Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Problems with racism in literature
Papers on racism in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Race depicts an immoral bias towards people who are not part of the majority, causing a division of power, wealth, and influence throughout society. In A Streetcar Named Desire, by playwright Tennessee Williams, race is depicted as a hindrance on one’s appearance and is viewed negatively by the rest of society. When Blanche comes to visit her sister, Stella, from Belle Reve, she brings her racial biases and her ‘Southern belle’ ideology with her. This perspective makes her view different races as a lower class than herself and inferior to the ‘white’ people of society. Not only is this unethical, but it shows that people of a higher-class look down upon those of a different race. In A Streetcar Named Desire race is closely intertwined with …show more content…
This derives from the fact that people of a different race getting categorized as lesser, which Stanley does not want, especially from Blanche. This quote also shows how Blanche continues to bring her prejudice and judgment with her from Belle Reve into a completely different environment in which she is of the majority from a socioeconomic perspective. Blanche has been placed out of her element and the new environment can be strenuous for people who are not acquainted with the role race and class plays in a different demographic. When Blanche is being escorted with the doctor out of the Kowalski residence she says, “[w]hoever you are- I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (Williams 178). This quote is not directed at anyone in the Kowalski residence, or anyone directly around Blanche. Instead this quote accurately depicts how Blanche is in this setting of an easy and relaxed intermingling of races and shows her lack of connection to the people of New Orleans and those who inhabit the city. This quote sums up how out of place Blanche is in a lower class filled with racial figures that someone of her socioeconomic perspective would usually segregate and thus exposes her racism and biased view of the past. It is evident that Blanche’s ‘Southern Belle’ perspective is a extremely racially and culturally biased opinion in the poorer districts of New Orleans. Blanche depicts all of the higher class citizens in New Orleans and shows how they would look down upon and disassociate themselves with other races because they view them as
In Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams uses the suicide of Blanche's husband to illuminate Blanche's insecurities and immoral behavior. When something terrible happens to someone, it often reveals who he or she truly is. Blanche falls victim to this behavior, and she fails to face her demons. This displays how the play links a character’s illogical choices and their inner struggles.
Identity in Contemporary American Drama – Between Reality and Illusion Tennessee Williams was one of the most important playwrights in the American literature. He is famous for works such as “The Glass Menagerie” (1944), “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947) or “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)”. As John S. Bak claims: “Streetcar remains the most intriguing and the most frequently analyzed of Williams’ plays.” In the lines that follow I am going to analyze how the identity of Blanche DuBois, the female character of his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, is shaped. Firstly, we learn from an interview he gave, that the character of Blanche has been inspired from a member of his family.
The dawn of the twentieth century beheld changes in almost every aspect of the day-to-day lives of women, from the domestic domain to the public. By the midpoint of the twentieth century, women 's activities and concerns had been recognized by the society in previously male-dominating world. The end of the nineteenth century saw tremendous growth in the suffrage movement in England and the United States, with women struggling to attain political equality. However, this was not to last however, and by the fifties men had reassumed their more dominant role in society. Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire around the time this reversal was occurring in American society. In this play male dominance is clear. Women are represented as
During early times men were regarded as superior to women. In Tennessee William’s play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Stanley Kowalski, the work’s imposing antagonist, thrives on power. He embodies the traits found in a world of old fashioned ideals where men were meant to be dominant figures. This is evident in Stanley’s relationship with Stella, his behavior towards Blanche, and his attitude towards women in general. He enjoys judging women and playing with their feelings as well.
Everyone has experienced a situation in life where it's like a rug has been pulled out from under them. Well, T. Williams’ novel A Streetcar Named Desire portrays a similar situation of three unconventional characters whose reality is not the American Dream that they are striving for. Blanche, Stella, and Stanley approach life hoping for different outcomes in their lives. But what is the American Dream they were striving for? Simply put, by looking at the principles of America, the primary dream for everyone is to have a well-lived life. For some people this includes a family, success, happiness, independence, money, and love. If these are T. Williams’ constructs of the American Dream, then Stella and Stanley Kowalski may never find their
Secondly, Williams reveals how Blanche lies over and over again to try to make her sounds like a more dignified person. In the beginning of the play she tries to represent herself as a good sister that has just fallen on hard times. She arrives and rushes to the closet looking for alcohol. She finds what she's looking for and remarks “Now don’t get worried, your sister hasn’t turned into a drunkard, she's just all shaken up and hot and tired and dirty” (William 19). In reality she’s a person that can not live without her alcohol. She doesn't even want, as stella offered her, a coke to mix with hard alcohol. She is an experienced drinker so she does not need a “chaser” to protect her throat from the strong liquor. Next, Blanch
Blanche is a character who has been conditioned by the society in which she was brought up, her background influencing her personality. Unhappy with her life, she is unable or unwilling to change it for the better. She prefers to retreat from reality into illusions and fantasies, building multiple façades of her identity, which she presents to the characters she interacts with. She was brought up to imitate the ideal Southern womanhood – the beautiful, sometimes shy, sometimes flirtatious yet always chaste lady. But the harsh reality of the 20th century urban America is in contradiction with this ideal, and Blanche is disillusioned, forced to make her own way in a world which does not understand her and which she does not understand. Her promiscuity and alcoholism are means of escaping these hardships, as she ...
