Tennessee Williams: I Am A Humanism

As one of the most celebrated playwrights in American literature, Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) has always been welcomed for his penetrating plays, and disputed for his constant concern about the dark sides of the society. Rather than writing about the mainstream American society, he focuses his attention on a special social group, with non-conformist gays and women at the center. In his plays, he casts this special group of people as his constant protagonists, portraying their painful struggling in a peripheral world, concerning with their torture and helplessness, conveying their yearning for tolerance, understanding and love. What lies beneath his concern with the special group is his great special humanism.This thesis intends to explore and discover his special humanism by analyzing characters in his three major plays -- The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Chapter One articulates the features of his special humanism compared with the traditional humanism and probes into the roots of his humanism. Chapter Two analyzes the way Tennessee Williams unfolds the painful struggling of his gay characters, and shows his empathy for the group. Chapter Three, by scrutinizing three female characters in the three plays, studies his profound concern with women as a disadvantaged group and reveals his praise and admiration for women, who, in the time of Williams, were still fighting for dignity and equality.Tennessee Williams is a pure and special humanist, because his humanism is free from any bondage of mainstream American conventions which often were not exempt from social bias, and because he gives sympathy and love to those in a peripheral underworld who are in desperate need for understanding and love.