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Blanche's Guilt In A Streetcar Named Desire

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Recommended: Sexuality in literature

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. After the regret and pain that came from
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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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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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Blanche’s final, deluded happiness suggests that, to some extent, fantasy is a vital force in every individual’s experience, despite reality’s inevitable triumph. This refers to her reality of how Mitch had came over to apologize to her, and she tells Stanley that she turned him down. This lie backfired, since Stanley knew exactly where Mitch was at this time. As well as Stanley saw through Blanches delusion of how she has received a wire, from Shep Huntleigh, inviting her to go with him down to the Caribbean cruise, in which Stanley later shuts down as

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490 Words | 2 Pages

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche possess a common theme of wanting to hold onto her youth. Blanche’s stance on her age is best expressed with her relationship with Mitch. After a couple nights out with Blanche, Mitch nevers learns her age because he was too in love with Blanche. On the other hand, Blanche worried about the dreadful question “How old are you.” With the feeling of being too old for Mitch, Blanche wasn’t confident in telling him her age.

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1295 Words | 6 Pages

Multiple harsh scenarios give a detailed outline on how Blanche can ruin a character 's self esteem without doing much harm to her own. Blanche buries her own personal flaws by attention seeking , flirtatious behavior, lying and drinking. “Blanches most fundamental regret as we see her in new orleans, is not that she happened to marry a homosexual… Blanche’s concern that, when made aware of her husband 's sexuality she brought on the boys suicide” (Berkman 252) When Blanche judges somebody else it take weight off her shoulders from her own life struggles. Allan killing himself was just another layer of filth that Blanche tends not to acknowledge. The act of Allan Grey killing himself after Blanche discover’s that he is a homesexual is what started the chain of events for Blanche to take on majority of her traits.

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349 Words | 2 Pages

Due to the tensions that existed in Blanche 's life, she experienced classic signs of psychosis. When a person develops a flawed relationship with reality they can experience psychosis. This disorder is exhibited by her hallucinations observed by Stanley, her anxiety regarding her past, and her change of personality towards the end of the play. Perhaps for Blanche she never experienced psychosis but instead she experienced the ultimate truth; moreover, being sent away to the mental institution allowed the liberation of her psyche. The streetcar named Desire switched over to Cemeteries and led to Elysian Fields.

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500 Words | 2 Pages

Blanche is describing a time when she was a “very young girl” and her lover “just a boy” (Williams 114), likely both in age and maturity of life. She feels guilty about the end of a past relationship, made clear at the beginning of the passage when she describes him as “a boy, just a boy” (114). The repetition of the word ‘boy’ suggests a borderline frantic and somewhat disbelieving point of view about the situation. Blanche further demonstrates her frenzied recollection when she describes her past lover: “There was something different about the boy, a nervousness, a softness and tenderness” (114). The reader expects a colon after the word ‘boy’ as she begins to list his qualities.

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1015 Words | 5 Pages

Stanley as a main character however is an antithesis of Blanche in that he is very realistic about life, and exposes Blanche’s illusions, (for example “Blanche is no lily”) however he does seem to portray illusions when speaking about his own dreams, which could be blamed upon ignorance however it is evidenced that this is not the case. In Scene 2 Stanley exclaims to Stella “And diamonds! A crown for an empress!” This can be seen as critical due to the fact him and Stella have very little and Blanche seems to have diamonds, therefore portraying that he wishes to have the money that Blanche apparently owns and owes him. Use of the noun “empress” portrays Stanley’s ideas of the Old South as the people were seemed to be that of gentry and very

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151 Words | 1 Pages

Even if Blanche were to encourage the men, technically she is not in the right state of mind and therefore, I don't completely blame her for her actions as a character. Though I can understand why one would say that Blanche does victimize others; to changes the lives of the other characters in a negative way. By the end, Blanche is admitted to a Mental Institution because her family and friends either didn’t believe she was raped or being sane for she would only live in her own fantasy world. Blanche went through many hard times in her life from losing her job, her husband’s death and receiving a shameful reputation from it all. Due to these kinds of events from her past

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286 Words | 2 Pages

Moreover, her excessive drink helps her to escape from reality. In addition, her madness appeared clearly in the closing scene when she was pinned on the ground and then taken off to the mental hospital. Accordingly, she comments “whoever you are-I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (Williams 142). Blanche expected that she is going to start a new life with her sister, but in reality she suffers more than she was living alone.

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778 Words | 4 Pages

The Destruction of the Belle Reve Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire is a wonderfully tragic story of the delusional Blanche DuBois, whose lies are unfolded and destroyed by the misogynist Stanley Kowalski. Throughout the play, Blanche frequently lies about her past, who she is, and what she’s done. Each lie she tells slowly unravels the next until she is caught, drowning in her own pathetic lies, forced to surrender to the malicious consequences dealt by Stanley. Similar to James Gatz, Blanche is obsessed with covering up her past actions, and creating a thin cloak of lies; however, James’ past is merely one of social degradation, Blanche carries the weight of her own horrible decisions.

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1266 Words | 6 Pages

To hide her true self, Blanche restored to duplicity, coupled with her voracious desire and ubiquitous deception caused her a breakdown. In the following paragraphs, there will be more events that led Blanche to such end. One of the things that led Blanche to her downfall is the past. The past, where she was the reason why she lost her husband, Alan, he

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1070 Words | 5 Pages

Aside the obvious fact that witnessing the suicide of another human can have a scarring effect on any one, the devotee of Allan was left with a major hole in her life. Every time Blanche is reminded, or effected by Allan’s death the Varsouviana polka gets stuck in her head which is only halted by “the shot! It always stops after that.” (114) From the death of her husband and the loss of the plantation there is a lot of things that have left a physiological mark on her and give her the will to cover her past up. While living with the Kowalskis, if Blanche had not lived many different lives, and lied to her new acquaintances she could have had a normal life.

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2279 Words | 10 Pages

Blanche ultimately deteriorates to madness when she lies to herself and others repeatedly telling others that Shep Huntleigh will come take her. She eludes herself to the extent of taking action by writing a fake telegram to him starting with "Darling Shep. Sister and I in desperate situation."(78). but cannot seem to keep up the illusion as she stops writing the telegram. She believes her own lie so much that she does not realise that Stella, Unice and Stanley are taking her away to a mental institution.

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769 Words | 4 Pages

She was upset over his life choices. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the street. This left Blanche feeling guilty and alone. She begins to have insecurities as to why she could not please her husband. Blanche also held the responsibility of taking care of all her sick family until they died.

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