46 pages • 1 hour read
Sweet Bird of Youth
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use, death, and graphic violence.
Easter Sunday
The entirety of Sweet Bird of Youth takes place on Easter Sunday. That it is Easter Sunday is established in the opening of Act I, Scene 1, when Chance opens the shutters to hear “a church bell [toll], and from another church, nearer, a choir starts singing the Alleluia Chorus” (18). The waiter explains that the bell is from the nearby Catholic church, while the chorus is from an Episcopal church. In the Christian tradition, Easter Sunday is a celebration of the day that Jesus Christ was resurrected three days after his death on the cross. In the play, by contrast, Easter Sunday is an ironic symbol of The Destructive Pursuit of Youth and Fame. Chance hopes to be symbolically resurrected and redeemed by reuniting with Heavenly and accomplishing his goal of stardom and respect. He hopes to return to life—that is, to return to his youth. However, as the Princess notes, his “come-back [is] a failure” (98). Chance is forced to reckon with the fact that only “saints and heroes” (123), like Jesus Christ, can overcome the forces of time, while he is “gnawed” by his fleeting youth.
That the events of the play take place against the backdrop of Easter Sunday also adds a further degree of debauchery and hypocrisy to the proceedings. Although the “respectable” citizens of St. Cloud, like Boss Finley, make a point of their Christian views, they spend the day drinking, scheming, and fomenting violence rather than observing the holiday.
The Lament
The Lament is a motif heard periodically throughout the play at moments of sadness. As the stage directions state, The Lament is “a wind among these very tall palm trees, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper, and sometimes it blends into a thematic music” (15). In the play, the Lament serves as a Greek chorus to express to the audience the tragedy of events. For instance, when the Princess is manipulating Chance to get him to stay with her, “the lament is heard” (50). This highlights the tragedy of their transactional relationship (and, more broadly, of The Universality of Exploitation and Transactional Relationships), as they each use manipulation to get what they want out of the other.
This use of the soundscape in combination with the setting and scenery is a form of atmospheric Romanticism. In Romantic literature, the sound of the wind is often given a spiritual, mythical quality. Tennessee Williams uses the wind through the palm fronds to similar effect in Sweet Bird of Youth. It represents the sound of the fleeting youth of Chance and the Princess as it flies away, metaphorically, like the “sweet bird” of the title.
Drugs and Alcohol
The lead characters of Chance and the Princess are characterized in no small part by their use of drugs and alcohol, which serve as a motif related to their destructive pursuit of youth and fame. Their consumption of drugs and alcohol increases over the course of the day as they grow increasingly despondent about their ability to recapture their youth and fame. Thwarted in their attempts to accomplish their goals, they sublimate their desires into substances, which serve as destructive substitutes for what they really want.
In the opening scene, it is clear that Chance and the Princess have both been drinking heavily. He reports that the Princess “curled up in the back seat” with a bottle of vodka on their way to St. Cloud (33); his own hands are shaking badly from his alcohol binge the day before. They then smoke hash together. The Princess explains that she needs it “and other practices like it, to put to sleep the tiger that raged in [her] nerves” (37), as she is overwhelmingly anxious and self-conscious about her loss of stardom as she ages. This substance use has become self-destructive. She breaks her glasses, appears not to remember how she met Chance or even where she is, and wanders disheveled through the cocktail lounge in desperation. When she learns that her film has been a success, she seemingly sobers up quickly and begins to make cogent plans for her return to the spotlight, her dependency on substances put into abeyance in a way that underscores its role as a proxy for her true desires.
When Chance realizes that he cannot win back Heavenly or get his big acting break through the Princess, he, too, takes to using drugs and alcohol as a poor substitute for what he really wants. As he remarks while taking barbiturates, “I took a wild dream and—washed it down with another wild dream, Aunt Nonnie, that’s my life now…” (81). His behavior becomes increasingly erratic and impotent as he becomes ever more intoxicated until finally, he is reduced to drunkenly railing at the television during Boss Finley’s speech. The play thus illustrates that what he felt was sustaining him helps bring about his tragic fate.
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