# data[].attributes.headline
Tennessee Williams and the context in relation with his inspiration

# data[].attributes.subject
Tennessee Williams and the context in relation with his inspiration

# data[].attributes.body
Wishes to be buried at sea in a manner that would “place his bones close to the bones of the submerged bones of Hart Crane”

Crane and Williams, both overly devoted to his mother

Both wrote out of an intense personal need. Crane drank heavily and was openly gay

Williams was a homo sexual.

He doesnt care about people who are shocked of the truth because they do not deserve the truth

His father was a traveling salesman and a heavy drinker.

Much of the pathos found in Williams’s drama was mined from the playwright’s own life (catharsis). Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness, and insanity were all part of Williams’s world. His experience as a known homosexual in an era unfriendly to homosexuality also informed his work. Williams’s most memorable characters, many of them female, contain recognizable elements of their author, Edwina, and Rose. His vulgar, irresponsible male characters, such as Stanley Kowalski, were likely modeled on Williams’s own father and other males who tormented Williams during his childhood.

# data[].attributes.body
The past and the present working together. No flashbacks, the past is always with us, as it is in life.

He simplified time to represent reality. Simplifying the past, the present and an older past.

Different actors are different lights on the same personality.

He wouldn't change any of the play today as there is no need to (meaning that the problem still somewhat applies? Social norms?)

The play does not speak to every generation

Life experiences have affected the way the themes and the ideas of the play were affected.

# data[].attributes.body
“After all the highways, and the trains and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive” (page 77)

# data[].attributes.body
Willy and Biff find themselves by recognising their love for one another. He wants to give/dedicate himself to pour his love to his son → Insurance money is given to his son Biff.

He was going to call it “The inside of his head”: The set was going to be the interior of his skull. Played inside there. Somebody else designed the set. It looked like it would be blown away with a breeze

# data[].attributes.body
the USA, economic situation, family, LIFE, corruption of capitalism. Coming to grips with the reality of life, love story between the father and the son. Loss of love and finding of love again.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tragedy and the Common Man (article summary)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tragedy and the Common Man by Arthur Miller Modern literature is rarely tragic because we perceive our lives to be lacking in grandeur or heroism to be worthy of starring in a tragic tale (tragic mode of writing often associated with kings historically etc.) BUT Miller believes that the common…

# data[].attributes.headline
Stella and Blanche's relationship - Abigail 

# data[].attributes.subject
Stella and Blanche's relationship - Abigail 

# data[].attributes.body
1)  Blanche admits to and exhibits “crazy” behavior that grows
increasingly worse, Stella demonstrates less obvious signs of anxiety that
become more significant in the context of this reading. Blanche’s appearance is said to have reminded her “how much Stanley means to her health”.
Thus has Stella chosen the protection of marriage, whose vows
represent a commitment both to a person and to a social institution. She
acknowledges her dependence on Stanley and signals her own instability
when she says, “I can hardly stand it when he is away for a night. . . When
he’s away for a week I nearly go wild!”
2) Often those staff members along the lower end of
the authority spectrum in the institution enact complicated relationships with the patients, part servant and part supervisor, in order to win cooperation, encourage
confidences or even build friendships. Stella does so with Blanche, waiting

on her and watching over her, providing her with her daily dose of alcohol etc.

3. "But on another level, Stella represents a patient herself, one who is

favored for the tasks she performs but nonetheless subject to torment by the
administration. She tolerates Stanley’s verbal and physical abuse because
she is, according to Kazan, “plain out of her head” about him. He goes on,
“she’s in a sensual stupor . . . drugged, trapped” and “actually narcotized all
day. . . She is glazed across her eyes” "

# data[].attributes.body
Outsiders vs Insider. They are both exported products. Blanche is the outsider. Biff can be the outsider.

# data[].attributes.body
Was good when it was new, but aged and is now faulty. Not as good as he dreamed of, wants more.

# data[].attributes.body
Destructive. The human urge to have power over something. Happy and Stanley link to bowling. It shows Power and Control.

