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Hidden Truths In Tennessee Williams, It's Only A Paper Moon

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Music plays a huge role in the plot and character developments throughout A Streetcar Named Desire by revealing hidden truths about the characters. The inclusion of the musical composition “It’s Only A Paper Moon” leads to deeper discoveries: the exposures of Blanche and Stanley’s true identities. By contrasting It’s Only A Paper Moon with Stanley’s aggressive dialogue during scene seven, Tennessee Williams forces viewers to side with Blanche and her internal belief that in order to live a life where you are truly happy, it is necessary to forsake some truths and start anew. Williams ' choice of having Stanley brutally unveil Blanche’s secrets “contrapuntally” with Blanche singing a sweet tune in the tub serves to expose Blanche and Stanley’s …show more content…

When Blanche first began singing, she started with the first verse of the ballad: “Say, it’s only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea -- But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me!” (120). The lyrics to the song directly reflect Blanche’s view on her life and how she chose to live it. The paper moon and cardboard sea represent the new life Blanche had imagined for herself; a life where she was happy and her past didn’t follow her. Blanche truly believes that her false reality “wouldn’t be make believe” if people just believed in her and not the stories told about her. Blanche feels that if people had faith in her and her story that she chose to tell, she could peacefully live among the cruelness of the world. Blanche also sang a line from the song that stated, “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world, Just as phony as it can be -- But it wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me!” (120). Here, Blanche is alluding to the circus-like function of the world and commenting on how, like a circus, nothing is as true as it seems. Blanche’s constant repetition of “it wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me” serves to reaffirm her claim that her fantastical reality would be fairly close to actual reality if only she had the support and acceptance of those around her. …show more content…

Throughout the scene, extending through the book, Stanley’s goal never wavered: he wanted to prove that Blanche was untrustworthy and did not have the power over him as she did over other people. Although Blanche was unsuccessful with pulling the wool over the eyes of Stanley, that was never her goal. All Blanched wanted was a chance to start a new chapter in her life without having to reference back to previous ones. This desire for a clean slate in order to live a sugar-coated lifestyle where she is utterly happy has the potential to be very powerful for many readers and viewers. Since Blanche had pure intentions, you could never fully hate her or condemn her for her actions as you could Stanley. Williams’ elaborate character development within the scene thus causes the viewers to side with Blanche because, in the end, she was only trying to hold on to her paper

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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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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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I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!” (pg ). This quote proves that Blanche is an over controlling

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Stanley sexually assaults Blanche, along with humiliating her throughout the novel. This forces Blanche to mentally escape to somewhere else. A place filled with illusionary ideas and fantasy. She regresses back to her time with Shep Huntleigh, believing the oil millionaire is coming to rescue her from Stella's apartment. Yet, as the play progresses, it becomes clear that Shep will never rescue Blanche.

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I. Vocabulary Effeminate- Adjective -(of a man) Having or showing characteristics regarded as typical of a woman; unmanly. (Pg 114) Repertoire- Noun - A stock of plays, dances, or pieces that a company or a performer knows or is prepared to perform. (Pg 130) Malarkey-

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1166 Words | 5 Pages

Tennessee Williams is one of the most recognized playwrights that lived during the mid-twentieth-century (“Tennessee Williams”). After finishing college, Williams decides to move to New Orleans, where he writes A Streetcar Named Desire. His career starts to take off as he begins to write more plays (“Tennessee Williams”). A Streetcar Named Desire talks about the life of a woman, Blanche DuBois, who is very secretive about her past and does not expose her true intentions of coming to live with her younger sister Stella. As the play goes on Stanley, Stella’s husband, starts to dig into the dark past that terrorizes Blanche when they begin to have a conflict with each other.

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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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741 Words | 3 Pages

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee Williams, the main character, Blanche DuBois, travels to New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella, and Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski. Throughout the play, sexulaity is seen as a strong motivator for many of the characters actions. Early in the play, Stanley is introduced as a particularly sexual character, “ Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence... He sizes women up with a glance, with sexual classifications…” (Williams 25).

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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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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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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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1245 Words | 5 Pages

Not only has Tennesse Williams portrayed Stella and Blanche to be seen as delicate and dependent, our own society has created this image but this not only affects how individuals see themselves but affects relationships immensely. Tennessee Williams reinforces the stereotype in which women are often the victims of unfortunate fate within the usage of the character Blanche. Throughout the whole play, we have witnessed Blanche being on the bitter end of life's miseries as she has encountered the tough loss of Belle Reve, dealing with her ex-husband's suicide and the loss of her relationship with Mitch. Arguably, the expectations and beliefs of women were either to be a housewife or a mother, whereas Blanche shows neither, as a result of automatically feeling out of place possibly leading to her downfall. Blanche was constantly fantasizing about the traditional values of a southern gentlemen, proving her dependence on this sex.

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895 Words | 4 Pages

Blanche flees a failed company and a failed marriage in attempt to find refuge in her sister’s home. Through her whirlwind of emotions, the reader can see Blanche desires youth and beauty above all else, or so the readers think. In reality, she uses darkness to hide the true story of her past. In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Williams uses the motif of light to reveal Blanche’s habit of living in a fantasy world until the light illuminates her reality. Blanche uses darkness to block her past from onlookers as to shape her image.

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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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608 Words | 3 Pages

In A Streetcar Named Desire, the author Tennessee Williams exaggerates and dramatizes fantasy’s incapability to overcome reality through an observation of the boundary between Blanches exterior and interior conveying the theme that illusion and fantasy are often better than reality. Blanche, who hides her version of the past, alters her present and her relationship with her suitor Mitch and her sister, Stella. Blanche was surrounded by death in her past, her relatives and husband have passed away, leaving her with no legacy left to continue. The money has exhausted; the values are falling apart and she is alienated and unable to survive in the harsh reality of modern society. Throughout the novel Williams juxtaposed Blanche’s delusions with

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