told Allan "I saw, I know, you disgust me…"( p.96). To Allan, Blanche seemed to
Superficial is the first impression that Blanche gives when she enters the play. Consumed by appearance and face value, she is unable to see that Stella’s new lifestyle is not as horrid as she imagines. In comparison to Belle Reve, it is true that these New Orleans slums may not meet Dubois standards, but Blanche is unable to see beyond the way things appear in order to realize that Stella’s world does not revolve around material items. This flaw is intertwined with her vanity and her need keep up appearances. On the surface, Blanche appears to be snobbish and conceited.
Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a play wrought with intertwining conflicts between characters. A drama written in eleven scenes, the play takes place in New Orleans over a nine-month period. The atmosphere is noisy, with pianos playing in the distance from bars in town. It is a crowded area of the city, causing close relations with neighbors, and the whole town knowing your business. Their section of the split house consists of two rooms, a bathroom, and a porch. This small house is not fit for three people. The main characters of the story are Stella and Stanley Kowalski, the home owners, Blanche DuBois, Stella’s sister, Harold Mitchell (Mitch), Stanley’s friend, and Eunice and Steve Hubbell, the couple that lives upstairs. Blanche is the protagonist in the story because all of the conflicts involve her. She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and with shielding her past.
Before one can understand Blanche's character, one must understand the reason why she moved to New Orleans and joined her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law, Stanley. By analyzing the symbolism in the first scene, one can understand what prompted Blanche to move. Her appearance in the first scene "suggests a moth" (Williams 96). In literature, a moth represents the soul. So it is possible to see her entire voyage as the journey of her soul (Quirino 63). Later in the same scene she describes her voyage: "They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields" (Quirino 63). Taken literally this does not seem to add much to the story. However, if one investigates Blanche's past, one can truly understand what this quotation symbolizes. Blanche left her home to join her sister, because her life was a miserable wreck in her former place of residence. She admits, at one point in the story, that "after the death of Allan (her husband) intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with" (Williams 178). She had sexual relations with anyone who would agree to it. This is the first step in her voyage-"Desire". She ...
Blanche consider herself as a Southern Belle, despite the changing of her status. Her life changed when she is facing financial difficulty and she has to pay for the cost of the funeral of her relatives.Blanche has lost Belle Reve
In A Streetcar Named Desire readers are shown a multitude of very obvious forms of gender stereotyping. The stereotype of the submissive wife is portrayed by Stella Kowalski, who is the oversimplified, obedient, and passive wife. Her sister Blanche DuBois was raised as an educated, upper-class woman, who instead of being shown as a respected Southern lady, is shown as a faded and cheap stereotypical southern belle. Both women are portrayed as the weaker sex who are both under the control and authority of Stanley Kowalski, the bombastic, overcompensating man.
Written in 1947, by playwright Tennessee Williams, the play A Streetcar Named Desire opens in the 1940s in the well-known city of New Orleans. Readers are presented with the young couple Stan and Stella Kowalski who live below another young couple, Eunice and Steve. While Stan and Stella manage to maintain a relationship, it is abusive. Stella reunites with her alcoholic sister Blanche, after learning that the family plantation had been lost due to bankruptcy. Blanche, a widow often finds herself in difficult and unforeseen circumstances. Blanche’s poor choices and vulnerability leads to an affair with Stan’s poker buddy Mitch. Coinciding with his abusive nature, Stanley rapes Blanche. No one believes her until the very end, causing her to get sent away to a mental institution. While the play and film were smashing, each had their similarities overall, in regards to setting, plot, and characters while differences concerned narrative technique.
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is a play about a woman named Blanche Dubois who is in misplaced circumstances. Her life is lived through fantasies, the remembrance of her lost husband and the resentment that she feels for her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Various moral and ethical lessons arise in this play such as: Lying ultimately gets you nowhere, Abuse is never good, Treat people how you want to be treated, Stay true to yourself and Don’t judge a book by its cover.