Torn Between the Real and the Illusion: Tennessee Williams' Protagonists

Abstract

Tennessee Williams is regarded as one of the most famous and important American playwrights in the twentieth century. His writing career spanned more than forty-five years, and his achievements have been recognized and appreciated by many critics and readers in the world. Williams' literary work was also under many critical controversies. During his life, he was awarded two times  Pulitzer Prizes for his work 'A Streetcar Named Desire' in 1947 and 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' in 1955. He was also awarded New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for ''The Glass Menagerie''. His southern roots play an important role to shape the theme of his work where thematically attached to twentieth-century southern fiction writers more than any other dramatist of his period. Williams concerned much with absconders and isolated people who were treated badly and trapped in their inappropriate circumstances, and this was the outcome of the impact of the social protest in the 1930s. His plays are concerned with large individual issues rather than the social issues that differentiate him from his contemporaries by the lyrical language he used too. The paper takes up the dialogue between the real and the illusion, especially in the way his protagonist relates to their social milieu.