A MemoirThere are many ways in which our past life experiences influence our actions. Every person in this world has a story and every person tells their “story” differently. Tennessee Williams, a man from Mississippi, took his life experiences and memories and chose to write stories and plays based on them. His stories were rooted in his troubled past. Tennessee Williams' most famous work, The Glass Menagerie, has a full cast of characters extremely similar to his own family and a plot directly related to his life. Tennessee Williams was born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. Williams described his childhood as happy. As a teenager, he and his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri. Things changed for him there. Williams turned inward and sadness overtook him. As a result, he started writing. Williams was raised predominantly by his mother, Edwina. He never had a good relationship with his father, Cornelius Williams. His father was a heavy drinker and cared more about his job than parenting. Furthermore, Williams' parents did not have a good marriage. Growing up in a tense family had a negative impact on him. After Williams attended college at Columbia University, he moved to New Orleans. There he changed his lifestyle and became fascinated by city life, which inspired his work. The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams' most famous and successful play, was written in 1944. This play has many autobiographical elements and the story is more closely related to his life than any of his other pieces. Tennessee based the character of Tom on himself. His mother, Edwina, was the basis for the mother in the play, Amanda Wingfield. The character of Laura Wingfield has been very similar to Tennessee's older sister, Rose....... middle of paper ......d for most of her life. He made writing his outlet through all his struggles. For much of his life, Williams needed an escape from reality and he found one. The Glass Menagerie doesn't just tell the story of the characters in a play. It tells the true story of Tennessee Williams, a man who was deeply affected by his troubled past and found no other way to escape it than to put it on paper and tell it. Word Count: (1500 words) Works Cited Williams, Tennessee. The glass menagerie. New York: New Directions, 1999. Print.Leverich, Lyle. Tom: The unknown Tennessee Williams. New York: Crown, 1995. Print.Jackson, Esther Merle. The Broken World of Tennessee Williams. University of Wisconsin Press, 1965.Williams, Dakin and Shepherd Mead. Tennessee Williams: An Intimate Biography. New York: Arbor House, 1983. Print.