Camino Real By Tennessee Williams: Poem Analysis

ippie.” It seems the woman was cleaning Chippie’s bird cage with a vacuum cleaner with no attachments on the wand when the phone rang. She picked up the phone and just as she was saying “Hello,” she heard the horrible sound of Chippie being sucked up into the machine.

Quickly, she ripped open the vacuum cleaner and the bag, and found Chippie inside, stunned, but still alive. She picked up the parakeet covered with dust, ran into the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and held him under the water. Then she turned on her hair dryer, and held Chippie in front of the blast of hot air to dry him off.

The reporter who got the interview concluded by asking, “How is Chippie doing now?”

And the woman said, “Well, Chippie doesn’t sing much any more. He just sort of sits and stares.” Maybe,

You can see it in his plays. His plays are about despair, about hopelessly trapped people, who never seem to get out of their imprisonment. But something unexpected emerged in Tennessee Williams’ last several years. He began to write ab out hope. And, after his death, a perceptive drama critic – picking up on a phrase from his unbearably bleak play,

“Camino Real” – observed that Tennessee Williams, at the end, “was writing about the power of violets cracking rocks.”

Something like that could be said about the disciples’ lives as well. There was a line right down the middle for them: before and after. Before the Resurrection when they were roughed up, they despaired that death, not life, is in control of things. But after the

Resurrection, no matter what happened to them – and worse things happened – they were convinced that love is the strongest power in the world, stronger even than death , and that

“nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of Christ.”

On Easter, they found the life-giving power of violets to crack rocks, and to crack open a tomb. On Easter morning, they saw an unmistakable demonstration of Who is in charge. That is what transformed the