From Supernumerary to Principal: The Role of Trauma as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Abstract

Through the lens of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this thesis examines Williams’s characters, Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar named Desire and Brick Pollitt from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as trauma survivors who struggle to find or reject pathways toward wholeness. Blanche seeks relief from the symptoms of PTSD, but is thwarted by her community, while Brick rejects resolving over-whelming trauma, engaging in subsequent destructive behaviors despite the admonishment and enablement by his family. This thesis delves deeply into the initial onset of trauma within each character’s history, as well as the demonstrated symptoms of PTSD due to unresolved trauma.

PTSD’s roots originate within trauma research, specifically in the early writings of Charcot, Janet, and Freud. Despite the long history of trauma research, it wasn’t until the 1980s that PTSD was recognized by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and codified into a series of symptoms. The traumatogenic event separates the survivor from her/himself, and cognition of this wound may be impeded by the overwhelming nature of the trauma. If the survivor is unable to integrate the trauma into the quilt of experiences over a lifetime, she/he continues to exist in separateness, which may develop into PTSD. While this thesis is not a clinical analysis on trauma, a primer on PTSD and its associated symptoms based on texts by notable authors in the field are included in order to present a more defined and supported argument. Evidence for this thesis includes lines from the text, critical analyses from peer reviewed journals and university press textbook anthologies.

This investigation concludes that critical analyses have been limited to observations that Blanche and Brick have undergone trauma, however there has not been sufficient investigation into the etiology of the trauma. Critical analyses without examining the etiology of the trauma enables limited portrayal of these characters, whereas a psychological understanding empowers comprehensive portrayal that is reflective of the entire spectrum of an individual. Lastly, these findings offer deeper understanding to the subtext of a life-long story arc from an initial trauma that occurred distantly in the past, as well as the subsequent manifestations of PTSD that occurred more recently before each play begins and recurrently appear while in action on stage.