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.
Summary of the Opening Scene A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is in New Orleans just after the second world war and focuses on three central characters: Blanche Dubois, her sister Stella & Stanley Kowalski. These three characters are very different. Stella is Blanche’s sister & Stanley’s wife & so she serves to link them. TW creates a very distinctive setting for the play in the opening scene. He is mainly focused in the relationship between Stellas sister, Blanche and the environment of the raffish charm city, New Orleans.
In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams the character Blanche Dubois shows the characteristics of a tragic hero. In the play, Blanche is tested by suffering, forcing her to face the consequences of her actions. Blanche has many tragic flaws that can be shown through symbolism and themes throughout the play. Aristotle states that the protagonist must be of noble character - defined not by birth but rather moral choice. Aristotle also felt the best type of a tragic hero will fall somewhere between the two extremes - “... a person who is neither perfect in virtue and justice, nor one who falls into misfortune through vice and depravity, but rather, one who succumbs through some miscalculation.”
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,
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.
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.
How are dramatic elements used to convey and enrich meaning? In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the theme used throughout the work, is appearances vs reality. This can be considered a broad meaning, however in this case, the two main characters, Stanley and Stella, appear to have a loving, safe relationship. In reality, Stanley is quite abusive towards Stella.
A Daily Joy to Be A Streetcar Named Desire Our identities can be limited by our past experiences. A Streetcar Named Desire is a southern gothic play by Tennessee Williams and “A Daily Joy to Be Alive” by Jimmy Santiago Baca has a dark but hopeful mood. A Streetcar Named Desire follows Blanche Dubois as she attempts to reinvent a new identity for herself when moves in with her sister and her husband, but she ends up making trouble for everyone down in New Orleans.
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
How far and in what ways do the central characters in A Streetcar Named Desire do led lives consumed by illusion? Each central character in A Streetcar Named Desire lives with a sense of illusion in their lives, however to different degrees. Blanche is fully aware of the illusions which she creates in order to stop herself from being damaged by the harsh reality of new ideals because as a Southern Belle she would’ve been hidden from the outside world and protected by men, and even though she has experienced many scarring events in her life (for instance the suicide of her young husband), she still lives a life consumed by illusion.
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.
Although the protagonists of “Fahrenheit 451” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” live in two drastically different societies, both are not satisfied with their current way of living and desire a change and improvement in their life. In “A Streetcar Named Desire”, the title of the play itself signifies Blanche’s desire to escape from the reality of her life, as she is haunted by her past and is currently living a life of insecurity, due to the loss of Belle Reve. Ironically, the streetcar named Desire did not bring her to what she truly wanted, an end of all her problems, and she in fact lost her sanity. The reason for Blanche’s tragic ending is due to the avoidance of her problems, shown metaphorically in the form of a flimsy paper lantern on top of a lamp.
“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.
A Streetcar named Desire written by American playwright Tennessee Williams is a Marxist play that depicts the socio economic status of the characters and people living during that time. The play was written in 1947, two years after the second world war. The historical time leading up to the Second World War known as the Interwar period from 1918-1939 was an era classified with economical difficulties for a majority of American citizens. After the new economic system based upon capital emerged succeeding the Industrial Revolution, the United States saw a massive prosperity in the early twentieth century only to be demolished by the stock market crash of 1929 also known as Black Tuesday (source). These unsuccessful stock markets were one of the signs that showed that the new system, which depended on an extensive labor force and an open and unregulated market, was not as reliable as previously thought, this period was known as the Depression.
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
