ipl-logo

A Streetcar Named Desire Light Analysis

504 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Discuss "The Great Gatsby"as a symbolic novel

He wants everyone to think that he is an Oxford man and to believe that he is well educated by having a library in his house with countless books. However he never really touched them, the books are only there to show the public a fake image of him. In the end, the great Jay Gatsby appears to be a character who can’t seem to be letting go of his past. *ADD QUOTE* Tennessee Williams on the other hand, portrayed Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire with a different view of her past. Unlike Gatsby, this character was wealthy, with a big loving family and a great plantation. She was married to a rich man and had the life she ever wanted. However, Blanche slowly started losing everything she ever owned, her life was falling apart. The symbol of light has a great impact in this character’s behaviour. Blanche avoids all direct, bright light, especially in front of men. Mitch, one of her potential suitors, proves this statement when he points out to Blanche: “I don’t think I ever seen you in the light. That’s a fact!” (Williams…) She refuses to reveal her age, and it is evident that she stays away from light to avoid others seeing her losing her beauty and her age. Blanche’s inner conflict gave the play an unforgettable conclusion. She “[doesn’t] tell the truth, [but instead] …show more content…

The readers can grasp that this theme bring up countless similarities and minor contrast in both characters. Both The Great Gatsby and A Streetcar Named Desire illustrate how this dominant theme portray significant symbols, inner conflicts and how appearances vs. reality impact the leading characters. The authors reveal Gatsby and Blanche as unstable and conflicted throughout their plot. In the end, the past has great importance to both characters as they use it to define their

Show More
Related
618 Words | 3 Pages

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

Read More
1480 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
1506 Words | 7 Pages

Desire in The Great Gatsby Desire can lead people in many different directions -- some good, and some bad. Desire can confuse people, and give them false hope. This makes them commit actions without thinking about consequences. Throughout the book, The Great Gatsby, desire influenced the choices of Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Myrtle.

Read More
1085 Words | 5 Pages

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

Read More
508 Words | 3 Pages

Jay Gatsby is an enigmatic character with a lot of traumas and what seems obsessions connected with love and money. Through the book, we as readers were only able to know a small part of his thoughts and emotions since he was not the narrator, but that is enough to understand him and his deep desires. As the narrator, Nick Carraway said, Gatsby is different from all the other characters. He is not as cruel as Tom and Daisy, but he is not morally correct, a quality that our narrator Nick considers he has. Gatsby comes from a poor and not influential family; he did not study in prestigious universities like the other characters, nor did he receive a heritage from his family, which the wealthy “nobility” of America considers to be one of the few ways to be part of them.

Read More
1054 Words | 5 Pages

Blanche acts as if her life is not falling apart and carries herself as the same girl from Belle Reve. She carries herself as the most sophisticated, classy, pure and innocent than everyone else, however later within the play the readers witness Blanche’s true nature. A promiscuous, manipulative, former aristocrat with a poorly hidden drinking problem. “She springs up and crosses to it, and removes a whiskey bottle. She pours a half tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down.

Read More
531 Words | 3 Pages

This is where Blanche becomes obsessed with avoiding any type of light, whether it be in a loving relationship or an overhead lightbulb. Her reaction can be seen as an attempt hide the fact her youth is fading as well as her true nature. While staying with her sister Blanche makes several strides to stay in the dark. One of the first in a series of events she has Stanley’s friend Mitch cover a naked bulb in her room with a Chinese paper lantern stating “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action” (114; sec. 3) shows that she would rather hide behind fancy shades than face

Read More
783 Words | 4 Pages

However the main conflict is Blanche’s inability to accept reality or her inability to let go of her past. Blanche sees herself above her sister’s life and carries a sense of entitlement that no longer fits her environment like it did in her past. Underneath, Blanche is a liar and Stanley is not. Stanley and Stella are able to able to admit what they are while Blanche is constantly trying to hide who she is. She is unable to come to her desire and sees herself superior to the people around her.

Read More
452 Words | 2 Pages

This shows how someone can think they are doing a good job how hiding their true self, but actually, everyone can see through their persona. Blanche tries her best to make sure her appearances are well kept; she is completely oblivious to the fact that she has severe mental and emotional problems, due to the fact that her husband took his own life.

Read More
778 Words | 4 Pages

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

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
1312 Words | 6 Pages

Another very common theme represented throughout both texts, is the constant allusion to light. Within “A Streetcar Named Desire”, the use of light reveals Blanche’s role and appearance as a character. One of Blanche’s biggest flaws is that she prefers to be only seen in the dark. She does not like to reveal herself in the light as she is afraid of people seeing that she is in fact aging.

Read More
895 Words | 4 Pages

When Blanche first comes to Stella’s house, she firmly demands Stella to “turn the over-light off!” as she cannot “be looked at in [the] merciless glare” (Williams 11). Although the light seems harsh, Blanche acts hardhearted and pitiless and could possibly be seeing herself in the glare. Blanche “cannot tolerate being seen in bright light” because she is “hypersensitive to her declining physical beauty” (Adler 30). In attempts to protect her own image, she buys a paper lantern to cover the harsh light in Stanley and Stella’s bedroom; Blanche’s mental state is “as fragile” as the paper lantern that protects her from her own reality (Adler 30).

Read More
853 Words | 4 Pages

Jay Gatsby, the title character of the novel “The Great Gatsby” is a man that can not seem to live without the love of his life. Trying to win Daisy over consumes Gatsby’s life as he tries to become the person he thinks she would approve of. What most readers do not realize is that Jay Gatsby’s character mirrors many personality traits and concerns that the author of novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, had. In fact, Gatsby and Fitzgerald are similar in that they both had a girl they wanted to win over, took a strong stance on alcohol, and ironically both had similar funerals, also, both people also symbolize the American dream.

Read More
1547 Words | 7 Pages

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

Read More

More about A Streetcar Named Desire Light Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document