Conflicts and Dualities in Tennessee Williams’s Play, The Night of the Iguana

Abstract

Abstract

The Night of the Iguana is a typical play of Tennessee Williams where he deals with the duality of human nature in contradictory images of light and darkness, man and beast. Problems of the contemporary world he lived in realises him how human beings suffer in the struggle of their goodness; the known and the evil; the unknown that we find in every individual. As Connie Zweig writes in the ?Introduction? to Meeting the Shadow ?Each of us contains both a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a more pleasant persona for everyday wear and a hiding, nighttimes self that remains hushed up most of the time.? (XVI). The playwright’s concern about life and death, hope and despair, society and individual life are highlighted in this play. Like most of his plays, this play is also written allegorically. Gerald Weales writes in his essay, ?Tennessee Williams’s Fugitive Kind?: