1. What do you know about the literature of lost generation? Call other authors of lost generation.
2. Explain the title of the novel.
3. Tell about the various symbols of the novel. Find episodes, where they are used.
4. Examine chapter 27 and find Henrys antiwar meditations. Comment on them.
5. Examine chapter 28 and find the episode, showing how the war influences the life of ordinary people.
6. Examine chapter 26. What is the attitude of Henry toward religion? Comment on it.
7. Examine chapter 30. How is the retreat described? How is the apathy of the soldiers shown?
8. Examine chapter 34. How does Hemingways theory of separate peace find its manifestation?
9. Describe the character of Frederic Henry.
10. Describe the character of Catherine Barkley (make usage of chapter16 and 23).
11. What mood is created in the novel?
12. What can you say about the language of the novel?
Tennessee Williams
(1911 - 1982)
Thomas Lanier Williams was an outstanding American playwright, the author of film scripts, short stories, novels, verse. He was born in Columbus, Mississippi. His mother, the daughter of a minister, was of refined upbringing, while his father was a shoe salesman. His parents often quarreled and this influenced the boy greatly. He attended the University of Missouri but did not finish his study. His father forced him to work for a shoe company. There he met a young man named Stanley Kowalski who would become his character of the play A Streetcar Named Desire. After two years of hard work at the warehouse Williams suffered a nervous breakdown. He returned to his study later and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938. He began his literary career under the nick name Tennessee. After his own disappointment in his first literary production, Tennessee Williams wrote an absolutely extraordinary play The Glass Menagerie (1945). He combined autobiographical material from his past in Mississippi with innovative technique. This play burst its way onto Broadway. In 1948 his reputation continued to zenith, after getting his First Pulitzer Prize for the play A Streetcar Named Desire . The Second Pulitzer Prize was for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955).
In these plays, as in many of his later works, Williams explores the intense passions and frustrations of a brutal society. Unable to write openly about his homosexuality in the 1950s and 60s, he displaced the pleasure and pain of sexua1 relations from the autobiographical into nominally heterosexual dramas. Women characters were the means for the writer to reflect his deepest emotions.
For his, next three plays, Orpheus Descending (1957), Suddenly, Last Summer (1958), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959) Williams borrowed elements of the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to create, violent plots involving murder, cannibalism, and emasculation.
Among his other the most prominent plays are The Rose Tattoo (1951), The Night of the Iguana (1961), Small Craft Warnings (1972).
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Williams was addicted to drugs and alcohol. He suffered from depressions all his life and was afraid of being insane like his sister. Being a regional writer, Tennessee Williams wrote in the Southern tradition. He romanticized the south and idealized southern people.
All of Williams plays illustrate a dark vision of life. He often transformed private experience into public drama. He wrote about what he knew best himself. He came from the South that is why the theme of the tragedy of Southern aristocratic families was very interesting for him. He is noted for his scenes of high dramatic tension and for brilliant dialogue. He is very successful in his portraits of the hypersensitive and lonely Southern woman such as Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire clutching at life, particularly at her memories of a grand past that no longer exists. Williams spent several months in New Orleans before writing this play. He lived in a flat overlooking the streetcars. He found a street named Elysian Fields. The name comes from Greek myth. Elysium was a happy land, a paradise. The name of the street is used in this play ironically. At the beginning of the play Blanche Dubois, carrying a suitcase, hesitantly walks down Elysian Fields. From her gestures and her dressing it is clear that she is a stranger. She wants to find the flat of her sister. Blanche is a worn-out traveler from Mississippi where she teaches at school and owns her familys Belle Reve, a large plantation with a white-columned mansion. Stella lives with her Polish husband Stanley Kowalski. Stella has a warm reunion, but Blanche has some bad hews: Belle Reve, the family mansion, has been lost. Blanche stayed behind to care for their dying family while Stella left to make a new1ife for herself. Blanche meets Stanley for the first time, and immediately she feels uncomfortable. Stanley