Williams's dramatic works all reveal his feelings about the "civilization disease" that accompanies modern material civilization - the indifference of interpersonal emotions. This sadness and desolate heartache are hidden in every play.
Writers tirelessly explore in their works to provide answers on how to face life. They regard this as a never-ending theme and also reveal their own values. As an observer and participant in the social turmoil during the most severe economic depression in the United States in the 20th century, Williams was extremely sensitive to social turmoil and tried to reflect the symptoms of cultural and lifestyle changes during the social transformation period in the form of drama. He witnessed the changes in southern society. The collapse under the invasion of modernity experiences the hardships and painful experiences of small people in southern society during the transformation of modern industrialization. The family drama explores the survival dilemma of modern people. People face the contradiction between inner needs and reality. Most of Williams' works are set in the American South in the first half of the 20th century, describing the decline of the South and full of nostalgia. The playwright is nostalgic for the beautiful past of the South and feels regretful and saddened by its decline. The sights and smells of the Mississippi Delta were woven into Williams' life.
Williams is familiar with and understands the mood and character of Southern characters, appreciates their language charm and patterns, and creates lifelike images of Southern characters. The Southern characters created by the playwright are vivid and touching, and the male characters in his works are unique, but it is the female characters that best reflect the regional characteristics of the South. The women described by the playwright are the last aristocrats left over from the ancient South of the United States. They cannot forget the lifestyle of the plantation era, and they are even less able to get rid of a set of hypocritical, strict and contradictory moral concepts pursued by the old South. When the social system changes, the civilization they were familiar with in the past is replaced by a strange, naked competition for survival and human desire. At this time, the inherent contradictions in the old culture and the contradictions between the old and new cultures attack them. . They are victims of the declining plantation culture and will inevitably be ruthlessly eliminated in the new environment. Due to the fact that southern women have been separated from actual labor and plantation management activities for a long time, women are extremely dependent on men. And their obsession with the elegance, solemnity and romance of the ancient South makes their tragedy even more sympathetic. Amanda, a typical representative of Southern women, on the one hand reflects a mother's care for her son, and on the other hand reflects her economic dependence on men. The main purpose of Amanda advising her daughter Laura to get married is to have someone to rely on in the future, because in the South, the fate of unmarried and unemployed women is very sad. They can only live under the roof of others and live without dignity relying on their brothers-in-law or brothers-in-law. .
In Williams's family drama, the regional cultural crisis of the American South is recorded in detail. It can be said that Williams' family drama projects and displays the psychological changes and pain of the American Southerners in the transformation of the times. In "The Glass Menagerie", the playwright presents to the audience the image of a group of evaders. Whether it is Amanda, Tom or Laura, they are all deeply influenced by southern American culture, and thus cannot face the impact of northern modernization. They chose to escape the difficult life during the Great Depression. In "A Streetcar Named Desire", Blanche tries to maintain the elegant life of a southern lady in the materialistic modern economy, but ends in failure. In the struggle with the barbaric forces of modern civilization represented by her brother-in-law Stanley, she The southern culture represented was strangled; in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", the South gradually regarded the money economy as a new "religion", and traditions such as art, romance, loyalty, and friendliness were considered inappropriate and were strangled. In terms of interpersonal relationships, the relationships between family members are also colored by money. The three works all focus on families filled with the influence of southern culture. Their emotions are bound to be inseparable from southern culture. The crisis of southern regional culture has become the background of family emotions that lingers in the works. Technique
Tennessee Williams' life plays were close to realism in the early stages. He is a Strindberg-style playwright. In terms of creative methods, he, like Western modernists, opposes simply following the tradition of realism, and strives to widely adopt symbolism, expressionism, romanticism, and realism. Various artistic techniques. He believes that symbolism is the natural language of drama, and his works are full of symbolic techniques. Some are successful, some are abused, and some are even used in later works that are obscure and difficult to understand and have been criticized. In fact, the titles of the three masterpieces he created earlier all contain symbolic meanings. For example, "The Glass Menagerie" symbolizes the heroine Laura as pure and fragile as a glass animal tchotchke, "A Street Corner Named Desire" symbolizes the heroine Blanche embracing her desire to die, and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" symbolizes the heroine Maggie's Uneasy situation and anxious mood.
Although the women in Williams' plays made certain struggles in real life to gain economic independence and obtain the satisfaction of their desires, they eventually succumbed to male dominance. On the one hand, Williams wanted women to strive for independence, obtain equal rights with men, and get rid of male oppression and control. On the other hand, he placed male power at the supreme position and believed that women must submit to male rule.
