The use of illusion in Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Tennessee Williams

Sophocles, Shakespeare, And Walt Williams

Many great writers -- including these three, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Tennessee Williams -- use illusion in their narratives. This paper will present some instances and passages in which these writers employ illusion in their work.

Sophocles' and Illusion

Interestingly, author Joe Park Poe notes in his book (Heroism and Divine Justice in Sophocles' Philoctetes) that in the plays Antigone and Philoctetes, "The common quality…might be inadequately described as a lack of illusion" (Poe, 1974, p. 6). Instead of illusion as a device, Poe sees "pessimism" and "suffering" in those plays rather than attempts at illusion. The way Sophocles treats his heroes in these two plays is "…variously pathetic, ironic, brutally realistic and perhaps a dozen other adjectives" (Poe, p. 6).

Meanwhile author Mark Ringer disputes Poe's assertions in Ringer's book, Electra and the Empty Urn: Metatheater and Role Playing in Sophocles. According to Ringer, Sophocles' Theban Plays are "flickering 'in and out' of illusion" and the playwright understands that drama "deals in illusion, in the creative tension of one person or object" that represents something other than what is apparent (Ringer, 1998, p. 67).

After all, the "fundamental" issues presented in Sophocles' tragedies are "appearance vs. reality," and Sophocles has the "keenest appreciation" for that gap between perception and reality (Ringer, 68). The "illusion-versus-reality" motif in Antigone is a hugely important part of that play; the reality is shown through what Ringer calls the "brutal, corporal world" of Creon and the illusion is the "invisible world of the dead," which Antigone seems to revere.

An example of illusion vs. reality (one of many in Antigone) is the way Sophocles presents Creon -- who launches into these very righteous and noble-sounding speeches and sentiments (an attempt at reality) -- but who is actually saying very little of substance (an illusion of reality). Ringer calls Creon's speeches as "hollow" as the rhetoric of an "egocentric actor" (69).

In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles creates Oedipus as a great person who has inner strength and the willingness to stick to what he believes is true. But Oedipus is not a great person in terms of his worldly position; rather, his "worldly position in an illusion, which will vanish like a dream" (Bloom, 2009). Moreover, Bloom writes that if "…every man could tear away the last veils of illusion" -- meaning, that is what Oedipus should have done -- and if every man in the world could view human life and time realistically, generations of people might have turned out differently (Bloom, 27-28).

Athena was the "embodiment" of "divine wisdom," according to Bloom. And what Odysseus said in response to Ajax' situation, deals effectively with illusion vs. reality: "I recognize my own: I perceive that all men living are but appearance or unsubstantial shadow" (Bloom, 28). Again the specter of illusion: what a person wants to be viewed as, contrasted with what he actually is -- which might be nothing more than an "unsubstantial shadow."

Tennessee Williams and Illusion

In A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche is a character that does not have a good grasp on reality but rather she is steeped in illusionary thoughts. At the beginning of the play she is clearly a little off, but by the conclusion of the play Blanche is totally engulfed in a world of fantasy (male callers are surely on their way, but they aren't).

And in one of the most famous of Williams' plays, The Glass Menagerie, the character Laura is fascinated with her glass menagerie to the point of living in a cloud of fantasy. When one of the little glass items (a unicorn) is broken, Laura says it "doesn't matter" because she will just "…imagine he had an operation" and the horn was "removed to make him feel less freakish!" (Williams).

Laura isn't the only one in this family to live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. Tom, Laura's brother and the family's breadwinner, escapes nightly to the movie houses. He finds an escape there from his family and from the boring job he has. The juxtaposition between the family's friend Jim is Williams' way of contrasting reality with illusion. Jim is realistic and objectively sees the family as a group that is living in an unreal world. He sees Laura for what she really is -- a shy, frail personality totally out of touch with reality. He tries to help pull Laura out of her illusionary lifestyle but it isn't very effective.

In conclusion, playwrights' Tennessee Williams, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, are known for wildly different genres, and it is understandable given their different lives in different periods of history. But all three capitalized on the use of illusion; all three found this literary style to be effective, and readers and play-goers through the years have benefitted greatly from the reality-versus-illusion themes in their plays.