The Passage of Time in 'Sweet Bird of Youth' Azeemah Bibi Lubnaa Jaulim 12th Grade

As a psychological dramatist who himself had suffered from the cruel ageing process, Williams delves into human nature’s Achilles’ heel: the impact of the passage of time. Through a complex portrayal of the dramatis personae and various elements of plastic theatre, he successfully depicts the poignancy of time in the 1959 play ‘Sweet Bird of Youth’.

Williams presents the passage of time as the transition from youth to decay. The delineation of the archetypal romantic hero, Chance Wayne, strikes us as him being a victim of time. His name is explicitly symbolical. This character’s ‘chance’ is gradually ‘waning’ due to ageing. Indeed, his first distinctive features are illustrated as “ravaged face” with “thinning hair”, which alludes to his gone youthful looks impacting his ambitions. This idea is dramatically reiterated through the Brechtian Alienation device- the cyclorama with “the soft, urgent cries of birds, and the sound of their wings”. This artificial depiction of seagulls symbolizes Chance’s degradation due to the saboteur- time. Parallel to the audience’s perspective of hearing the birds but never seeing them, Chance is blinded to reason and is still searching for the “bird of youth”. As such, the seagull phallic imagery...