The Glass Menagerie and Haircut
Considered perhaps the greatest American playwright, TennesseeWilliams was raised in Mississippi and achieved success early on in hiscareer when he won the New York Critics' Circle Award in 1944-45 for theBroadway debut of The Glass Menagerie. Williams went on to win the sameaward and the Pulitzer Prize for A Streetcar Named Desire a mere threeyears later. Despite all his fame and fortune, Williams loathed being acelebrity. He found comfort in his relationship with Frank Merlo, whotragically died in 1961 from Lung Cancer. Williams fell into a deepdepression soon after, and he too passed away tragically in a hotel room inNew York in 1983 from a drug overdose. Alongside great writers in American Literature like Williams, RingLardner is considered one of America's greatest short story writers. Whilehe never wrote a novel, Lardner was well acquainted with F. ScottFitzgerald whose editor helped publish Lardner's works. His only playwrightsuccess came from a comedy he co-wrote with George S. Kaufman, called JuneMoon. Ring Lardner was initially a sports columnist, which was why it wasfitting that his first publication was a short stories anthology centeringround baseball. Lardner died in 1933,
Many critics account this for his desire to escape thestormy marriage of his parents and to find solitude in a world that was notready to accept his sexuality. This play is already consideredautobiographical, and Wingfield "going to the movies" whenever he wasconfronted with an unpleasant situation parallels Williams's own life. contributed to the liberation of American prosefrom the tyranny of its English heritage" (Short Story, 131). In The Glass Menagerie, there is the underlying theme of alcoholism inwhich Williams had experience with growing up in a home affected by thedisease. The only thing is that youdon't feel like talkie' to them and you get kind of lonesome" (Haircut,Lardner). While he had first-hand experience of what the disease does to aperson and the family unit, it is the other underlying theme ofhomosexuality that truly proves the 'auto-fictional' aspect of this play. Lardner used humor in his stories as a narrative device and a way toget his message across. She finds beauty in Nature and finds solace in her glass animals. In the play we learn that she'escapes' from her urban quandary through a glass menagerie and music. He was a 'pretty gooddrinker' and a 'lady-killer' which in turn lead to his demise. This formation of an understanding of howthe camera aids the story gave Williams the ability to present his plays insuch a manner that transfixed theater audiences into believing his centralcharacters. This is also illustrated in thebarber's narrative about shaving dead people, and how he only charges threedollars because "personally I don't mind much shavin' a dead person. She isa character that we feel pity for, and also sympathize towards for heremotional frailty. Indeed, there is a bitter irony in thatLaura dominates as the most deserving of an audience's sympathy and notionof what a 19th Century woman should be in nature and spirit.
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Acceptance Essays
