ISSN 1923-1555[Print] ISSN 1923-1563[Online] www.cscanada.net www.cscanada.org Studies in Literature and Language Vol. 15, No. 1, 2017, pp. 63-66 DOI:10.3968/9799 63 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture Applying Nietzsche’s Concept of “Self-Creation” to Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie: A Postmodern Study Pegah Qanbari [a],* [a] MA., English Literature, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. *Corresponding author. Received 18 May 2017; accepted 10 July 2017 Published online 26 July 2017 Abstract The main tenet of Postmodernism is its insistence on the multipolarity of reality; postmodernists maintain that there is no definite, transcendental truth to be discovered and followed by individuals, instead there are plurality of truths made by people based on their needs and desires. According to Nietzsche existing realities, good and bad, are governmentʼs constructs and are created as tools to impose power on people and suppress peopleʼs creativity and potentiality. Nietzscheʼs solution in this chaotic world is “Self-Creation” which means individuals should live up to their own standards, not societyʼs. Williamsʼs characters are fragile and maladjusted wanderers who due to their inability to encounter facts and solve their problems take shelter in a cocoon of fantasy as a means of self-defense, to protect themselves instead of creating their own characters. The researcherʼs aim is to prove the cause of the protagonistʼs downfall was her traditional way of thinking, such as every woman needs a man to protect her, though in a postmodern world in which anything goes, everything is acceptable and as valid as the other things, there is no absolute truth. Key words: Postmodernism, Self-creation Qanbari, P. (2017). Applying Nietzsche’s Concept of “Self-Creation” to Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie : A Postmodern Study. Studies in Literature and Language , 15 (2), 63-66. Available from: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/sll/article/view/9799 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/9799 INTRODUCTION The Glass Menagerie (1953) written by Tennessee Williams shares the features of both Modernism and Postmodernism. The ambiguity of language, dysfunctional family, the sense of uncertainty pervaded in this drama, disintegration, displacement of the characters who are misfits in the society, the influence and persistence of the past into present made possible the application of Postmodernism to this play. In the present study, the protagonist is to be blamed for not striving to create herself and for letting society make fun of her and role play her like puppet. According to Postmodernists, whatever happens to anyone is the direct result of oneʼs perspectives and attitude towards life; one is either rule over life or let life rule over one. One can rule oneself according to oneʼs own wishes and desires and enjoy life and win or one can let society rule over one and impose sorrow, lack of confidence, nervousness, uncertainty, oscillation between reality and fantasy to escape the harsh reality society imposed on one and lose. One can be oneʼs survivor or destroyer depending on the attitude one takes or one can wait for a savior who will never show up and disillusion one. As Dave Robinson maintained in his book Nietzsche and Postmodernism: If there is no God and there are no eternal verities, and the universe in which we live is “absurd”, then Nietzsche has a point. We do have to create ourselves. Who we are is decided by the choices we make and the acts we perform. And the process of creating ourselves may well be rather like that of the artist. (p.31) Belief in the tradition and Meta-narratives and sticking to them is the real cause of Lauraʼs downfall. She was prone to create logos for herself, and base her life on those logos. Precisely Logo-centrism was her fault; she found meaning in a male protector, her savior was not herself but men who never showed up or left her alone. A. Postmodernism It is a reaction to Modernism and to modernists’ confidence in reason and scientific truth to explain everything. They were against modernistsʼ notion of the