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Sympathy In A Streetcar Named Desire

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“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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