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Stanley Kowalski's Cruelty

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The Merciless Cruelty of Stanley and Blanche Everyone will hurt someone in their lifetime, it is inevitable. Cruelty can be showed in many different ways. Whether intentional or not, everyone causes pain to others. In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Williams shows the different types of cruelty. Stanley Kowalski is the most cruel character. Stanley is cruel by physically and verbally abusing others. Blanche Dubois is the second most cruel character in the story. Blanche hurts others by lying to them. Harold Mitchell is the most innocent character of the three. Mitch is cruel only by being unforgiving and not helping others in need. Stanley Kowalski is cruel to Blanche and Stella throughout the story. Stanley constantly abuses Stella, physically and verbally, throughout the story. Stanley is the most harsh towards Blanche. On top of constant verbal abuse, Stanley does the unthinkable. “She sinks to her knees. He picks up her inert figure and carries her to the bed.” (Williams 162) Stanley’s ruthless behavior and actions throughout the story prove to be the most detrimental because it is the main driving force behind the …show more content…

Blanche and Stan exploit Mitch’s biggest flaw of being a pushover. “[Mitch rises as Stanley returns to his seat] Sit down!” (Williams 56) Mitch naively opens up to Blanche which turns out to be a big mistake. She lies to Mitch about her past, and the truth is revealed to Mitch by Stanley. When Blanche needs somebody most, Mitch gives Blanche the cold shoulder. As Blanche is being taken away, (most likely to a crazy house) Mitch puts his head down and does nothing as she is leaving. This unforgivingness is the least harsh type of cruelty because he is acting this way because his reasoning is the most justified; his heart was broken by Blanche. Although Mitch hurt Blanche, he is definitely the most innocent character in the story behind

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Stanley is a blunt, practical, and animalistic man who has no patience for subtleties and refinement. His animalistic character shows the moment he meets Blanche, when he, moving with “animalistic joy” (24), “sizes” Blanche up with “sexual classifications” and “crude image” in his mind (25). Under his stare, Blanche draws “involuntarily back” (25), a movement that foreshadows their later conflict and her subsequent demise. His practical and straightforward side shows when he interrogates Blanche about the sale of Belle Reve to make sure that his wife is not swindled. His straightforward, practical nature makes him “boom” out of impatience (46) and demands Blanche to cut straight to the point when she tries to talk in an indirect, subtle manner as befit a Southern gentlewoman.

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That is why he hates Blanche because she is not the same as the girls he has seen. He sees her as a threat in the sense that she will ruin the marriage between Stella and Stanley. However, he has feelings of self conscious and feels threatened because he feels like she can ruin him. He hates that Stella and Blanche were always wealthy and he feels as if they look down on him for being poor. He does not feeling submissive which is why he reacts harshly most of the time.

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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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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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Stanley continues to impose his reality onto Blanche, which causes her more anxiety relying more and more on herself to create more of an illusion by creating an admirer for herself, saying that she ended it with Mitch because she does not deserve “deliberate cruelty”, and crating this alter ego for herself as being pure. While Stella is in the hospital, he and Blanche are left alone for the night as she continues bragging about her admiration coming from Sheep Hunt Leigh and how she just got a wire from him. Stanley catches her in her life, finally tearing apart Blanche's illusions. Although Stanley has been a threat to her through his suspicion and empowering masculinity over her, the last scene is where he finally takes final control over her, or symbolically where reality has a final triumph over her illusions. While catching her in the midst of her lies she reveals to Blanche that “[he’s] been on to [Blanche] from the start!”

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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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he says: “not once did you pull any wool over this boy’s eyes!” Not only Stanley had broken her world of illusion, but also Mitch who is influenced by Stanley and destroys the protection of darkness by exposing her to the bright light. Stanley bringing up the past contributes to how Blanches ends up, alone and insane expressing the theme that what happened in the past determines the present, and illusion and fantasy directly correlate. Though reality triumphs over fantasy in A Streetcar Named Desire, when the truth comes colliding down on Blanche, she has no choice but to go insane ultimately avoiding the acceptance of

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In the 1940’s men were thought of as the heirs to women. Tennessee Williams uses Stanley Kowalski as a model for how cruel and unusual men treated women at the time. Throughout the film Stanley is seen as a very abusive man with absolutely no right judgement. In today’s society the way he treats women would be morally unacceptable. However, during the 1940’s this sadistic man was seen as a true man.

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