Memories
A distinctive feature of Williams' plays is that he is good at describing the characters' memories of past events. These memories are often narrated through the protagonist's monologues.
They can be roughly classified into two categories, one is the memory of the "idyllic" life in the past, and the other is the incubus about the "demonlike" life in the past. The playwright injects religious and mythological elements into these memories. The former is a "memory drama" with strong nostalgic emotions, showing the protagonist's desire to return to the romantic past years, which makes people can't help but think of the characters in the original mythology. They show the audience the relationship between heaven and earth in ancient times. A beautiful scene of harmony and unity between spirit and body.
The "demonic" memories represent the protagonist who is tortured by guilt and attempts to get rid of the pain buried deep in his heart, escape from the pursuit of nightmares and seek relief. This type of "memory drama" is reminiscent of archetypal myths that often describe the physical and spiritual conflicts suffered by the inhabitants of a fallen and fragmented world, and the unbridgeable gap between humans and gods. .
These memories with mythological elements, whether pastoral or demonic, create a "pause of time" in the character growth and plot development. When the protagonists in Williams' plays are immersed in the memories of the past, they are either addicted or afraid. Their emotional activities will be bound or restricted in a frozen state, and their psychology will appear abnormal, neurotic, and chaotic. The obvious characteristic of this frozen state is that they are either obsessed with remembering a certain moment in their past life, or they are trying to get rid of it. At the same time, the characters and events in memory are more or less indirectly expressed through religious, mythological, historical and literary images, and are endowed with mythical or religious ritual elements. Moreover, in a certain character It will have the characteristics of multiple mythological archetypes at the same time. In Williams' own words, "All my important characters transcend real life and are not realists."
In those plays with "idyllic" memories, the protagonists are given the images and character traits of the strong and beautiful male and female gods in Greek mythology. They may have the same characteristics as the saints in the Bible. or have messianic characteristics, or possess the qualities of heroic figures in popular culture such as fairy tales and folklore. In those plays composed of "demonic" memories, the protagonists take on archetypal characteristics of sin-tormented lost men or demons, or simply versions of disgraced Christians and martyrs. These memory dramas also have a unique feature. The memories of the past in the first half are often reproduced in one form or another in the second half, forming a strong convolution and contrast in the plot structure, which further highlights the latter part. Half of the plot exaggerates the tense atmosphere before the climax.
In his drama creation, Williams not only used some relatively complete religious mythological stories as the plot backbone of his plays, but also often intercepted certain scenes, fragments, or certain gods from religious mythological stories. The dramatic relationship between them is integrated into his works. This seemingly inadvertent stroke of genius greatly enriches the connotation of the drama, provides the audience with an imagination space that is far larger than the drama stage, and increases the plot layering and ideological connotation of the play.
Symbol
In Williams' writing, when the protagonist is forced to return to the real world from the illusory world he created, he is forced to face the true face that he has tried so hard to cover up and hide. At that time, the drama reached its climax. This moment of stripping away the mythical cloak or rendering it non-ritual is usually achieved by breaking, tearing or destroying a concrete symbol that is directly connected to the protagonist's spiritual world. These symbols often cause her or him to fall into an emotional world of idyllic memories or to try to escape nightmarish memories.
Language
While Williams strives to create a new dramatic stage, he also tries his best to adapt the dialogue of the dramatists to the poetic and romantic style of his plays. Williams' plays are based on reality, and his "realism" is so deeply rooted in Southern culture that it is easy to judge his unique language from the words of his characters style. Williams successfully used some unique exaggeration and realistic and imaginary expression techniques, making his plays rooted in reality but transcending reality, creating a kind of distance beauty. The words of most of his characters exude a touch of exoticism, contain witty and humorous gags, or reveal an elegant and song-like charm. These are what distinguish Williams from other American dramatists of the same period. place.
Stage effects
In his drama creation, Williams is also good at using changing lights, personalized music, and stage backgrounds that change from time to time to serve the plot and create an all-round experience for the audience. visual and auditory space.
When he was young, he admired Chekhov and Dai H. Lawrence very much, and he liked poetry even more. Therefore, his plays were often full of poetry and painting, and he used expressionist techniques to carefully arrange the stage design and cleverly Use all dramatic means such as scenery, lighting, music, costumes, props, etc. to enhance the artistic effect. As early as 1944, he used it skillfully and successfully in his famous work "The Glass Menagerie".
Williams synthesized stage art, screen art, and conventional techniques in literary creation, and presented them organically through the stage space. Moreover, in his works, he expresses the reality of life on the stage through his unique stage language.
He proposed using the screen as a metaphor for a consciousness that is both lyrical and philosophical, both unique and universal.