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A Streetcar Named Desire Past And Present Essay

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The Past and Present Society and its values are always changing and shifting in American history. This is true for the pre-war and post-war eras of World War II. Before the war, America’s society was the conservative type which wanted to represent high culture and elite status. After the war, however, the values which society once held close, were not important to people anymore. In 1947, only two short years after World War II, Tennessee Williams wrote the play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” to highlight how the shift in time brought change in society. Williams was very resistant to the emerging conservative ideals of the time period, which is perhaps because of his own experiences with an alternative lifestyle. In the play, Williams intertwines the past and present by using symbols such as characters, places, and music embedded in the stage directions to show how society should embrace the new values and morals that are emerging as the past dies. Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski are the two main characters that Williams uses to intertwine the past and present together and represent the differences in the old and new worlds. In the beginning of the …show more content…

Before the war, society was one which valued aristocracy and high morals, however, the war brought much reform. Now, these values and morals were not as important as they once were. Williams was against the conservative way of life because he did not agree with its beliefs and practices, and instead wanted to live an alternative lifestyle. Because of this, he wrote, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” to show how the old society was dead and a new one was emerging which brought new views towards once disgraceful ways of life. He does this through the use of characters, places, and music embedded in stage directions. Tennessee Williams was a very powerful author who encouraged society to evolve and adapt to changing times, and ultimately, he achieved

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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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Williams uses the expressionist technique “The ‘Varsouviana’ is filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle” to parallel Blanche’s inner mind and depicts Blanche’s deranged mental state after Stella’s betrayal. The imagery ‘Lurid reflections appear on the walls in odd, sinuous shapes’ highlights her mental turbulence and the stage directions ‘mysterious voices behind walls, as if reverberated through a canyon of rock…the echo sounds in threatening whispers’ heightens tension, positioning the audience to witness the overwhelming fear and exaggeration of her senses, further emphasising the detrimental impact Stella’s decision made. The Streetcar Named Desire also examines the influence that a person’s social standing can have. Stanley’s statement in scene 2 ‘The Kowalskis and Dubois have different notions’ indicates their social upbringing has influenced the way they think, hence disrupting their connection and loyalty towards one another. The use of their family name is metonymic for their ancestry and social standing, addressing the barriers derived from a social hierarchy which have affected their relationship.

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