Southern Renaissance Themes

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The Southern Renaissance The Southern Renaissance was the period of time that began in the 1920s with the arrival of many influential writers such as Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor. Writers during this era were from the South and tended to focus on many recurring themes such as lost romance, dysfunctional family, and the Gothic tradition. In this paper, I will examine how those three themes played major roles in The Glass Menagerie, A Rose for Emily, and The Life You Save May Be Your Own. The first theme I will discuss is a lost romance, which deals with a love that has gone astray. In The Glass Menagerie, Laura is most appropriate with this theme. Although she never had a true love story, she tremendously seeks one and yearns everyday for a man in her life. In high school, her dream was to be wed to Jim O’Connor and when she finds out he is her “gentleman caller”, she shivers and involuntarily becomes sick. When he kisses her and she believes that she has finally found a man, he uncovers to her that he is engaged and set to be married. Her romance, therefore, was dispersed. Emily Grierson in A Rose for Emily is also correlated with this theme. Homer Barron, the man she fell in love with after her father died, revealed to her that he did not want to get…show more content…
This theme is found in The Glass Menagerie by the mother, Amanda. She constantly criticized Tom and Laura and treated them like little kids. An example of this was found in the beginning of the play when she consistently critiqued the way Tom was eating. He eventually abandoned his dinner and left the table. In The Life You Save May Be Your Own, the old Lucynell Crater desires so much to rid herself from her daughter that she is desperate enough to throw her on a random man that does not love her. Consequently, the daughter would be returned to her mother without the

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