Streetcar Named Desire Decisions

In life, what an individual believes will make them happy will affect their actions and decisions. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams explores the many ways individuals compromise their lives through the lies they tell themselves and the poor choices that go along with it. In this modern drama, main characters Stella and Blanche make mistakes that negatively affect their pursuit of happiness.

One of the most influential voices we hear in our decision making is our own. We tell ourselves small lies to make situations seem better than they really are in an attempt to create a false sense of happiness. These lies can cause us to ignore serious problems that often end up compromising our happiness in the long run. Even though it

After a night out, Stella and Blanche return home to find Stanley and his friends playing poker. After a brief conversation, Stella begins to walk away but Stanley give her a hard slap on the thigh. She is not amused and her and Blanche retreat to Stella’s bedroom and begin talking. Stanley begins showing signs of irritability and tells them to be quiet from the room next door. Stella accredits his harsh tone to him being drunk and tells him that she can talk as much as she wants to. Blanche then turns on a radio which elevates Stanley’s initial frustration. He storms over and turns it off. He begins snapping at his friends when they do not pay attention or behave the way he wants them to behave. He gets particularly cross when his friend, Mitch tries to leave the poker table. The final straw for him is when Stella goes to turn the radio back on. In a fit of rage, Stanley takes the radio and tosses it out the window. Furiously, Stella tells the poker players to go home. Stanley rushes at her and hits her. His friends try to take control and are eventually

Stella insists that Stanley is in fact loving man and that although his actions from the previous night are not acceptable, there is no reason to worry. Blanche replies by telling her sister to “face the facts...You’re married to a madman (Williams 64).” She goes on to try and convince her sister that she has given into her husband and there is still time to leave and start a new life for herself. Stella insists that she is not in anything she wishes to get out of. She is in denial that her marriage is broken even though Blanche does her best to convince her otherwise. Since Stella and Stanley have been married so long, Stella has become immune to Stanley’s violence and has learned to accept his issues rather than put a stop to his abusive tendencies. Although she does let him know when his actions upset her, she forgives too quickly for her message is to truly get through to him. Her current living situation is so drastically different from the one she had growing up, that in her mind the only way to be happy is to lower her standards and make compromises. Growing up in the lavish mansion of Belle Reve would have made the transition to living in a small, one bedroom apartment particularly difficult for her. Over time, in order to adapt to her new life, she was forced to drastically lowered her standards in order to accepts the many compromises she made. Stella also tells Blanche how she found it