ipl-logo

A Streetcar Named Desire Essay

1338 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Desire and intimacy in a streetcar named desire

Throughout the 1951 film, A Streetcar Named Desire the audience beholds the story of a young woman who chases her desires and the aftermath that ensues. Directed by Elia Kazan, the film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tennessee Williams. The movie portrays a young woman with an aristocratic nature by the name of Blanche DuBois, as the film begins the audience watches as she makes her way from her family estate in Mississippi down to stay with her sister in New Orleans. The audience then sees Blanche’s life with her sister Stella, as well as the conflict that arises between Stella’s husband and Blanche. After, the viewers see the gradual downfall of Blanche until her inevitable departure. In the film A Streetcar Named Desire, …show more content…

Through Blanche’s character, the theme of desire and its outcomes are shown throughout the film. One example of Blanche’s desire can be traced to the origin of nearly all her problems. When she was 16 Blanche fell deeply in love with a boy, they were happy until one day when they were dancing, she told the boy he was weak and that she had lost respect for him. The boy would soon then run outside and shoot himself, leaving Blanche with a hole in her heart she was never able to fill (Streetcar 1:11:22-1:14:42). Because of Blanche’s character, she did not think twice about telling the boy what she did, leading to her own loss in her heart. Another example of her desire stems from her actions towards her young lover. With her heart empty and shattered from the suicide of the young man, she would go on sleep with many men in …show more content…

One situation that sticks out is when Blanche is alone at the apartment after Stella and her husband Stanley have left; a young man comes to collect money for the newspaper when he meets Blanche in the house. Blanche beckons for the young man to come near her in a slightly aggressive manner, she then proceeds to indulge on his lips until she remembers her last incident when she had an affair with another boy (Streetcar 0:59:30). Seconds later a man named Mitch walks up to take her out, who Blanche said she wanted badly. The scene from the plot shows that Blanche’s sexual desires still reside heavily in her, as she kisses a young boy even though she already had a similar incident only months prior. In addition, she also has another man coming to see her who she also says she wants to be in a relationship with, demonstrating that the protection and fulfillment she seeks still hides from her. One of the major scenes of the film is towards the end of the story when the plot leads Stella to the hospital for her baby so just Stanley and Blanche are left at the apartment. Stanley was already aware of Blanche’s history, and with her previous flirting he thought another man would not be a problem. Blanche noticed Stanley’s advances and tried to escape, unfortunately she was outmatched and was raped by Stanley (Streetcar 141). In this occurrence,

Show More
Related
680 Words | 3 Pages

When leading up to the rape Stanley “springs toward her, overturning the table. She cries out and strikes at him with the bottle top but he catches her wrist... He picks her inert figure and carries her to the bed.” After the fact that this occurs Blanche looks for comfort looks for someone believe her with what had occurred, she goes to stella maybe hoping she could help her, but we are surprised when we come to find out Stella “couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley.” This makes readers feel the way they do towards Blanche because when something this terrible happens, you’d expect family to be there for you but Stella would rather choose to not believe her sister, Blanche just to go on living with her husband Stanley.

Read More
832 Words | 4 Pages

A Streetcar Named Desire was published just after World War II. When the play came out, the country had just emerged from the war after struggling through the Great Depression of 1930 's, and suddenly the national spotlight concentrated on the lower and middle classes as the true supporters of the heroic American spirit. The title of the play shows that desire is the force which will lead the actions of the play. The title comes from an actual vehicle or a streetcar named “Desire” that Blanche takes to transport her to her sister’s house, then she turns to one called Cemeteries and get off at Elysian Fields. So it is obvious that desire is what Blanche has followed from the beginning

Read More
1073 Words | 5 Pages

In Scene 10, Blanche is begging Stanley to let her get by and he is not moving to let her through. Stanley says that he thinks Blanche would not be too bad to interfere with in a sexual way going back to Scene 6, when he would walk through the rooms in his underwear at night near Blanche. Blanche complained about the little bit of privacy she had in the house and that was exemplified when Stanley later picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. Blanche had thought in the beginning that her situation was frightful, but never to the degree in which she experienced towards the end of the

Read More
1166 Words | 5 Pages

Tennessee Williams is one of the most recognized playwrights that lived during the mid-twentieth-century (“Tennessee Williams”). After finishing college, Williams decides to move to New Orleans, where he writes A Streetcar Named Desire. His career starts to take off as he begins to write more plays (“Tennessee Williams”). A Streetcar Named Desire talks about the life of a woman, Blanche DuBois, who is very secretive about her past and does not expose her true intentions of coming to live with her younger sister Stella. As the play goes on Stanley, Stella’s husband, starts to dig into the dark past that terrorizes Blanche when they begin to have a conflict with each other.

Read More
369 Words | 2 Pages

In a Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams utilizes characterization to focus on the theme of desire. The personality flaws of the three main characters, Stanely, Blanche, and Stella, all reflect how they let their desires drive them to their eventual downfalls. Williams provides the reader with colorful images of each character allowing us insight into how their past has led them to a life of deception, domination, and inability to see reality. In the beginning of the play we are introduced to Blanche DuBois; she is the sister to Stella.

Read More
783 Words | 4 Pages

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the main characters, Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski, share a great dislike and distrust towards one another, ultimately becoming the basis for the story’s conflict. Their common contemption stems from their contrasting personalities and backgrounds, their incompatibility of being able to function under the same environment, and inability to adapt to the situations they find themselves in. Although Blanche detests Stanley and the manner in which he behaves in, she realises that he is a necessary part for Stella’s life in New Orleans, an environment that greatly differs from the southern aristocracy that Stella and Blanche once lived in. Blanche expresses this idea by stating, “Oh,

Read More
778 Words | 4 Pages

In Scene 10, she deviously claims that she has just received a telegram from the millionaire, Steph Huntleigh, to explain why she is dressed up. At first, Stanley plays along, but once Blanche musters up the audacity to say that Mitch returned to their apartment seeking repentance, Stanley draws the line. He calls her out for her fictitious tales of her past, and states, “We’ve had this date from the start,” just before he maliciously rapes Blanche. Their natures root in primal, animalistic instincts, Stanley like a dirty hog, open and free concerning his sexuality, Blanche like a fox, sly and deceitful. Despite her incessant attempts to destroy her past, Blanche is unable to stop their sexual connection as she has had so many other men.

Read More
1266 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
757 Words | 4 Pages

As she was kissing him and reached into his back pocket, took the money for herself and then tucked it in her bra. I found their relationship very affectionate throughout the movie where I did not picture this when reading the play. However, I think that the director was very clever when incorporating their passionate relationship between Stella and Stanley. I believe this because it proved how sexually driven and aggressive Stanley was which almost had a foreshadowing affect on the end relationship between Blanche and Stanley. I also think this portrayal of raw emotion was an extremely important aspect of the film because inner emotion and motives drove every characters actions throughout the play.

Read More
1307 Words | 6 Pages

As Tish Dace writes in A Street Car Named Desire, “Streetcar’s original producer, Irene Selznick, as a woman, may have been touched by the power of double standard to dictate that Blanche’s father and grandfather could indulge in ‘epic fornications’ and Stanley could be admired for his sexual prowess, but a woman of Blanche’s class, once she has slipped off her pedestal, is fair target for rape” (Dace). Blanche’s promiscuity is the reason Mitch will not marry her and it is the reason she is banned from her hometown, while Stanley, guilty of the same crime, is not punished at all but admired for

Read More
1547 Words | 7 Pages

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.

Read More
608 Words | 3 Pages

he says: “not once did you pull any wool over this boy’s eyes!” Not only Stanley had broken her world of illusion, but also Mitch who is influenced by Stanley and destroys the protection of darkness by exposing her to the bright light. Stanley bringing up the past contributes to how Blanches ends up, alone and insane expressing the theme that what happened in the past determines the present, and illusion and fantasy directly correlate. Though reality triumphs over fantasy in A Streetcar Named Desire, when the truth comes colliding down on Blanche, she has no choice but to go insane ultimately avoiding the acceptance of

Read More
1202 Words | 5 Pages

The renaissance was a time of great innovation and is considered “the bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history” (wikipedia.org). The renaissance is considered a bridge because of how people started to think, and how it influenced literature, science, philosophy and art. At the time of the renaissance, the knowledge that was known about space and astronomy was limited and some theories were erroneous as well, such as the theory that planets in space orbited around Earth. Astronomy was limited because of the lack of inventions and technology. An example of limited technology at the time would be the telescope, which could only magnify images about three times.

Read More
765 Words | 4 Pages

To Blanche, Stanley originally comes off as appealing however once he rapes her, he becomes monstrous in her eyes. On the contrary, Blanche is not exactly humane as well. Blanche is the extreme version of how a female was represented in the mid-1900s, but takes crazy too far. As opposed to helping Blanche deal with the world, her fantasizing is more destructive then helpful. Stanley’s violent rape of Blanche is a wake up call from her fantasy life, the final straw in her mental decline, leading to her

Read More
847 Words | 4 Pages

“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.

Read More

More about A Streetcar Named Desire Essay

Related Topics

Open Document