Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1974

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Pearce, Howard D.

Abstract

This thesis explores the conflicts between and within the main characters in three Tennessee Williams plays: A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, and Orpheus Descending. It demonstrates that the conflicts between the characters, the inevitable outcome of the individual's persistent adherence to established ideals and denial of his instinctive impulses, are analogous to the antithetical Apollonian-Dionysian forces as explored by Friedrich Nietzsche and Euripides. Of these opposed forces, one represents the learned traits the other the unlearned primitive impulses. When further related to man's divided psyche they reveal that man's emotional stability depends upon the harmonious coexistence of both his conscious and unconscious impulses. However, as the study reveals, it is impossible for man to suppress and deny his natural impulses which, like nature itself, are too powerful and imperative to man's basic existence and spiritual salvation. To Williams Dionysus becomes the symbol of modern man who, haunted by ineffectual traditional values and threatened by technological encroachment, refuses to become extinct and defiantly fights to create a fresh and meaningful life.

Extent

65 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1974.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT13681

Format

pdf

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