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Disaster As Penchant: A Streetcar Named Desire

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In 'A Streetcar Named Desire' the crude manly ruthlessness of Stanley Kowalski conflicts with the paper-slender misdirected longs for his Southern beauty sister-in-law Blanche. The sheer contradictorily of these two identities and the way Williams barbarously sets them against one another totally stunned me. The typical topics of death, life, want and questionable sexuality are overflowing in this picture of up and coming physical and mental fixing.
In ‘Criticism on Streetcar Named Desire’ John S. Bak believed the play is a social drama. Bak utilizes different sources to support him claim. For example, “Though a substantial number of critics believe Streetcar to be essentially a social drama, few have found themselves in concert in defining …show more content…

Britton J. Harwood in his "Disaster as Penchant: A Streetcar Named Desire" also finds the Apollonian/Dionysian legitimization in the Blanche-Stanley conflict, Harwood sees the fight better defined in Rudolf Otto's expressing: Self versus Other. Harwood sees the center of Streetcar as a code of unwavering quality both kept up and betrayed. While Stella stays committed to Stanley by the end Blanche deceives her trustworthiness to Allan by revealing his homosexuality. Stanley and Blanche battle lead to the deciding decision of Self. Along these lines, while other critics find Williams successful in his sensation of human nature. The other critics would say A Streetcar Named Desire as a dramatization of human nature to be a play not of conviction frameworks rather of sexual hate for protection and inducing. These critics find Williams forming a play based on Darwinian consistent determination. Blanche and Stanley are two rebutting animals of the same species taking a cut at the survival of their kind, with Stella as the …show more content…

For Blanche, that mission is to restore her southern culture; for Stanley, it is to ensure the continued with advancement of the capable Napoleonic code, symbolized in the origination of his birth of his son toward the play's end. Both fight over Stella, for in her picking one-creature gatherings infer the death of the

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Streetcar Named Desire Monologue

381 Words | 2 Pages

Williams is known for his powerfully written psychological dramas. Through the language used in this play one can easily recognize the conflict between the sensitive, neurotic Blanche Dubois and the crude, animalistic Stanley Kowaliski. By analyzing the dialogue of this text, the reader can easily understand the way in which the lines are meant to be projected and one can clearly see their emotions and feelings at any specific time of the events (Kolin 52). Concerning language, there are two levels of language are used in A Streetcar Named Desire, the words spoken by the characters in the play and the text of the stage directions. The dialogue is used to enable the reader to create an image of the characters, to decide if it’s

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Insecurity In A Streetcar Named Desire

1085 Words | 5 Pages

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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A Streetcar Named Desire Conflict Essay

783 Words | 4 Pages

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the main characters, Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski, share a great dislike and distrust towards one another, ultimately becoming the basis for the story’s conflict. Their common contemption stems from their contrasting personalities and backgrounds, their incompatibility of being able to function under the same environment, and inability to adapt to the situations they find themselves in. Although Blanche detests Stanley and the manner in which he behaves in, she realises that he is a necessary part for Stella’s life in New Orleans, an environment that greatly differs from the southern aristocracy that Stella and Blanche once lived in. Blanche expresses this idea by stating, “Oh,

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Character Analysis: A Streetcar Named Desire

1038 Words | 5 Pages

Tennessee Williams is acclaimed for his ability to create multi faced characters such as Blanche Dubois in the play, A Streetcar Named Desire. She comes to New Orleans after losing everything including her job, money, and her family’s plantation Belle Reve, to live with her sister Stella. During her time there she causes many conflicts with Stella’s husband Stanley and tries to get involved with the people there, all while judging them for their place in society, although she is imperfect too. Through her, Williams has created a complex character. She is lost, confused, conflicted, lashing out in sexual ways, and living in her own fantasies throughout the entirety of the play.

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Gender And Power In A Streetcar Named Desire

1886 Words | 8 Pages

In A Streetcar Named Desire, there is an ongoing power struggle between Stanley and Blanche, which propels the narrative. Stanley has the power of masculine physicality and mentality whereas Blanche only has the power of her background, of which she feigns to be her class. As the battle between the two is predominantly over Stella, we begin to witness in scene 2, where Stanley openly accuses Blanche of hiding “legal papers connected with the plantation”. His aggressive nature, towards her, motivates the idea of his resentment towards her, as

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Blanche's Destruction In A Streetcar Named Desire

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

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Animals In Streetcar Named Desire

903 Words | 4 Pages

Playwright Tennessee Williams once said “a symbol in a play has only one legitimate purpose which is to say a thing more directly and simply and beautifully than it could be said in words”. He seems to take his own advice to heart when writing such a thought provoking play as A Streetcar Named Desire. While Williams makes extensive use of symbols in Streetcar, the use of animals and animal-like characteristics as a symbol are constantly used to define Stanley Kowalski’s character and convey his desires as primal and ferine. Stanley has the first line in the play and is immediately characterized by Williams with the use of his stage direction “bellowing” (Williams 244; sc. 1). Like a wild animal, Stanley has a desire for unrefinement and

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Who Is Responsible For Blanche's Downfall

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.

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A Streetcar Named Desire Literary Analysis

1697 Words | 7 Pages

These rumors were a threat to what she has created in order to help her with the chaos in her life. Although she tried to build a new life with Stella, Stanley never gave in to her act and was constantly suspicious of her actions. Stanley's constant investigations and interrogations on Blanche’s old life. This is a representation of reality is starting to creep in of Blanche's newly created life. From the beginning Stanley has doubted Blanche, this is seen as he went through Blanche's things with Stella, questioning her belongings, “has she got this stuff out of teacher's pay?”(2.33).

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Violence And Power In A Streetcar Named Desire

652 Words | 3 Pages

The themes of violence and power in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ hold an important role in the criticism of 1940s American society. Conflicts perpetuated by violence and power, such as abusive relationships and violent oppression are projected through the characters within the play.  Williams uses these conflicts to highlight his criticisms of faltering values and social norms, from the perspective of an individual constrained by the expectations of a strict, Southern society. To begin with, there is an indefinite violence between men and women within ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Stanley Kowalski, a focal character, is the epitome of male dominance and primitive aggression.

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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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Examples Of Archetypes In Huckleberry Finn

547 Words | 3 Pages

In literature, an archetype is a character whose actions represent a certain type of person or a reoccurring symbol. Every one person has their own archetype that they can relate to, which forms personalities and certain behaviors. In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, modern archetypes can be applied to Huck as the seeker and Jim as the caregiver. Hucks behavior can relate to the modern archetype known as the seeker.

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Relationships In A Streetcar Named Desire

1371 Words | 6 Pages

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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A Streetcar Named Desire Past And Present Analysis

1547 Words | 7 Pages

Tennessee Williams wrote “A Streetcar Named Desire” (Williams, 1947) It is based in New Orleans a new cosmopolitan city which is poor but has raffish charm. The past is representing old south in America 1900’s and present is representing new America post world war 2 in 1940’s. Past and present are intertwined throughout the play in the characters Stanley, Blanche, Stella and mitch. Gender roles show that males are the dominant and rule the house which Stanley is prime example as he brings home food and we learn of one time when he got cross and he smashed the light bulbs.

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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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