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A Streetcar Named Desire Theme Essay

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Trying something new isn’t bad, but trying to be someone you are not is not an exceptional choice. In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, people believe in something and make it their reality. Tennessee Williams develops multiple themes, but the ones that do not change in the ending of both the play and the movie are: marriage, alcohol/ alcoholism, and loneliness. Throughout the play you can see that these themes have different effects, towards different people. Marriage is a theme that covers a few minor themes in itself. It inquires aggression, sexual assault, and the choice of dominant sex in the relationship. “Oh, you can’t describe someone you’re in love with” (scene 1) For Stella love blinds her, to the point where …show more content…

Stanley doesn’t think about his actions when he is under this drug, and all relaxed. Blanche uses it to distract herself from reality and to sink into her own fantasy world. “…Now don’t get worried, your sister hasn’t turned into a drunkard, she’s just all shaken up and hot and tired and dirty!” (scene 1) Blanche doesn't hide her alcoholism from Stella, because she is her sister and will never betray her own sister. In the 1940’s drinking alcohol wasn’t ideal for a woman's reputation, so this specific habitat would have to be somehow hidden for others not to misunderstand. In both the play and the movie alcohol and the act of alcoholism is used as a symbol of escapism from reality. For Blanche escapism through alcohol is to forget her past and live the present but not in the real world but in her own fantasy like world. Loneliness is caused by depression or the feeling of being alone with nobody behind your back. Blanche and this theme go along very well, she is a very lonely human being. She has loved only once, her husband, that has committed suicide. Blanche apparently tries to find love through sexual affairs that she has with younger men. She had a chance with Mitch, since they were so alike. But if not all her lies, if they didn’t come out, things would’ve gone well for both of

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Blanche's Guilt In A Streetcar Named Desire

402 Words | 2 Pages

Blanche attempts to take control over her present life and make her fantasy become a reality. As she struggles to get past her husband's suicide, she comes across a phase in which she wishes to please other men in order to feel complete with herself. Her husband's sudden suicide was traumatizing and this main factor pushed her to find comfort in men. As Blanche explains, “coming suddenly into a room which I thought was empty- which wasn’t empty but had two people in it… the boy I had married and an older man who had been his friend for years” (114). Through this event, we can tell how Blanche has guilt because she made her husband feel horrible for being with another man which led him to shoot himself.

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Manipulation Of Blanche In A Streetcar Named Desire

276 Words | 2 Pages

How Blanche has been treating relationships in her past affects how she treats the people around her. With how she goes about with their interactions she leads to sabotaging them for herself. Her confrontation with her husband homosexuality and her own words pushing him over the edge causes her to burden herself with the blame, the only release of which is the active search for short term relationships she has with other men. She fills in the void of a close partner with ones that can fit the role but never truly fulfill it. That manipulation of essentially disposable men skews how she sees relationships affecting her interactions with herself with the rest of the cast.

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Insecurity In A Streetcar Named Desire

1085 Words | 5 Pages

He regretted it and was crying for her to go back to him and love him. Also, love in this story is filled with insecurities and secrets. Blanche and Mitch would have been official, but Mitch believed what he was being told about Blanche and did not want her for hearing she was not “pure”. Stanley and Stella are in

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A Streetcar Named Desire: Discussion Questions

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

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Literary Analysis Of Blanche Dubois

1166 Words | 5 Pages

Blanche feels the need to be appreciated by men at all time and seeks attention when she does not receive it, especially from Mitch. “She dupes him regarding her age and declares herself younger to Stella, tries to fool him regarding her drinking habits, avoid going out with him until after dark and manages to avoid being seen in direct bulb-light!”(Kararia 24). Blanche is portrayed as a liar and attention seeker who wants to be showered with compliments from Mitch. She tries to fool and flirt with Mitch so she can secure her future with him. “She sees in Mitch an opportunity to prove her allure and score an easy sexual conquest.

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A Streetcar Named Desire Conflict Essay

783 Words | 4 Pages

She brings this sense of superiority to Stella who unintentionally tries to distinguish her background from Stanley as well. Stanley recognizes the fact that Blanche looks down on him forcing him to assert his masculinity over her. Stanley’s dominance over the household and Stella is being questioned upon Blanche’s

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Character Analysis: A Streetcar Named Desire

1038 Words | 5 Pages

“[She springs up and crosses to it, and removes a whiskey bottle. She pours a half tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down. She carefully replaces the bottle and washes out the tumbler at the sink]”(1.71) Blanche tries to separate herself from reality when she drinks, trying to forget and escape her troubled past. Being in a new environment is unsettling.

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Blanche Dubois Loneliness

774 Words | 4 Pages

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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Blanche's Destruction In A Streetcar Named Desire

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.

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A Streetcar Named Desire Literary Analysis

1697 Words | 7 Pages

(10.225). towards the end of the play Stella, Mitch, and Stanley play a role in imposing reality into her allusions. As Stella calls for the Doctor to pick Blanche up it rips her away from her fantasies with Shep Huntleigh. When Mitch reveals to Blanche that she isn't pure enough to take home to his

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Theme Of Dominance In A Streetcar Named Desire

698 Words | 3 Pages

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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Blanche Dubois Character Analysis Essay

1307 Words | 6 Pages

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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A Streetcar Named Desire Past And Present Analysis

1547 Words | 7 Pages

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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Society In A Streetcar Named Desire

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.

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Summary: A Streetcar Named Desire By Tennessee Williams

790 Words | 4 Pages

In any form of fiction writing there is alway a bit of truth and imagination woven together to create a work of art that enthrals the adiunce. In Tennessee Williams 1947 play "A streetcar named desire", he has created a world were you actually see what can happen to a person when they choose to live in the illusions of their own making when they can no longer handle their situation in reality. In a Streetcar named desire, Blanche recreates and raps herself in her own delustions, because she can not face what she has become or her past actions, but in doing so her past litterly hounts her, through her brother in law and voices in her head, to make her deal her own tragic past and present reality. Through out the play Tennessy Williams lets

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