"I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really."
-- Tennessee Williams

And this is the key to Tennessee Williams' plays. He depicted characters who managed to survive in a cruel and rotten world. They are not exceptionally beautiful or exceptionally smart, but not because they are rotten. Had they been born and lived in another, better world, they could have become absolutely different. They just cannot resist the pressure on their inner worlds from the society. And from that point of view many characters are very much alike to the author himself. Tennessee Williams was brought up in a rather poor family, later he had to take care of his disabled sister for a very long time, what's more, he was a homosexualist - so he knew what it was like to be an OUTCAST. Very few of those who admired him so much really understood him, took him as a human being and not as a playwriting machine: "You're always having to compete with yourself. They always say, 'It's not as good as Streetcar or Cat'. Of course it's not. At 69, you don't write the kind of play you write at 30. You haven't got the kind of energy you used to have." (T.Williams)
All his characters may be seen as survivors, as people who did not deserve such a life but who nevertheless had to live it - or die.