ipl-logo

A Streetcar Named Desire Light Essay

1293 Words6 Pages

A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, demonstrates light as a moral conflict with Blanche’s personality. For example, light shows the true nature of appearance versus reality with Blanche losing her dignity and the reality of seeing her essential beauty. Williams portrays Blanche’s uneasiness about light in her romantic interest in Mitch. Blanche fears her emotions against the vague shadows of depression. Light symbolizes the tragedy of Blanche’s first love and the heartbreak that was unbearable to her soul. Blanche realizes that her phobia of light ruins her self-confidence without having a chance to escape and believes happiness is a joke in life. Blanche discovers her revelation when she confronts her phobia of light in Stella and Stanley’s apartment. She discovers the purpose of Mitch dumping her for the quality of being deceitful. In Act IX, Williams characterizes Mitch as the man who observes Blanche’s avoidance of light from sorrow and idealism: “What it means is I’ve never had a real good look at you, Blanche. Let’s turn the light on here” (1164). Light represents Blanche’s youth, naiveté, affairs, and sexual …show more content…

The illusion of light reveals Blanche’s identity behind her perplexing mask. Aggressiveness and pleasure are unpredictable in regards to her sadistic ambitions for humiliating others, such as Stella and Mitch. Blanche symbolizes a pitiful shadow cloak in darkness that can cause men pain and suffering. Her sins will drown in a hollow shell of regret and doubt. In Act V, Williams characterizes Blanche’s desire for a man to adore her: “Because of hard knocks my vanity’s been given. What I mean is-he thinks I’m sort of-prime and proper, you know! I want to deceive him enough to make him-want me…” (1147). The direct influence of an external world contradicts her own movements and decisions. The play implies that Blanche’s soul is tarnish with

Show More
Related
986 Words | 4 Pages

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, and The Silence of the Lambs were all famous movies about serial killers. However, the mass-murdering psychopaths portrayed in these movies were all dreamed up because their creators were inspired by one man. Ed Gein was the man that inspired the birth of these murderers, and he is all too real. Edward Theodore Gein was born on August 27, 1906, in Plainfield, Wisconsin. His mother, Augusta Grafter, and his father, George P. Gein, were not exactly very good parents.

Read More
1317 Words | 6 Pages

Slavery was closely similar to the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam supplied electricity to citizens in Colorado, just like the slaves provided farmed products and free labor. Every system, however, included at least one flaw. The rising water in the dam was the equivalent of the rising issue of slavery. The conflict would continue to rise and eventually, it would break out into a massive war across the nation.

Read More
618 Words | 3 Pages

5) What does Blanche do while waiting for Stella to return to her apartment? What does this reveal about her character? Blanche sat very stiffly and drinks. This shows that Blanche is a nervous type and a person who like to be in control due to lines like “Now, then, let me look at you.

Read More
1480 Words | 6 Pages

Blanche is projecting the self-image of a person who believes that they are above others. She acts as though she is of a royal family and demands the respect of everyone around her. She loses her family's home to the government and blames it on her sister who left in order to search for her own lifestyle. From the beginning of her visit, Blanche gets an off feeling about Stanley. When she arrives, he starts to stare at her with a sense of caution then soon begins inspecting the paperwork that she brought with her in order to validate her story.

Read More
1085 Words | 5 Pages

It is what is haunting Blanche’s life, it is what has made her mentally unstable. Throughout the play, she has been hiding her past from people so she looks like

Read More
1065 Words | 5 Pages

Blanche’s final, deluded happiness suggests that, to some extent, fantasy is a vital force in every individual’s experience, despite reality’s inevitable triumph. This refers to her reality of how Mitch had came over to apologize to her, and she tells Stanley that she turned him down. This lie backfired, since Stanley knew exactly where Mitch was at this time. As well as Stanley saw through Blanches delusion of how she has received a wire, from Shep Huntleigh, inviting her to go with him down to the Caribbean cruise, in which Stanley later shuts down as

Read More
1526 Words | 7 Pages

Specifically, we see Blanche Dubois lose touch with reality as she avoids the light and attempts to manipulate the other characters. Blanche is fearful of the light because of her traumatic past that she has faced. Her fear of being revealed in the light shows her true nature, manipulative, delusional and malevolent. Tennessee Williams uses the motif of light and dark to explore and delve into the characters of Blanche Dubois, Stanley Kowalski, and Mitchell. The two opposing forces in a streetcar named desire are Light and Darkness.

Read More
531 Words | 3 Pages

This is where Blanche becomes obsessed with avoiding any type of light, whether it be in a loving relationship or an overhead lightbulb. Her reaction can be seen as an attempt hide the fact her youth is fading as well as her true nature. While staying with her sister Blanche makes several strides to stay in the dark. One of the first in a series of events she has Stanley’s friend Mitch cover a naked bulb in her room with a Chinese paper lantern stating “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action” (114; sec. 3) shows that she would rather hide behind fancy shades than face

Read More
1366 Words | 6 Pages

Blanche represented hamartia in many ways which can include of her compulsive lying, creating a fantasy for herself and others, drinking antisocially, and her inability to be independent. Blanche 's dependence on men throughout the play was a main theme that Williams

Read More
452 Words | 2 Pages

This shows how someone can think they are doing a good job how hiding their true self, but actually, everyone can see through their persona. Blanche tries her best to make sure her appearances are well kept; she is completely oblivious to the fact that she has severe mental and emotional problems, due to the fact that her husband took his own life.

Read More
778 Words | 4 Pages

Both Blanche's family and Belle Reve represent her dream to indulge in a sophisticated, high class, and luxurious life. When all of Blanche’s family dies and Stella leaves, Blanche loses the first piece of her “beautiful dream.” She no longer has the money to support herself, since her educational career provides insufficient funds. After the tragic loss of her husband, Blanche loses Belle Reve and loses her job, symbolizing that her “beautiful dream” has been fully crushed and the only remnants of her dream are the lies she feeds herself. This fall of social class leads Blanche to carry a tone of classism.

Read More
1312 Words | 6 Pages

Another very common theme represented throughout both texts, is the constant allusion to light. Within “A Streetcar Named Desire”, the use of light reveals Blanche’s role and appearance as a character. One of Blanche’s biggest flaws is that she prefers to be only seen in the dark. She does not like to reveal herself in the light as she is afraid of people seeing that she is in fact aging.

Read More
895 Words | 4 Pages

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).

Read More
1547 Words | 7 Pages

Blanche is an old southern Belle who expects the man to be a gentleman and in her level of class, scene 10 “A cultivated woman, a woman of intelligence and breeding, can enrich a man’s life” (Williams, 1947) this is how Blanche intertwines the past and present as past women were only there to be seen, look after the house and provide children and present Blanche could be seen to be past her prime. Blanche is representing the past as she is still dress in grand dress white moth Ironically Blanche appears in the first scene dressed in white, “the symbol of

Read More
608 Words | 3 Pages

And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!” Blanches magic is seen through her illusions and delusions. In Blanches world Mitch doesn’t fit however she has reached a point of intimacy by being honest about her first husband and the guilt she endures as she begins to share the painful moment of her life with him. Stanley’s intrusion ruins her plans of marriage with Mitch and yet again she had to retreat in the world of her delusions. Stanley who represents realism in this novel and play pops Blanche’s illusion bubble through seeing the realism in scene ten

Read More

More about A Streetcar Named Desire Light Essay

Related Topics

Open Document