“Desire is something that is made to occupy a larger space than that which is afforded by the individual being – For the sins of the world are really only its partialities, its incompletions, and these are what sufferings must atone for.” – Tennessee Williams from the short story Desire and the Black Masseur
My brother and I rarely seemed to be watching the same movies as other teenagers. Sure, we were linked in to the same films that occupied our peers in the mid 80s like
Stop Making Sense and
Repo Man but we also watched and re-watched some movies that made our friends roll their eyes. Like
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I could not even tell you how many times. It had to be our favorite movie. My brother would rattle off Big Daddy’s “lies and mendacity” riff for any remotely relevant situation in life.
Thinking about it now, it somehow seems perfect for teen angst. The often repeated themes of desire, loneliness, and longing in the plays of Tennessee Williams have great relevance in an adolescent’s life. And the lies and mendacity required to cover up those desires, that loneliness, those longings must have attracted us on a subconscious level. And then there is that near palpable tension in a Williams’ work as characters struggle to contain that which is unsuitable for containment in an individual as suggested by the quote above. Just loved it. Electrifying. And found it again this week in The Night of the Iguana.
The play opens on the veranda of a second rate hotel on the west coast of Mexico. The defrocked Reverend Lawrence Shannon has just plunked himself down in front of the proprietress, his friend, Maxine Faulk. At the bottom of the hill is a hornet’s nest of angry southern Christian women waiting for him to carry himself back down the hill and take them to the brochure approved hotel he is scheduled to as per his tour guide duties. Then there is also that issue of his having slept with a teenager in the group. Nasty threats of statutory rape charges. But Shannon isn’t moving. He is on the verge of falling apart. Again.
One afternoon and one night on this Mexican veranda sees an odd assortment of characters pass through that include the bevy of southern hornets previously mentioned, a family of grotesque Nazi vacationers, “the world’s oldest living and practicing poet,” and an iguana tied under the porch. And of course the two females that attempt to engage the fragile Shannon. The sultry Maxine wishes to seduce him, for him to take the place of her recently deceased husband. The eerie Hannah offers him a sexless alternative as an answer to that which has plagued him. From my favorite part of the play:
SHANNON: Yeah, but how will it seem to be traveling alone after so many years of traveling with….
HANNAH: I will know how it feels when I feel it – and don’t say alone as if nobody had ever gone on alone. For instance, you.
SHANNON: I’ve always traveled with trainloads, planeloads and busloads of tourists.
HANNAH: That doesn’t mean you’re still not really alone.
SHANNON: I never fail to make an intimate connection with someone in my parties.
HANNAH: Yes, the youngest lady, and I was on the verandah this afternoon when the latest of these young ladies gave a demonstration oh how lonely the intimate connection has been for you. The episode in the cold, inhuman hotel room, Mr. Shannon, for which you despise the lady almost as much as yourself. Afterward you are so polite to the lady that I’m sure it must chill her to the bone, the scrupulous little attentions that you pay her in return for your little enjoyment of her. The gentleman-of-Virginia act that you put on for her, your noblesse oblige treatment of her … Oh no, Mr. Shannon, don’t kid yourself that you ever travel with someone. You have always traveled alone except for your spook, as you call it. He is your traveling companion. Nothing, nobody else has traveled with you.
Now this may seem a bit heavy handed. Exposition channeled through a shell of a character that represents another version of loneliness. But Hannah is the trickiest bit in the play. In one moment, incredibly insightful things come out of her mouth, and in the next, one feels like they are drowning in her own self-deception when she recounts the stories of her two sexual encounters. Complete creep fest material. Again referring to the quote at the top of the post, it is almost as if Maxine and Shannon cannot contain the contents of their longings within their individual vessels, and Hannah, observing people like them, has decided to leave her vessel as empty as possible.
Getting around to re-watching the 1964 John Huston film adaptation sometime this weekend. Until then, I really enjoyed this play as I do most of Tennessee Williams’ works. Works me up into a state of anxiety and dread that is oddly pleasant. If that makes any sense.
Other insights from our shared read:
Emily at Evening All Afternoon
Richard at Caravana de recuerdos
Claire at Kiss a Cloud
Jill at Rhapsody in Books
Teresa at Shelf Love
EL Fay at This Book and I Could Be Friends
Sarah at What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate
