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A Streetcar Named Desire And Their Eyes Were Watching God Analysis

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A person’s life is a series of decisions leading them to the place in which they are today. Take a second to remember a point in time when you were face to face with a fork in the road, and a decision had to be made. Decisions are found in and throughout literature. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston are both built on decisions made by the characters. From small decision such as what to wear on a dinner date to difficult decisions such as pulling the trigger and killing the love of your life, they each played an important role in the stories. A Streetcar Named Desire was written in 1947 and won a Pulitzer Prize shortly after. The play begins with Blanche making the decision …show more content…

She stayed at a hotel known solely for its fair share of prostitutes. In the end Stanley makes the cruel decision to rape Blanche and ultimately push her mental issues over the edge. The most shocking of decisions in A Streetcar Named Desire would have to be those made by Stella at the end of the play. Stella ultimately decides to believe Stanley’s word over her own sister’s, and she doesn’t stop there. She decides to send Blanche to a mental institution and continue raising her child with Stanley. Every decision, small or important, throughout the book lead to the unfair outcome.
Their Eyes Were Watching God was written in 1937 and played an important role in African-American literature. The main character, Janie came face to face with the fork in the road many times throughout the novel. Janie’s story begins with a very important decision that was made for her. Nanny, Janie’s grandmother decides that to insure Janie a good life she will marry her off to Logan Killicks. Janie soon decides she does not love Logan nor will she ever love Logan. One day a traveler by the name of Joe Starks catches the eye of Janie and little does she know the decisions he brings along with

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In the town of Eatonville, Janie’s Reappearance created chaos and disruption. It all began when Janie returned from her Journey and reconnected with a long lost friend about her love story. At the age of 17, Janie married Logan to please her Nanny, but later left him after nanny died. She than married Jody the mayor; and goes to work with him in the shop, where she met Tea cake. Some time passed on as Jody died, and Janie fell in love with Tea cake, to soon leave Eatonville and travel to Everglades.

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Young Janie’s first marriage was with a man named Logan Killicks. It was not Janie’s choice to marry him, but was her grandmother’s request. Janie said she would learn to love him, but never does because Logan was repulsing to Janie and he eventually put her through manual labor. Even so,

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959 Words | 4 Pages

The play A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most notable plays of the late 1940s to early 1950s and is still prevalent in the theater community today. It originally opened on Broadway in a 1947 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, today more commonly known as the Barrymore Theatre, preforming for a little over a thousand patrons. The original Stanley was played by Marlon Brando, who would reprise this role in the movie adaptation. At the Barrymore Theatre, the set was quite complex with a full stairway and banister, a pallor with a 4-chair dinning set and all the dressings of a then modern, but lower-class apartment.

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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.

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1038 Words | 5 Pages

Tennessee Williams is acclaimed for his ability to create multi faced characters such as Blanche Dubois in the play, A Streetcar Named Desire. She comes to New Orleans after losing everything including her job, money, and her family’s plantation Belle Reve, to live with her sister Stella. During her time there she causes many conflicts with Stella’s husband Stanley and tries to get involved with the people there, all while judging them for their place in society, although she is imperfect too. Through her, Williams has created a complex character. She is lost, confused, conflicted, lashing out in sexual ways, and living in her own fantasies throughout the entirety of the play.

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1317 Words | 6 Pages

Where one grows up can significantly impact one’s life in the long run. John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California to Olive Hamilton and John Ernst Steinbeck. The third of four children, he was expected to do the same chores as his older sisters Elizabeth Ainsworth and Esther Rodgers, and younger sister Mary Dekker. He had a comfortable childhood with his mother, a retired school teacher, and his father, a manager at a local flour mill. Even so he had some challenges.

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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.

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Stanley continues to impose his reality onto Blanche, which causes her more anxiety relying more and more on herself to create more of an illusion by creating an admirer for herself, saying that she ended it with Mitch because she does not deserve “deliberate cruelty”, and crating this alter ego for herself as being pure. While Stella is in the hospital, he and Blanche are left alone for the night as she continues bragging about her admiration coming from Sheep Hunt Leigh and how she just got a wire from him. Stanley catches her in her life, finally tearing apart Blanche's illusions. Although Stanley has been a threat to her through his suspicion and empowering masculinity over her, the last scene is where he finally takes final control over her, or symbolically where reality has a final triumph over her illusions. While catching her in the midst of her lies she reveals to Blanche that “[he’s] been on to [Blanche] from the start!”

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A Street Car Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams, which slowly uncovers Blanche’s prior life. Her troubled past causes her a lot of trouble when she tries to start over. She used to work as a teacher in Mississippi, however, she was forced to leave after she was caught having an affair with one of the students. This was typical behavior for Blanche since she had previously taken many lovers. Since she had such a hard time in Mississippi, she decides to move to New Orleans to live with her sister, Stella, and her husband, Stanley, in hopes of escaping her past.

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The Fight for Dominance In today’s society, gender norms convince men that unless they are able to control women, they are weak. Considered the inferior gender, women must find new ways to prove their own strength, whether it be through manipulation or their sexuality. The battle between the two continues as men strive to remain dominant, often by immoral means, and women attempt to gain the upper hand. In the screenplay, “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, the sexual tension and struggle for dominion between Blanche and Stanley is evident, and as the play continues, Blanche's promiscuity and Stanley's predatory nature foreshadow an inevitable confrontation.

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This is presented by Blanches descent into madness due to her inability to act properly on her sexual urges. Lastly, Williams demonstrates how Blanche is not at fault for not knowing how to act on her desires. She was brought up in a world that told her that expressing her sexuality or even having sexual desires was wrong, she never learned how to deal with desire. This is why A Streetcar Named Desire should not be dismissed as a cautionary tale that warns individuals not to embrace desires. On the contrary, this is a story that blames society for not allowing people to openly express their sexuality and act of their most primal of

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Character Analysis of Blanche DuBois One of the main characters in a play by Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire is Blanche DuBois. Blanche is a victim of her upbringing and the changing times she lives in. She was born to aristocratic family and raised to be taken care of. This romantic, art, music and poetry loving soul is unprepared for the world she lives in

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959 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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Tennessee Williams wrote “A Streetcar Named Desire” (Williams, 1947) It is based in New Orleans a new cosmopolitan city which is poor but has raffish charm. The past is representing old south in America 1900’s and present is representing new America post world war 2 in 1940’s. Past and present are intertwined throughout the play in the characters Stanley, Blanche, Stella and mitch. Gender roles show that males are the dominant and rule the house which Stanley is prime example as he brings home food and we learn of one time when he got cross and he smashed the light bulbs.

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During the era of A Streetcar named desire (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949), money and social status had power over peoples lives. In that sense, people were labeled for what they had. And the fast that money had power over the characters lives in both books, it showed that their world revolved around it. It also had so much power in the sense that both of the books ended in a negative note. So, i believe that Death Of a Salesman by Authur Miller and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams connected in a sense that money created problems between the characters.

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