The Theme Of Loneliness In Orpheus Descending

Tennessee Williams is one of the most significant playwrights in America in the twentieth century. Many of his works are adapted into films and enjoy worldwide popularity. Over the years, scholars at home and abroad focus their studies on a limited few of his works, such as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and pay less attention to his other works. The research object of this thesis, Orpheus Descending, is a play Williams created in1957about loneliness, desire and redemption. Since the advent of the play, it has just received few scholars attentions. Critics usually adopt myth archetypal criticism, psychoanalysis, symbol study and feminist approach to analyze the play. Williams attaches much importance on theme of estrangement, loneliness and alienation in his plays. However, up till now, critics seldom make a comprehensive study on the theme of loneliness central to Williams’ plays.Loneliness is an important theme in literary history. It has attracted many writers and they probe into men’ loneliness from different aspects. Due to the repressive family and social environment and special life experience, Williams was especially sensitive to loneliness. And as a southern writer, Williams was influenced by the absurdity and repression in southern literary tradition. Thus, loneliness becomes one of Williams’major literary concerns. Instead of the traditional single perspective in loneliness study, this thesis would combine metaphysical perspective and social perspective to explore the theme of loneliness. Theories of existentialism and alienation and the cultural study on southern Puritanism and patriarchal system are applied in the thesis to reveal the different expressions of loneliness in different characters and the reasons for them.Firstly, on the viewpoint of existentialism, this thesis examines men’s loneliness in an absurd and meaningless world full of evil and violence. Through the help of existential theory, the thesis analyzes how the existentialist protagonist struggles to escape from existence predicament but fails to do it after he witnesses the corruption and violence in southern society. The result shows that life is absurd and men’s existence is meaningless. All men’s efforts to cast off the sense of nothingness and loneliness are in vain.Secondly, the thesis tries to reveal that the estrangement and alienation in southern society is another reason for loneliness in the play. American South in the1940s experienced great transitions in economy, politics and values. The traditional plantation economy was gradually replaced by the industrialized modern economic pattern. Commercialization of the southern society led to the estrangement and alienation among people. Economic transition also had great impact on southern traditional values, but many southerners still believed in the past southern myth, such as white supremacy, and oppressed the blacks and their vindicators cruelly.In the battle between the old and new values, those who advocated freedom and equality would suffer brutal persecution because they violated the conservative traditional southern values. Racism and conservative values turned the South into a violent and horrible society which was no longer suitable for living, and people in the society would feel self-estrangement and loneliness.Thirdly, the thesis explores women’s loneliness based on the study of southern puritan culture and patriarchal system. Southern puritan culture regards women as individuals without sexual desire. Traditional southern women are supposed to be reserved and virtuous. Meanwhile, southern patriarchal system regards women as affiliated to men and restrains women’s freedom physically and mentally. By analyzing Lady and Vee’survival predicament in southern society, the thesis reveals that the physical and mental oppression upon women and the restraints on women’s nature and their spiritual pursuit from southern puritan culture and patriarchal system are the reasons for women’s loneliness.Through the study on the theme of loneliness in Orpheus Descending, the thesis reveals the interpersonal estrangement in modern society and men’s solitary survival situation. The thesis aims to enlarge the research scope of Williams’ plays to a certain extent, deepen the understanding of the theme of loneliness in Williams’works and provide the later researchers with some insights.