Tennessee Williams: The Original American Outcast
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Transcript of Tennessee Williams: The Original American Outcast
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Tennessee Williams: The Original American Outcast
By: Maria Massad
March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983
Playwright, Dramatist
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The Main Feature:The condition of the outcast in American society
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Guiding Questions
• How does Blanche struggle to maintain her world of illusions?
• How do the costumes add to Williams’ expression of his characters?
• Ultimately, how do these scenes reveal Blanche’s status as an outcast in American society?
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Tennessee and Rose Williams
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Grabber
• “[Tennessee] Williams felt himself rendered different, or ‘Other,’ by his homosexuality, and thus felt a specialized sensitivity to all those who were physically, emotionally, or spiritually misbegotten and vulnerable – and therefore somehow special” (Shuman 1657).
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Thesis
• Williams was able to craft dramatic, insightful plays that reflected his distinctive literary voice – a voice that transformed the genre of the American play by exploring the illusion-filled lives of outcasts.
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Critical Quote• “Williams’s most prominent and all-inclusive
theme is an effect of an aggressively competitive society on sensitive characters…. All are social outcasts in society” (Ruzinko 2736)
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Literary Example
• “I take it for granted that you still have sufficient memory of Belle Reve to find this place and these poker players impossible to live with” (A Streetcar Named Desire 80).
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Literary Example• “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes,
magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth” (A Streetcar Named Desire 145).
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Literary Example
• “You come in here and sprinkle the place with powder and spray perfume and cover the light-bulb with a paper lantern, and lo and behold the place has turned into Egypt and you are Queen of the Nile!” (A Streetcar Named Desire 158).
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Critical Quote
• Blanche Dubois is “unable to operate on the realistic level” (Novick 548).
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Conclusion
• Reading Tennessee Williams enhanced my love of literature!
• Insights:– Everyone is an outcast