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Themes in a streetcar named desire
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Sound And Music In Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire
1175 Words5 Pages
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was born in Mississippi but moved to New Orleans at the age of 28. There he found the inspiration for his play A Streetcar Named Desire. The play is set in New Orleans and incorporates the atmosphere of the setting particularly through music. Williams use of vivid music in this play heightens themes such as madness and social differences. In this essay I am going to verify how Williams uses sounds and music as a tool to develop the plot, more specifically how it shows Blanche’s lost grip of reality.
A distinct sound throughout the play is a musical piece referred to as the “Blue Piano” playing from the nearby saloon. The song functions much like a score would in a movie. It is a form of mood setter. The music is deliberate and does not occur in every scene but rather in intense situations, for instance in scene 1 when Blanche and Stella discusses the loss of Belle Reve (Mays 1784). The “Blue Piano” is introduced in the first stage direction, setting the tone for the genre of the play, a tragedy, since it brings up connotations to the idiom “feeling blue”, an unhappy state of mind. The "Blue Piano" is an ambiguous sound and it is unclear of how its actual sound. In the stage directions it is mostly described with adjectives such as being “blue” or “loud”, without given an actual description of the sound itself. There are exceptions where Williams describes drums
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The play A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most notable plays of the late 1940s to early 1950s and is still prevalent in the theater community today. It originally opened on Broadway in a 1947 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, today more commonly known as the Barrymore Theatre, preforming for a little over a thousand patrons. The original Stanley was played by Marlon Brando, who would reprise this role in the movie adaptation. At the Barrymore Theatre, the set was quite complex with a full stairway and banister, a pallor with a 4-chair dinning set and all the dressings of a then modern, but lower-class apartment.
581 Words | 3 Pages
The tone is the element that brings the entire plot together, driving home the theme of the story by forcing the reader to digest the aspects of the story it amplifies. The voice of the story is overwhelmingly sympathetic in favor of Blanche, causing the audience to have pity on her even in times when they theoretically should not. When Blanche arrives at her sister’s residence, she comes across pretty distraught and nervous, seeming wracked by some horror or another, even saying outright that she couldn’t be alone because she wasn't very well while "her voice drops and her look is frightened” (Williams 17). Right off the bat, the audience is bound to feel sorry for her and even worried for her well-being, a sense of distress and even embarrassment sweeping over the audience just by the state that she entered the stage with and the overwhelming anxiety and pain that seems to swarm
841 Words | 4 Pages
In the beginning of the play, Blanche and New Orleans are anticipated as totally incongruous together. The reason why this controversy is created between Stellas sister and New Orleans, is that Blanche comes from Belle Reve, a completely different city, and she is not used to the life in the place where Stella has settled down, as she is described as a highbrow person, from an elevated social class who is well refined and very delicate. Her character is also noticed from the fluffy bodice clothes and the white gloves that she is wearing, as well as the cultural language that Blanche uses to communicate with the others. On the other hand, New Orleans is a small city, with old white painted houses with rickety stairs, with an atmosphere of decay, full of bars where the loud disturbing sound of the tinny piano is heard, and people that behave differently from what Blanche expected.
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.
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.
749 Words | 3 Pages
The Role of Fantasy and Purpose in Individuals “I don’t want realism, I want magic”- Blanche DuBois (Williams 145). In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents readers with the acute presence of fantasy in individuals’ lives. Every character fabricates fantasies in his life to gloss over his struggles and forget each other 's flaws. A Streetcar Named Desire evaluates individual’s use of fantasy as a crutch to avoid the hard truths and give purpose to an empty life. Blanche DuBois, the protagonist of the story, uses fantasy to cope with her world crumbling around her.
1697 Words | 7 Pages
A Streetcar Named Desire Literary Analysis The late 1940’s were characterized by the emergence out of World War II that led to a dependence on the idea of The American Dream, which meant men were working harder to achieve a more comforting lifestyle and opportunity while women were still fighting the oppression of caused by unequal representation. This idealistic dream is illustrated throughout Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”, which has a rigid dichotomy between illusion and reality revealed throughout multiple characters and their dysfunctional lives that are a direct result between fantasy and actuality. Illusion is taken advantage of as an alternative to the unfair circumstances that the characters in “A Streetcar Named
757 Words | 4 Pages
A Street Car Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams, which slowly uncovers Blanche’s prior life. Her troubled past causes her a lot of trouble when she tries to start over. She used to work as a teacher in Mississippi, however, she was forced to leave after she was caught having an affair with one of the students. This was typical behavior for Blanche since she had previously taken many lovers. Since she had such a hard time in Mississippi, she decides to move to New Orleans to live with her sister, Stella, and her husband, Stanley, in hopes of escaping her past.
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.
1534 Words | 7 Pages
Society of Tennessee Williams’ time saw sexuality as a part of ourselves that should be suppressed because of it’s destructive nature. Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire Williams showcases his characters in this anti-sex society. He shows them in this society, not to praise it, but instead to highlight the negative effects of existing in such a world. Through the actions and consequences his characters face in conforming to societies’ standards Williams manages to communicate a story that condemns society for keeping people from expressing their sexuality and from being stable, whole and sexual human beings. Expressing sexuality or sexual desires leads the play 's characters to death or to ruin, the suppression of desire is destructive and
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.
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.
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
947 Words | 4 Pages
There were many musical elements heard throughout these pieces and it was interesting to hear how they varied in each song and suite. In Intermezzo, it began with a quieter violin solo melody creating a monophonic texture. Soon after, it became accompanied by the other violins and cellos, then the full ensemble came in creating a moderate, flowing melody at about mezzo forte and switching to a polyphonic texture. Next, there was a harp solo at forte with many crescendos and decrescendos. The full ensemble enters again raising the dynamics to forte before decrescendoing and slowing down to end with a held note and final tone.
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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