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A Streetcar Named Desire Lies Analysis

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A person can not simply believe what reality is when all they have ever known is their own lies to be the truth. In the play “A Streetcar Named Desire” Tennessee Williams has multiple characters that are constantly battling between what is fact and what is fiction in the Kowalski Flat household. Blanche DuBois, a former english teacher from Laurel, Mississippi, Stella’s sister, is the main victim of this conflict. With Ms. DuBois’ character and the knowledge we have that she was an english teacher, it is easily implied that drama and romance were not only a part of her profession. Blanche’s constant fight between what is real and what is an illusion begins to spiral out of control and gets to the point that she must be institutionalized. One of the first of countless lies was shortly after Blanche arrived at the Kowalski Flat house. Blanche makes a statement to Stella, “I was so …show more content…

I call her my little sister in spite of the fact she’s somewhat older than I. Just slightly. Less than a year…” (55). In this scene Blanche portrays herself to Mitch as the younger sister only to make herself look better. Later on in the story we find that Blanche had lied once again. Mitch states, “Lies, lies, inside and out, all lies.” Blanche responds with “ Never inside, I didn't lie in my heart…” (119). When Blanche responds with this statement of never lie inside, it represents how she believed her own lies nearly as much as Mitch did. When Mitch forces Blanche into the light, he reveals he knows that she has lied to him, this represents Blanche coming to reality but still believing her delusions. In order for Blanche to tell Mitch the truth inside and out it is necessary for her to come clean about her past life. It is nearly impossible for Blanche to be free of pain and forget her past when she is in a state of

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But don’t look at me..” and “Open your pretty mouth and talk while I look around for some liquor”. 6) Identify two examples of Blanche’s deception in this scene. What does this reveal about her character? One example is that Blanche try to seem alright

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It is what is haunting Blanche’s life, it is what has made her mentally unstable. Throughout the play, she has been hiding her past from people so she looks like

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301617- A Streetcar Named Desire Lying as well as deception is a common theme in A Streetcar Named Desire for the characters. There is Blanche, whom, because of her deception and lying which has played a bigger role on the other characters than she goes and realizes. Blanche stated in scene two of A Streetcar

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I. Vocabulary Effeminate- Adjective -(of a man) Having or showing characteristics regarded as typical of a woman; unmanly. (Pg 114) Repertoire- Noun - A stock of plays, dances, or pieces that a company or a performer knows or is prepared to perform. (Pg 130) Malarkey-

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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.

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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,

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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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She frequently relies on her perception of herself as an object of male sexual desire. She always starts with flirting when she comes in contact with men. Blanche tells Stella that she and Stanley smoothed things over when she began to flirt with him, “I called him a little boy and laughed and flirted. Yes, I flirted with your husband.” (44) When Blanche meets Stanley’s poker-playing friends, she takes interest to Mitch and sees him as a possible choice for her to find companionship.

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It is Blanche’s obsessive desire for a clean slate that ultimately drives her streetcar into destruction. With each lie she tells, the last lie becomes a reality to her, and once her delusional reality begins to fade, Blanche recedes into a dark hole where neither she or anyone else could ever truly see herself

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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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Stella accepts her willingly, however, Stanley begins to hear rumors. Blanche starts to date one of Stanley’s friends, Mitch, but when Stanley informs him about her past, Mitch basically tells her

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Not only has Tennesse Williams portrayed Stella and Blanche to be seen as delicate and dependent, our own society has created this image but this not only affects how individuals see themselves but affects relationships immensely. Tennessee Williams reinforces the stereotype in which women are often the victims of unfortunate fate within the usage of the character Blanche. Throughout the whole play, we have witnessed Blanche being on the bitter end of life's miseries as she has encountered the tough loss of Belle Reve, dealing with her ex-husband's suicide and the loss of her relationship with Mitch. Arguably, the expectations and beliefs of women were either to be a housewife or a mother, whereas Blanche shows neither, as a result of automatically feeling out of place possibly leading to her downfall. Blanche was constantly fantasizing about the traditional values of a southern gentlemen, proving her dependence on this sex.

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Blanche’s personality makes her live in the past acting as a “southern belle” and believing millionaire Shep Huntleigh will marry her unfortunately for Blanche living in the past meant she ended up in a state institution. Stella is a good example of past and present intertwined as he past was living in Belle Reive a plantation as a “southern belle” and now her present is in New Orleans and married to a husband who abusive. The character of Mitch a hard worker whom looks after his ill mother seems to the reader as a decent person with past and present intertwined personality he is respectful at the start to win Blanche

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In A Streetcar Named Desire, the author Tennessee Williams exaggerates and dramatizes fantasy’s incapability to overcome reality through an observation of the boundary between Blanches exterior and interior conveying the theme that illusion and fantasy are often better than reality. Blanche, who hides her version of the past, alters her present and her relationship with her suitor Mitch and her sister, Stella. Blanche was surrounded by death in her past, her relatives and husband have passed away, leaving her with no legacy left to continue. The money has exhausted; the values are falling apart and she is alienated and unable to survive in the harsh reality of modern society. Throughout the novel Williams juxtaposed Blanche’s delusions with

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“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.

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