| Tennessee Williams is an extremely important playwright in the history of American drama.On the basis of reading the plays,this paper tries to analyze the main characters of the three works of The Glass Menagerie,The Streetcar Named Desire and The Cat on Hot Roof from the perspective of trauma theory,and explore the influence of trauma experience on Tennessee Williams’ s creation.Traumatic experience is one of the important driving forces of Tennessee Williams’s life plays.Traumatic Researchers believe that trauma is the painful life experience that undermines the cognitive structure of the world.Because of the rupture of these cognitive structures,people who experience trauma are frustrated and show obvious traumatic symptoms.This paper consists of three parts:introduction,main body and conclusion.The first part introduces Tennessee Williams and the artistic achievements of his plays,summarizes the research status of Williams’ s play at home and abroad and presents the research significance of this paper.From Tennessee William growth experience,this thesis analyzes his childhood and adult trauma.His childhood was overshadowed by lack of father’ s care and family misfortune.In his adulthood,because of suppression of homosexual repression at that time,he was deeply ashamed and remorseful of his homosexual emotions.The first chapter introduces the research method of this paper--trauma theory and its development.In the second chapter,the paper takes different characters to analyzes the trauma symptoms and their corresponding causes,including the abandoned mother in the broken family,psychologically repressed and distorted male image in the patriarchal society and a typical decaying aristocracy in south American plantation culture in the plays The Glass Menagerie,The Streetcar Named Desire and The Cat on Hot Roof.The third chapter discusses the coping strategies of the characters in the face of trauma.These characters are self-indulgent,self-deceptive,or escape from reality,indulge in memories,or unwilling to yield to fate,struggle through life.Most of their healing end in failure.The last part is the conclusion:Tennessee Williams devotes his life to his plays,play writing is the sublimation of his life trauma experience.His work has a strong autobiographical color,and the characters also have his own and his family’ s shadow.Traumatic experience is the main source of Tennessee Williams’ s creation and play writing is his lifetime spiritual comfort.On the one hand,this paper provides new perspective for readers to understand Tennessee Williams,it also has a positive meaning for guiding people’s mind to mature. |
