Images of Horror in the Plays of Tennessee Williams

Abstract

The world portrayed by Tennessee Williams is replete with hectic hysteria,
repression, deception, sickness, sterility, insanity, castration, cannibalism and
lynching. The forces of sterility dominate and castrate the forces of vitality and
life. Ethnic intolerance can also be observed in some of his plays. The brutes hold
their sway by bullying and beguiling methods, and they do not let love, affection
and personal freedom take their roots. Here, life becomes a struggle for survival
and longing for domesticity leads to despondency. The recurrent themes of
mental instability, insanity, asylum and suicide are a direct comment on the
horrors and anarchy of the age, maimed and mutilated by selfishness and
brutality. Williams’ plays deal with the spiritual anarchy resulting from the social
anarchy. He portrays a dark and barren world where every effort to beautify and
humanize it turns into a nightmare. He portrays an irredeemable world with its
dying and disintegrating civilization. His threatened figures find themselves in a
brutal society. They try their best to sustain themselves with the power of their
will and imagination but fail in their efforts.