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Sympathy In A Streetcar Named Desire

549 Words3 Pages

“A Streetcar Named Desire” is a play that questions not only the character’s morals and standards but the reader’s as well. While navigating through the moral puzzle of a play, the reader realizes some characters are victimized and others are not. Blanche is a character that is victimized time and time again. The author, Williams, sympathizes for Blanche; this sympathy proves Williams is not misogynistic but rather criticizes the society that has brought about Blanche’s tragic circumstances. The death of her husband leads to sympathy from readers as well as characters. “I hurt him the way that you would like to hurt me, but you can’t!” Blanche behaved unpleasantly toward her husband or failed him in some manner, leading to the death she …show more content…

The movie enhances visual representation of her bravery as well as her vulnerability in the scenes leading up to the rape. The sinister mood of the rape scene proves that Blanche was not in any way compliant with Stanley’s violation. Williams’s vilification of Stanley throughout the entire play draws a clear differentiation between victim and offender in the rape scene. Williams makes his sympathetic tone toward Blanche tangible by exploiting her vulnerability before the indifference of the people that surrounds her. In addition to the iconic comment “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” Blanche’s vulnerability is also illuminated through stage directions such as “a look of sorrowful perplexity as though all human experience shows on her face” and “She turns her face to [the doctor] and stares at him with desperate pleading.” She could have depended on her career and focused on improving her life instead of turning to her temporary strangers. If she had turned toward her career, she could have built herself up again after Allan’s death. She could have left Elysian Fields when tensions rose between her and Stanley. Leaving creates opportunities that staying limits. All in all, the plot played out and taught readers a valuable lesson that in a world of violence some morals are worth keeping. When reading or watching “A Streetcar Named Desire,” it is easy for the reader to see Blanche as a victim, but has her manipulation and victimization of others lead to her own

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The themes of violence and power in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ hold an important role in the criticism of 1940s American society. Conflicts perpetuated by violence and power, such as abusive relationships and violent oppression are projected through the characters within the play.  Williams uses these conflicts to highlight his criticisms of faltering values and social norms, from the perspective of an individual constrained by the expectations of a strict, Southern society. To begin with, there is an indefinite violence between men and women within ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Stanley Kowalski, a focal character, is the epitome of male dominance and primitive aggression.

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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.

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Character Analysis of Blanche DuBois One of the main characters in a play by Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire is Blanche DuBois. Blanche is a victim of her upbringing and the changing times she lives in. She was born to aristocratic family and raised to be taken care of. This romantic, art, music and poetry loving soul is unprepared for the world she lives in

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Illusion Vs Reality In A Streetcar Named Desire

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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

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During this time men brought in the money for the household, while the mother’s would stay at home and watch over the children of the family. With this came a sense of pride and authority for the men. Throughout the film Stanley continually abuses Blanche and even goes to the extreme of raping her. He depicts an animal-like man with no awareness of morals. When he gets angry he has no control of his reactions and results to physical violence.

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