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A streetcar named desire critical iterpretations
Essay analysis of a streetcar named desire
Analysis of a streetcar named desire
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Blanche is projecting the self-image of a person who believes that they are above others. She acts as though she is of a royal family and demands the respect of everyone around her. She loses her family's home to the government and blames it on her sister who left in order to search for her own lifestyle. From the beginning of her visit, Blanche gets an off feeling about Stanley. When she arrives, he starts to stare at her with a sense of caution then soon begins inspecting the paperwork that she brought with her in order to validate her story.
The play “A Streetcar Named Desire” is about an emotionally unstable lady named Blanche. She moves in with her youngest sister and her husband because the landlord took the land away from Blanche because they could not pay for it anymore. After being their for a while Blanche starts remembering her horrible past which is something she was trying to do in the first place. The husband of Stella, Stanley Kowalski was also someone that made Blanche’s life miserable for complicating everything and harassing her in every possible way. Death is one of the most symbolic terms in this play.
Stella’s sister, Blanche, sees through the illusion and can see how toxic the marriage really is. Stanley and Blanche come from distinctly different backgrounds, Stanley is from the working class while Blanche comes from wealth. Williams uses these two contrasting points of views on marriage, to show the issues of possessiveness, class, and sexism. When it comes to Stanley’s marriage to Stella, one of the most notable characteristics is how possessive Stanley is. An example of this is when Stanley found out that Blanche and therefore Stella, lost their estate.
Blanche tells a lot of lies, not just to Mitch but to Stanley and Stella also, and this starts a long trail lies she has to cover. Upon the coming to New Orleans, Blanche tells her sister false information about the loss of Belle Reve. Stanley always suspected her to be a liar and searched for evidence. He finds the truth about her, and this is significant in the play because it turned everyone against her just like back in Laurel. It is also significant because in the play Stanley raped Blanche and Stella does not listen to her because she thinks Blanche has lost her mind from all the traumatic experiences.
From the moment that Blanche enters the Kowalski’s apartment, it’s clear that she and Stanley have opposing personalities and desires. Blanche, a woman in her thirties who comes from a wealthy family, wants to maintain her illusions of majesty and refinement. On the other hand, Stanley, who represents the working-class, has a more practical and realistic approach to life. He is direct and straightforward in his communication, and he values hard work and physical strength. The tension between the two is heightened by their differing attitudes towards truth.
Tennessee Williams’ famous play of 1947 revolves around the iconic, tragicomic character of Blanche DuBois, a washed-up Southern Belle and disgraced high school teacher, who finds herself staying with her sister Stella and her uncouth husband Stanley Kowalski, in a seedy tenement in New Orleans. The tragedy and the bitter comedy of Blanche’s character lie in her disconnection from reality. The grandiosity and glamour with which Blanche surrounds herself, with her costume jewelry, her fine clothes and improbable stories are at odds with the fact that, despite her distaste, she has to put up with her sister’s squalid apartment and brutish husband, because she has no other option; having lost her estate, her job, her reputation and her youthful
When talking about “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Blanche has a strong impact in the play’s tittle because its significances relates to her life. The play was published by Tennessee Williams in the year 1947, one of the main characters is Stella’s sister, blanche who has philological problems. In addition, the tittle of this play relates with blanches’ life from the beginning of the play, when she has to take and streetcar referring to a taxi, which is called desire. The taxi is suppose to take her far from where she was just spell for having sex with a young boy who was her student. Moreover, Sex seems to be one of blanches principals problems everywhere she goes she tries to have some kind of intimate relation with other characters in the play.
The Role of Fantasy and Purpose in Individuals “I don’t want realism, I want magic”- Blanche DuBois (Williams 145). In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents readers with the acute presence of fantasy in individuals’ lives. Every character fabricates fantasies in his life to gloss over his struggles and forget each other 's flaws. A Streetcar Named Desire evaluates individual’s use of fantasy as a crutch to avoid the hard truths and give purpose to an empty life. Blanche DuBois, the protagonist of the story, uses fantasy to cope with her world crumbling around her.
