“Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives”(Bertrand Russell). One of the most basic human needs is the need to be loved by someone and to love someone in return. In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams uses a consistent theme of loneliness and peoples desperate need for human companionship in order to be happy as a driving force in the main characters lives. This theme develops gravely throughout the play for each of the main characters. Even though unchecked desire can and does lead to unhappiness, the desire to avoid loneliness drives the main characters into relationships …show more content…
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. She exploits Mitch’s loneliness to her advantage in hopes of finding a soul mate but, her past choices destroy that possibility. She is forced into true loneliness because she has always used sex to her advantage and good companion choices do not desire that quality. Her primary focus leads to her destruction as she is caught between the two extremes of desire and loneliness.
Each person in the Dubois/Kowalski family relationship is in some way affected by the desperate need for human companionship despite its unhealthy affect on their world. Since companionship provides a sense of comfort and provides a sense of belonging, desire to avoid loneliness drives people into relationships. Tennessee Williams uses this desperate need for companionship as a central theme in the play, A Street Car Named Desire. His intention is to show the reader the power that this need has over a human and he succeeds in demonstrating that the desperation of loneliness can destroy a