How Does Stanley Create Tension In A Streetcar Named Desire

In the book “A Streetcar Named Desire” written by Williams, Tennessee central ideas such as power, identity, and home continue to reappear throughout the novel in different moods and contexts. Characters such as Blanche, Stanley, and Stella drive these central ideas through power struggle and conflicting motives and rightfully so the positions each character was put in the spot to play were at the time immovable limiting their ability to shape their own identities.

Stanley, In the book Stanley is our tension character who creates most of the uneasy scenes and is moving or plotting against another character in this case Blanche who has had a power struggle with Stanley ever since her unexpected arrival. Knowing our context that the play

was

The book clearly outlines how Stanley came from a Polish family Blanche even insults the Polish right after Stella tells

Blanche that Stanley was Polish she said, “Only not so--highbrow?” (Scene 1). America was very forthcoming with its disapproval towards minorities and immigrants at the time and shaking your ethnicity was not something one could do casually. Blanche immediately refers to Stanley with a slang term right after this saying, “Polacks?” (Scene 1) After just being told Stanley's ethnicity moments ago Blanche already refers to Stanley with ethnic slang showing how

Stanley's identity is extremely hard to change due to his ethnic history and background.

Blanche in the book A Streetcar Named Desire is the one who has a power struggle with

Stanley. At first Blanche's backstory was a mystery other than memories that she explained from her childhood with Stella. Later in the book Stanley comes to learn that Blanche had in fact committed misconduct towards a student as a teacher and also had a shady background linked to prostitution he said, “Well, this somebody named Shaw is under the impression he met you in

Laurel, but I figure he must have got you mixed up with some other party because this

She wanted someone to appreciate her for her finer aspects which I felt similar to a line from the poem A Daily Joy to Be Alive it states, “I do not live to retrieve” (Stanza 3, line 1)

Blanche desired equality in her relationship not servitude. After Stanley had exposed Blanche any hope of forming a new identity was lost. She was free to try and refine and make a new identity but she was limited because of the actions from her past.

Stella has a very solid identity all throughout the book we are presented with the single idea of Stella being Stanley's loved wife. Only once do we see Stella try to change in some sort of way. When Stanley and Stella have their fight we see Blanche try to convince Stella to leave

Stanley this was a part of the power struggle between Blanche and Stanley. Stella at first agrees with Blanche and threatens to leave Stanley this is probably the most significant point of change that Stella tries to use to reform her identity as a woman in the late 1940s still is identity is very much attached to whether she does or doesn't have a husband. This makes the initial action to leave her husband extremely daring previously we have analyzed that Blanche and Stanley