SOURCE: "Tennessee William's Meditations on Life and Death in 'Suddenly Last Summer', 'The Night of the Iguana' , and 'The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore," in Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, edited by Jac Tharpe, University Press of Mississippi, 1977, pp. 558-570.

In the following essay, Armato studies Williams's portrayal of human perceptions of death in his dramas, concluding that "underneath the guise of southern decadence, Tennessee Williams practices the art of a decidedly Christian playwright.

In Tennessee Williams' autobiography, the chapter dealing with his life in the sixties might well be entitled "The Inferno." His recent description of these years is chilling. Before publication of Memoirs he had told Rex Reed that they culminated in a "protracted death wish that lasted roughly from 1963 until my release from the psychiatric hospital [1969] where I came within a hairbreadth of death." Even before these most difficult years of spiritual and physical suffering...