A streetcar named desire was written by Tennessee Williams in 1947, in purpose to show the “declining of the upper class and the domination of the bourgeois middle class in the U.S.A. where the south agriculture class could not compete with the industrialization.” Blanche Dubois the protagonist of our story, a southern beauty that is trapped by the restrictive laws of her society. But she broke them, and eventually put herself in a state, where she had no job and no house. So she had to go to her sister, Stella and live with her and her sister’s husband, Stanley. While staying there, she created a façade for her to hide her flaws and kept acting as a lady, where she is anything but that.
He worked with the Provincetown Players before his plays were financially made. His sensations were striking for their range. Tennessee Williams, one of America's most expressive authors, contributed many plays about social free scholars and untouchables. In A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), a masochist, decimated Southern lady battles to keep up her figments of affability when compelled to face reality about her life by her sister's normal specialists mate. Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), which won the Pulitzer Prize for execution, comparably in light of dishonesty and its hazard and devastation in a sad family.
This is made clear through Stanley’s insecurities about inferiority to women and his prolonged struggle to defeat Blanche. Again, this is evident with Blanche and even Stella. Stella is perceived as a static character with no real individuality, and Blanche, who is seemingly more independent, is characterized mostly by her sexuality. Tennessee Williams demonstrates society’s need for the superiority of men to women through the interactions of Stanley and Blanche in the play, their struggles, and their ultimate
A Streetcar named Desire written by American playwright Tennessee Williams is a Marxist play that depicts the socio economic status of the characters and people living during that time. The play was written in 1947, two years after the second world war. The historical time leading up to the Second World War known as the Interwar period from 1918-1939 was an era classified with economical difficulties for a majority of American citizens. After the new economic system based upon capital emerged succeeding the Industrial Revolution, the United States saw a massive prosperity in the early twentieth century only to be demolished by the stock market crash of 1929 also known as Black Tuesday (source). These unsuccessful stock markets were one of the signs that showed that the new system, which depended on an extensive labor force and an open and unregulated market, was not as reliable as previously thought, this period was known as the Depression.
Williams uses the expressionist technique “The ‘Varsouviana’ is filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle” to parallel Blanche’s inner mind and depicts Blanche’s deranged mental state after Stella’s betrayal. The imagery ‘Lurid reflections appear on the walls in odd, sinuous shapes’ highlights her mental turbulence and the stage directions ‘mysterious voices behind walls, as if reverberated through a canyon of rock…the echo sounds in threatening whispers’ heightens tension, positioning the audience to witness the overwhelming fear and exaggeration of her senses, further emphasising the detrimental impact Stella’s decision made. The Streetcar Named Desire also examines the influence that a person’s social standing can have. Stanley’s statement in scene 2 ‘The Kowalskis and Dubois have different notions’ indicates their social upbringing has influenced the way they think, hence disrupting their connection and loyalty towards one another. The use of their family name is metonymic for their ancestry and social standing, addressing the barriers derived from a social hierarchy which have affected their relationship.
Blanche is an old southern Belle who expects the man to be a gentleman and in her level of class, scene 10 “A cultivated woman, a woman of intelligence and breeding, can enrich a man’s life” (Williams, 1947) this is how Blanche intertwines the past and present as past women were only there to be seen, look after the house and provide children and present Blanche could be seen to be past her prime. Blanche is representing the past as she is still dress in grand dress white moth Ironically Blanche appears in the first scene dressed in white, “the symbol of
“A Streetcar Named Desire” is a very elegant film in which the Southern gothic culture is demonstrated profoundly. Tennessee Williams uses the characters in the play to bring about a sense of how corrupt society truly was in the 1940’s in the South. The 1940’s was marked by an immense amount of violence, alcoholism, and poverty. Women at the time were treated as objects rather than people. Throughout the play Tennessee Williams relates the aspects of Southern society to the characters in the play.
