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The Dream of Life
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Tennessee Williams' plays are about sad dreamers whose dreams die hard. There is the crippled Laura in The Glass Menagerie, who is as breakable as the glass figurines she collects. Blanche Dubois, the faded Southern belle in A Streetcar Named Desire, falls on hard times and is forced to sell the family manse, appropriately named Belle Reve. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the alcoholic Brick, a former football hero, grieves for a dead teammate he loved perhaps too well. Brick's wife Maggie urges him to move on, saying, "Life has got to be allowed to continue even after the dream of life is all over.”
What happens when we awaken from the dream of life? For seekers of enlightenment, there is the expectation that real life will be like heaven after we wake up. But is that not just another dream that substitutes God for the pathetic illusions that sustain Tennessee Williams' characters? Not that God is an illusion, but our notions about God often are -- a distinction that is lost on most people. The circumstances we encounter in real life are essentially no different from those in the dream of life. The only difference is that there is no longer anyone dreaming it.
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