Wednesday, February 10, 2010
I don't really know what to do with this one...
I'm supposed to present "The Mysteries of the Joy Rio," but I'm still trying to wrap my head around what exactly was going on, so I'll just say some things about the author for now. Tennessee Williams was best known for his plays. Probably his most famous plays were The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Needless to say, he was a pretty big deal in the 40's and 50's. I did some reading and found that Williams was believed to be a homosexual, which really puts this story into context. While he never openly confessed it, it was a somewhat well-known fact. This is reflected a lot in his poems, and some in his short stories. It seems that when it pops up in his short stories, however, homosexuality is usually met with disease and death. For example, both Kroger and Pablo get colon cancer after a life of homosexuality. I'll go into further detail about that tomorrow.
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I wondered about that. That makes more sense now.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Centers for Disease Control, colorectal cancer is not a sexually transmitted disease, but anal cancer is. Moreover, "Gay and bisexual men are 17 times more likely to develop anal cancer than heterosexual men."
ReplyDeleteThis isn't a risk only for men, however. According to the American Cancer Society, "Anal intercourse ... increases the risk of anal cancer in both men and women, particularly in those younger than the age of 30."