Reconstructing an Identity: A Psychoanalytical Reading ofThe Night of the Iguanaby Tennessee Williams

Abstract

This paper attempts to detect Tennessee Williams's psychological development in his last successful play The Night of the Iguana (1961) in comparison with his previous plays which pronounced his fragmented identity. A comparison between Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer (1958) and The Night of the Iguana detects a sudden shift of the dramatist's mind in the application of symbols and images employed. A psychoanalytical assessment and comparison of symbols, images and literary devices applied in both plays will depict the dramatist's constitution of his tenuous "I" and reconstruction of his distorted identity. Unlike the horrifying images of God, cannibalism and melancholia resulting from abjection that imposed a certain Gothic atmosphere in Suddenly Last Summer, the images and settings in The Night of the Iguana resonate with comfort and leisure which resemble the pre-symbolic. The study therefore suggests that Williams's abundant use of natural symbols and images, particularly the God image in The Night of the Iguana presents the setting as the "chora" which Kristeva defines as the place where the infant's identity is merged with his/her mother before gaining an identity after the mirror stage and the learning of language which marks subsequent entry into the symbolic order. This analysis therefore helps to bring some clarity to the play, particularly in the light of prior criticism levelled against Williams for his excessive use of symbols and natural images.

The Elderly Characters in Dramas of Tennessee Williams

“…Today, the scholarly studies (L. R. Hezaveh, N. Abdullah, & M. S. Yaapar (2015); G. Mandelbaum (2017); M. Lisagor (2020)) tackle the general psychological aspects in dramas of the playwright as well as the issues of gender and sexuality of Williams' proverbial characters (D. Dervin (1999); A. J. Saddik (2015); N. M. Iftimie (2018); S. Gontarski (2021)).…”