immediately distrusts Blanche to the extent that he suspects her of having cheated Stella out of her share of Belle Reve. Stella is enchanted by her husband Stanley because of their sexual relations and neglects the fact that he is not from her stratum. Stanly is totally incapable of understanding Blanche. He is coarse and common and hates Blanches delicate, aristocratic manners. The situation grows more and more tense. Stanleys roughness bothers Blanche; he makes no effort to be gentle with her. Mitch, Stanleys friend falls in love with Blanche and she is going to marry him. Stanley gets information of Blanches past. He tells Stella that after losing the mansion, Blanche moved into a motel where she has numerous, sexual partners and she was dismissed from her job as a schoolteacher because it was discovered that she was haying a love affair with a teenage pupil. Stella is scared to learn that Stanley has told Mitch these stories about Blanche. Stella tries to protect her sister and tells Stanley about the tragic marriage of Blanche and the shock which she had after the death of her beloved husband. But all in vain, Stanley wants to drive her out of the flat and ruin her possible marriage with Mitch. The only unforgivable crime, according to Blanche, is deliberate cruelty. This sin is Stanleys specialty. While Stella is not at home (she is taken to hospital because of her pregnancy), Stanley rapes Blanche and the brutality of the act breaks her fragile nature; she is totally destroyed. Blanche suffers a mental breakdown. She has told Stella what Stanley did, but Stella prefers to think that it cant be true. The only place for Blanche now is the state institution, where Stanley and Stella send her. Doctor and nurse come and take Blanche away to the asylum. Blanche screams and tries to resist. Finally, the doctor manages to calm her, and as Blanche is led off to the mental institution, she holds tight to the doctors arm, saying, Whoever you are I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
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The themes of A Streetcar Named Desire (the theme of old South, desire, cruelty, illusions) are based on the conflicts between man and woman, classes and attitude to life. The main differences that are developed are between Blanche and Stanley. Stanley Kowalski is the perfect stereotype of a member of the lower class of society. By nature, he is vulgar, rude, intolerant, indiscreet, foul-mouthed, cruel and violent. He is proud of himself and exudes sexual energy. He makes it clear that he is the boss in the house and in the marriage. With Blanche, he demonstrates his superiority by overcoming her physically; his nature is so different from Blanches that he cannot understand her delicate and sensitive soul. His wife Stella comes from the same refined and educated background as Blanche, but she prefers to obey him and adjust herself to his way of thinking and style of life. Blanche can not accept the superiority of Kowalski that is why he hates her. Blanche is an escapist who says, I dont want realism. She hides from bright lights, just as she hides from the truth. Her delicate aristocratic nature simply cannot bear the reality of present-day existence; she finds it too painful that her sister lives with a domineering, rude man. Blanches tragic marriage in the past ruins her future and she prefers to live under the net of her own illusions and romantic dreams.
There are a lot of symbols in the play and most of them are used ironically. Dubois means from the woods. The both sisters come from the Southern aristocratic family. Stella meaning star but there is nothing special in her personality. On the contrary, she is submissive and is a symbol of compromise and adjustment. Blanche means white but she is not pure and innocent even though she is dressed in white as a symbol of how she views herself. The old family mansion, Belle Reve can be translated as beautiful dream. But Blanche loses all of her dreams in the end. Games may be regarded as a sexual symbol of phallic power. For example bowling and porker have a special meaning in the play. Blanche asks if she can play cards but is not accepted. Stella watches Stanleys bowling but never participates. Stella argues with her husband while he is playing cards. In the last scene the game of poker is being played, while Blanche is being sent to the medical institution. The world of games is pictured as the masculine world, which is alien to women.
The reference to the streetcar called Desire is highly ironic too. Blanche has to go on it to reach Elysian Fields, her sisters home. She wants to reach happiness and her desires, which the name Elysian Fields indicates, but her desires bring her grief. Because of her desires she was driven out of the school and the town. Brutal, sexual desire of Stella towards her husband makes her betray not only her aristocratic ideals but also her sister.
