A Study Of The Theme Of Salvation In Tennessee Williams' Plays

Tennessee Williams is one of the most famous playwrights whose plays arouse great interest abroad.However,the domestic study of his plays only began after 1980 s with a few monographs.Both Chinese and foreign critics have paid great attention to themes reflected in his plays.When probing into themes,this thesis aims to foucs on the theme of salvation which is caused by both his spiritual crisis that is represented by his homosexual identity and the external pressure that is represented by an alienated world in the transitional period from McCarthyism to The Cultural Movement in 1960 s.This thesis selects five plays,The Glass Menagerie,A Streetcar Named Desire,Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,Orpheus Descending,and The Night of the Iguana,to study the theme of salvation.These five plays sequentially spanned from the beginning of Tennessee Williams' fame to the ending of his popularity in writing career.Based on these five plays,this thesis argues that the expressions of salvation undergo three stages in a progressing manner,namely self-paralysis salvation,sexual balance and self-communion.Furthermore,this thesis points out that it is the last stage--exile that distinguishes his salvation from that of his peers.From The Glass Menagerie to The Night of the Iguana,Tennessee Williams sets his characters in predicaments which are caused by ethical,social,political and cultural influences.In writing career,he is devoted to the theme of salvation which moves within the stranglehold of both realistic and spiritual crises.Those characters languish in both internal and external darkness,and thus Tennessee Williams is devoted to the exploration of salvation in order to emancipate those people who are troubled.This thesis comprises six main parts.The introduction gives a brief depiction of Tennessee Williams' life and writing career.At the same time,this part focuses on the major plot and characters of these five plays,and reviews the previous and present researches on Tennessee Williams' plays,especially on the selected five plays.At the end of the introduction,this thesis sets forth the central argument,research methods and significance of the thesis.Then,this thesis concentrates on elaborating the theme of salvation in the four main chapters.The first chapter aims to define the meaning of salvation in Tennessee Williams' plays from the etymological perspective.The second chapter pins down the three expressions of salvation in Tennessee's plays with the support of the textual details and at the same time illustrates the progressing of salvation in the sequence of these three stages.The third chapter aims to elaborate the factors leading to the formation of salvation in Tennessee's plays.And the last chapter aims to analyze the features of Tennessee Williams' salvation.In conclusion,this thesis concludes that the progressing of salvation's expression is Tennessee Williams' pursuit of emancipating people from the stranglehold of both physical and spiritual world.