Darkness can be a comfortable place for anyone. Without having to look at yourself or have people see you, one may not feel as judged or insecure. Light is revealing. In a bright room, you can’t hide tears, blemishes, or emotions. Blanche, from A Streetcar Named Desire, knows the pain of light all to well. 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. …show more content…
When Blanche first comes to Stella’s house, she firmly demands Stella to “turn the over-light off!” as she cannot “be looked at in [the] merciless glare” (Williams 11). Although the light seems harsh, Blanche acts hardhearted and pitiless and could possibly be seeing herself in the glare. Blanche “cannot tolerate being seen in bright light” because she is “hypersensitive to her declining physical beauty” (Adler 30). In attempts to protect her own image, she buys a paper lantern to cover the harsh light in Stanley and Stella’s bedroom; Blanche’s mental state is “as fragile” as the paper lantern that protects her from her own reality (Adler 30). The fragility of Blanche’s mental state is evident when her paper