윌리엄즈의 극에 나타난 시간의 문제: 과거 속으로의 도피

Abstract

Tennessee Williams is acknowledged as one of the greatest playwrights of the post-war generation in the history of American theatre, although some argue that the range of his work is limited to private, individual lives. A number of twentieth-century American writers have concerned themselves with the dilemma of human beings trapped in time. The effect of time upon the human condition was also one of Williams' important concerns. Burdensome memory of the past disrupting the present is a major theme recurring throughout most of his dramas. Williams views both the personal past and the historical past of the South as dynamic forces that stubbornly continue to affect the lives of his characters. Many of his chief characters are victimized by their deluded references to personal and collective pasts, most of which their imagination fabricated. Therefore, Williams regards time in terms of entrapment and demonstrates the futility of attempts to transcend time. A Streetcar Named Desire shows the destruction of a young woman who yearns to live the mythic life of the Antebellum South. In frustration and despair she is thrust into the life of contemporary New Orleans. Raped by her brother-in-law, she is forced into an insane asylum. Blanche, trapped in the terrible loneliness and despair of the present, tries to ameliorate her miserable situations by attempting romantic flights to the past, flights which only exacerbate her desperate state of the present.