# data[].attributes.headline
Parallel in the Kowalski household and the asylum - Abigail

# data[].attributes.subject
Parallel in the Kowalski household and the asylum - Abigail

# data[].attributes.body
1) The arrival both include suitcases, Stanley acts as an asylum superintendent by rummaging through Blanche's suitcase - which is what they do in the asylum to check the patient's bags.
2) What began in the nineteenth century as the “water cure” or
hydropathy, offering a proto-spa remedy well-suited to “delicate female
physiology,” for it “allowed women to escape oppressive domestic routines”. This exists in the mental institution as well, along with shock therapy and  lobotomy.
3) She seeks to hide her past (embodied by her aging face) and her bad habits (embodied by her drinking), and she succeeds temporarily in deflecting the investigation, but ultimately the shade comes off, the institutional light shines brightly, and like the moth to which she is compared, she shrivels in the glare. As her “therapeutic program” proceeds against her will, the lantern is torn off, and she is forced to confront her former life and her failings.
4) Blanche’s condition worsens during her time at the apartment, her lack of progress reflecting yet another historical reality of asylum treatment: that many patients quickly become institutionalized, sometimes copying behaviors of other patients or becoming increasingly less willing to care for themselves

# data[].attributes.body
Flute playing is hope for a better future, Varsouviana is remembering the past

# data[].attributes.body
A streetcar has a tack, so its set. Which is a fixed path. Blanche isn't in control of her destiny. A car doesn't have a set path. Willy has more control over his destiny.

# data[].attributes.body
Though different at sight, the swiss cheese and the meat both represent a past time. The throwing of the meat is a primitive act, shows how Stanley is to a certain extent still living in the past. The swiss cheese vs american cheese is the idea of past vs present, and in this play, the present takes over the past

# data[].attributes.body
A coping mechanism, to make them forget and numb the senses. State of euphoria.

# data[].attributes.body
Swiss cheese vs canned cheese, tradition vs modernity, normal vs new

# data[].attributes.body
Carrying baggage - Blanche carries her past and Willy carries his sons?

# data[].attributes.body
They represent the mass produced goods as opposed to her father's handmade flute. Regarding departure, it symbolises the dislocation of the common man, impermanence, and lack of a home. The fact that Willy hides the silk stockings for his mistress in the suitcase suggest that they represent the start of downfall of the modern man.

To a great extent, the suitcases also represent the past and the burden for character. This holds for both Blanche and Willy, they are both carrying the burdens of their past, personified in the suitcases. Blanche enters the place lost, and Eunice's greeting confirms this. The carrying of too much suitcase suggest the dangers to bringing too much of the past.

Blanche's fear of the light is contrary to the description of her as a moth. Her fear of light suggest that she wants to hide away from reality. Yet, the month comparison suggest an attraction to light. The symbolism of departure is also apt for Blanche. At her last moments, her suitcase is already packed for her.
To summarise, the suitcases are representations of characters being displaced. They are trying to find a their place in the world amongst the tragedy and sorrow.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Arthur Miller interview on "The Death of a Salesman" (1999)

# data[].attributes.headline
Video clip of interview withTennessee Williams

# data[].attributes.subject
Video clip of interview withTennessee Williams

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tennessee Williams Interview with Bill Boggs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Bill Boggs Interviews Tennessee Williams "It's an honor to have this great American Playwright in my archives. This interview came to be because Tennessee's agent was a friend of mine and he actually offered to have his client do the program.

# data[].attributes.body
by Arthur Miller

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
February 27, 1949

Tragedy and the Common Man
By ARTHUR MILLER
n this age few tragedies are written. It has often been held that the lack is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science, and the heroic attack on life cannot feed on an attitude of reserve and circumspection. For one reason or another, we are often held to be below tragedy-or tragedy above us. The inevitable conclusion is, of course, that the tragic mode is archaic, fit only for the very highly placed, the kings or the kingly, and where this admission is not made in so many words it is most often implied.
I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. On the face of it this ought to be obvious in the light of modern psychiatry, which bases its analysis upon classific formulations, such as Oedipus and Orestes complexes, for instances, which were enacted by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations.

