Tennessee Williams Biography

Tennessee Williams, one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, was the man behind unforgettable characters like Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. He gave the audience characters that they were going to remember for the rest of their life. His plays were a crystal clear vision of the life down South and the different forms and strata of the human society. He has been rightly called the Master playwright, the greatest Southern playwright in the history of American Drama. Just like his characters, he too was troubled and self-destructive. He was addicted to drugs and was a hardcore alcoholic. His plays are autobiographical in nature and we can see glimpses of his own life in his plays. He was a fan of the concept called ‘poetic realism’—when one watches the same thing over and over again, the act seems to take on a symbolic meaning after some time. His plays were filled with extremities which were justified because he believed they were a part of the human condition. What Williams wrote was very honest and came from a heart that had endured everything that he wrote about. His vulnerability was what that made his work so much more important. His genius lay in his heartfelt struggle to tell the world his innermost stories.