Abstract:

Tennessee Williams, the renowned American playwright of the 20th century, is undoubtedly the greatest symbolist of American theater. This paper focuses on how symbols and myths combine in his plays to underscore the major themes and concerns that permeate his work. The principal function of his symbols is to establish an emotional connection with the audience, to create a play so emotionally charged with concrete and general categories of quintessential images, the realization of which brings down the psychological walls of our divided ego, turning the particular into the general, the unknowable into the known, and also making the grotesque acceptable, as another dimension of the human condition. Williams employs two types of symbols- concrete and abstract- to evoke this common reaction. One of the most significant functions of his symbols is to provide his characters with a mythical dimension or stature. Williams viewed his characters not as realistic but as larger than life. One way of making his characters extraordinary was by universalizing the peculiar and the bizarre, by finding those similarities or archetypes in myths, legends or tales that would touch the collective unconscious and would make the personal vicissitudes meaningful.

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