More simply, when the question of tragedy in art is not at issue, we never hesitate to attribute to the well-placed and the exalted the very same mental processes as the lowly. And finally, if the exaltation of tragic action were truly a property of the high-bred character alone, it is inconceivable that the mass of mankind should cherish tragedy above all other forms, let alone be capable of understanding it.

As a general rule, to which there may be exceptions unknown to me, I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing-his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his "rightful" position in his society.

Sometimes he is one who has been displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks t attain it for the first time, but the fateful wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity and its dominant force is indignation. Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.

In the sense of having been initiated by the hero himself, the tale always reveals what has been called his "tragic flaw," a failing that is not peculiar to grand or elevated characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness. The flaw, or crack in the characters, is really nothing-and need be nothing, but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are "flawless." Most of us are in that category.

But there are among us today, as there always have been, those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them, and in the process of action everything we have accepted out of fear of insensitivity or ignorance is shaken before us and examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against the seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us-from this total examination of the "unchangeable" environment-comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy. More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn. And such a process is not beyond the common man. In revolutions around the world, these past thirty years, he has demonstrated again and again this inner dynamic of all tragedy.

Insistence upon the rank of the tragic hero, or the so-called nobility of his character, is really but a clinging to the outward forms of tragedy. If rank or nobility of character was indispensable, then it would follow that the problems of those with rank were the particular problems of tragedy. But surely the right of one monarch to capture the domain from another no longer raises our passions, nor are our concepts of justice what they were to the mind of an Elizabethan king.

The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world. Among us today this fear is strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who knows this fear best.

Now, if it is true that tragedy is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity.

The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens-and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies. In no way is the common man debarred from such thoughts or such actions.

Seen in this light, our lack of tragedy may be partially accounted for by the turn which modern literature has taken toward the purely psychiatric view of life, or the purely sociological. If all our miseries, our indignities, are born and bred within our minds, then all action, let alone the heroic action, is obviously impossible.

And if society alone is responsible for the cramping of our lives, then the protagonist must needs be so pure and faultless as to force us to deny his validity as a character. From neither of these views can tragedy derive, simply because neither represents a balanced concept of life. Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect.

No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination. Which is not to say that tragedy must preach revolution.

The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right and end in submission. But for a moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this sketching and tearing apart of the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is spuriously attached to the royal or the high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure his rightful place in the world.

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal.

For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.

The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force.

Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief-optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.

It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time-the heart and spirit of the average man.

Return to the Books Home Page

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
February 27, 1949 Tragedy and the Common ManBy ARTHUR MILLER n this age few tragedies are written. It has often been held that the lack is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science, and the heroic attack on life cannot feed on an attitude of reserve and circumspection.

# data[].attributes.body
FROM “HOME-PLACE” TO THE ASYLUM Confining Spaces in A Streetcar Named Desire

# data[].attributes.headline
Lecture on suitcases, sand and dry goods (Michigan Quarterly Review)

# data[].attributes.subject
Lecture on suitcases, sand and dry goods (Michigan Quarterly Review)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Drama Matters: Suitcases, Sand, and Dry Goods

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Despite Pozzo's fateful recommendation in this weighty speech from Godot, playwrights who aim to make a difference, including the one we celebrate with so much pride tonight, continue to reference their world-our world-in their scrupulous playing with time. "I could not imagine a theatre worth my time," Miller wrote in his autobiography Timebends, "that would not want to change the world."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ida Wyman Lalo Shaving, Los Angeles, 1950

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Spartacus, A Streetcar Named Desire music by Alex North - Ivory Duo piano Ensemble

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
00:03 'Blanche' (A Streetcar Named Desire) 03:11 'Vesuvius Camp' (Spartacus) http://www.natalie-peter.com/ Ivory Duo Piano Ensemble (Panayotis Archontides & Natalie Tsaldarakis) perform music from the films composed by Alex North (arranged for the piano four-hands by Panayotis Archontides) Alex North studied at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, then won a scholarship to Julliard in New York (1929) and, later, the Moscow Conservatoire (1933) -- he was the first-ever American to become a member of the Union of Soviet Composers.