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How Individuals Shape Their Own Identity In A Streetcar Named Desire

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Every person in the world has a different identity. Everyone also has a different understanding of who and how they came to be the person they are today. I believe that individuals are free to shape their own identities to the extent that they change the paths given to them. A person can be raised one way and change their opinions along the way based on different things they see and learn. While a person has their own identity, they gained that identity from experiences influenced by others.
From birth, everyone is being meticulously shaped by their surroundings. Every instinct, fear, obsession and moral opinion has been influenced by the people around you. Individuals do not have the complete freedom to shape their own identities because of …show more content…

We saw this in action in the play, A
Streetcar Named Desire, when we learned that Blanche and Stella were both raised on a plantation in the Old South. They also received higher education than most due to their financial status. We saw how this showed through Blanche’s identity because of her prejudice against working-class traits. Even though Stella had immediately welcomed Blanche into her home,
Blanche had criticized their home. She said, “explain this place to me. What are you doing in a place like this?” (page 12) and “Oh, I’m not going to be hypocritical, I’m going to be honestly critical about it” (page 12). Blanche continued to judge her lifestyle by asking why she “had to live in these conditions!” (page 12) Blanche's upbringing showed through and how it affected her identity towards poverty in this scene.
While this shows that your upbringing affects your identity in your later life, it also shows that you can change the way you see things because of your experiences. Blanche’s sister,
Stella, married a working- class man and settled down in a small town with an apartment. She had the choice to stay up with her rich lifestyle, but decided that she wanted to follow her …show more content…

This continues to show that even though you can make your own choices that influence your identity, your past is still what caused you to be where you are today. In the poem we see how the writer is trying to change his own identity. He says, “I do not live to retrieve or multiply what my father lost or gained” (Stanza 3, Baca). When the writer says this, he is giving the reader insight into what he wants to do with his life and identity. While he says that he isn’t going to let his father’s decisions dictate his life, this still shows that his own persistence influenced his personal identity. In this poem he talks more about how he finds himself changing daily. He says, “I continually find myself in the ruins of new beginnings, uncoiling the ropes of my life to descend ever deeper into unknown abysses” (Stanza 4, Baca).
Every little thing that people do influences their identity. It doesn’t change who someone is, but enhances their personality through the struggles and hardships they went through to get to where they are today.
We see people changing everyday, even you are changing. While you may not notice it, everything that has brought you to where you are today comes from your identity. All of

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Blanche is projecting the self-image of a person who believes that they are above others. She acts as though she is of a royal family and demands the respect of everyone around her. She loses her family's home to the government and blames it on her sister who left in order to search for her own lifestyle. From the beginning of her visit, Blanche gets an off feeling about Stanley. When she arrives, he starts to stare at her with a sense of caution then soon begins inspecting the paperwork that she brought with her in order to validate her story.

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Stella’s sister, Blanche, sees through the illusion and can see how toxic the marriage really is. Stanley and Blanche come from distinctly different backgrounds, Stanley is from the working class while Blanche comes from wealth. Williams uses these two contrasting points of views on marriage, to show the issues of possessiveness, class, and sexism. When it comes to Stanley’s marriage to Stella, one of the most notable characteristics is how possessive Stanley is. An example of this is when Stanley found out that Blanche and therefore Stella, lost their estate.

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Identity can be greatly shaped by the individual by determination and perseverance. Works Cited Baca, Jimmy Santiago. “A Daily Joy to Be Alive. ” Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. New Directions,

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Blanche is characterized by emotional intensity rather than calculation or judgement. In many situations Blanche’s emotions take over. When Blanche was talking to Stella about Belle Reve the plantation what was lost. She started to use emotion to blame Stella for the plantation being lost Blanche angrily yells at Stella “... you are the one that abandoned Belle Reve, not I! I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it!”

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In this tragic drama, we follow Blanche who comes to live with her sister Stella and her husband Stanley Kowalski in New Orleans, Louisiana. Blanche is a woman who is mentally ill and has a lot of mental problems she suffers from such as post-traumatic stress disorder and personality disorder. Blanche’s American Dream consists of being rich and beautiful and living a high class lifestyle, when in reality she is not any of those things. Blanche will not stop at anything until she achieves her dream even if that means causing herself and those around her suffering. Shown in this quote said by Blanche in the play, “I don't want realism.

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Blanche's monologue suggests that the death of the South's agrarian culture leads to a decrease of American civilization and the new Americans are staying on the evolutionary stages. Third, this monologue does not give us a direct confrontation between Blanche and Stanley. But instead and equally important, there is a confrontation between the two classes, old money and new money. Although the age already had a change, the old money still keeps their prejudices and stereotype of new money and fantasy and illusion of their past

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Both Blanche's family and Belle Reve represent her dream to indulge in a sophisticated, high class, and luxurious life. When all of Blanche’s family dies and Stella leaves, Blanche loses the first piece of her “beautiful dream.” She no longer has the money to support herself, since her educational career provides insufficient funds. After the tragic loss of her husband, Blanche loses Belle Reve and loses her job, symbolizing that her “beautiful dream” has been fully crushed and the only remnants of her dream are the lies she feeds herself. This fall of social class leads Blanche to carry a tone of classism.

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This is made clear through Stanley’s insecurities about inferiority to women and his prolonged struggle to defeat Blanche. Again, this is evident with Blanche and even Stella. Stella is perceived as a static character with no real individuality, and Blanche, who is seemingly more independent, is characterized mostly by her sexuality. Tennessee Williams demonstrates society’s need for the superiority of men to women through the interactions of Stanley and Blanche in the play, their struggles, and their ultimate

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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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As the play progresses the thin veil of Blanche’s fantasies begins to unravel exposing the fragility of her constructed life. Stanley Kowalski, her sister Stella’s husband, immediately sees through her carefully crafted facade and forcefully confronts her with the unvarnished truth. This can be seen when Blanche says she is a lady to which Stanley counters, “And I’m the king of France”. This telling exchange underscores the fleeting nature of the strength derived from illusions as they ultimately fail to provide lasting

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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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