The Impacts of Love Traps in Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke

Abstract

The play Summer and Smoke is originally written to tell the romance between two main characters, they are Dr. John Buchanan, Jr. and Alma Winemiller. Nevertheless, it becomes an even more interesting story of romance when we give proportionally attention to the other female characters who are involved in the same story; each of the characters in the analysis of this thesis is having the same objective that is winning the love of Dr. John. Alma Winemiller, John Buchanan, Rosa Gonzales, and Nellie Ewell perform the same attitude to win the heart of the person they love. Such attitude involves tricks, strategies to put the person they love in a situation that is hard to escape; a situation that causes him or her to reveal secrets, betrays his or her own ideas, etc. which has been properly termed “love traps”. Each of the four characters analyzed in this thesis performs the love traps subjective to their own experience also to their personal and social backgrounds. The love story of Alma, as it is told ironically by Tennessee Williams, has started very early. She is presented as a girl of ten who has already had the feeling of love for the little John. Her love remains in her heart when she reaches her teenage toward her adulthood. It stays there as faithfully as Alma does in Glorious Hill waiting for her lover to come and brings her the miracle. That same feeling endures the steaming heat of summer in Glorious Hill, Mississippi. In the end of the play, Alma has lost John’s love because her great appreciations on piety, morality, pride of a lady, and profound way of thinking rejecting notions of the physical oppose John’s. John’s way of thinking represents the physical where empirical facts are more important. Alma’s soulful love is against John’s because John sees that love is just a matter of the twinning of two bodies. John also fails in bringing Alma into his possession because of the irony Williams created. John finds the sensuality in Alma while she guides him to his recognition. His chance for matching Alma’s projection of a “gentleman” arrives in just about the time that Alma sets different standard that is by the time the “lady” has died and, concurrently, the idea about being “a gentleman” no longer

52 has relevance. Both cannot be together because of their exchanging position nicely presented in the play with the heaviest emphasis before the closing of the play. John gets closer to Alma but never so close for her to hold. Alma’s love story becomes even more ironic when we add to it the other female characters. The sexy Rosa’s approaches to get her love also fail because John eventually desires more than just physical satisfaction despite his monstrous appetite for biological needs. Rosa who is relying only on her body cannot get sincere love from John. His father could not do better than pushing with his money and revolver that end up in the tragedy of Dr. Buchanan’s death because of which John sets out for finding his true identity. John departs to Lyon to finish his father’s duty and comes back with sudden glory and new-found responsibility. Finally, Nellie’s unexpected winning in becoming Mrs. John serves small amount of contribution for the conclusion of the play. So mysteriously does the play conclude that it leaves us not a thing but another question instead of the closed plot of the play. Nellie’s lines are quite short despite of her minor role in the play. These do not contribute many convincing suppositions in deciding whether it is her love traps that give her victory. Therefore, there are not enough evidence that we can use to reveal such mysterious end but that Williams tries to expose Alma’s bitter irony in commencing her love.