More handpicked essays just for you.
Character analysis on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
Character analysis on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
Character analysis on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Tennessee Williams wrote in a letter that "It ('Streetcar') is a tragedy with the classic aim of producing a catharsis of pity and terror and in order to do that, Blanche must finally have the understanding and compassion of the audience. This without creating a black-dyed villain in Stanley. It is a thing (misunderstanding) not a person (Stanley) that destroys her in the end." In your opinion, to what extent has Williams succeeded in his aims. Although there are many different viewpoints on a conventional tragic heroine, Aristotle made his views clear that a hero must fall from fortune and power, due to a tragic flaw, allowing an audience to feel catharsis at the end of the play. It can be argued that Stanley causes Blanche's downfall, however,
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
Throughout Tennessee Williams’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Blanche Dubois exemplified several tragic flaws. She suffered from her haunting past; her inability to overcome; her desire to be someone else; and from the cruel, animalistic treatment she received from Stanley. Sadly, her sister Stella also played a role in her downfall. All of these factors ultimately led to Blanche’s tragic breakdown in the end. Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it.
During the late nineteen-forties, it was common for playwrights such as Tennessee Williams to use symbolism as an approach to convey personal thoughts, through the attitudes of the characters and the setting. Williams' actors have used symbolism to disguise the actuality of their thoughts and to accommodate the needs of their conservative audience. A Streetcar Named 'Desire' has a few complicated character traits and themes. Therefore, they have to be symbolised using figures or images to express abstract and mystical ideas, so that the viewers can remain clueless. Williams not only depicts a clear personality of the actors
Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest American dramatists of the 20th century. Most of his plays take us to the southern states and show a confused society. In his works he exposes the degeneration of human feelings and relationships. His heroes suffer from broken families and they do not find their place in the society. They tend to be lonely and afraid of much that surrounds them. Among the major themes of his plays are racism, sexism, homophobia and realistic settings filled with loneliness and pain.1 Tennessee Williams characters showed us extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior.2 One of his most popular dramas was written in 1947, and it is called A Streetcar Named Desire.
Tennessee Williams’ play “A Streetcar Named Desire” illustrates his past through sadistic poetry – in his play he portrays himself as a god that has absolute control of the story; additionally, he constructs a numerous amount of tragedies for his fictional characters to suffice his pleasure. In this specific play “A Streetcar Named Desire” the characterization of Blanche Dubois was a result of his tragic past, using this fictional character as an emotional outlet; subsequently, creating multiple astounding plays for the audience to experience. Consequently, both Williams and Blanche have a strikingly similar story; although, Williams has denied that his plays were about him – he was an abuser of drugs and alcohol and unsurprisingly uses them
“Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama…the purest language of plays.” Once, quoted as having said this, Tennessee Williams has certainly used symbolism and colour extremely effectively in his play, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. A moving story about fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois and her lapse into insanity, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ contains much symbolism and clever use of colour. This helps the audience to link certain scenes and events to the themes and issues that Williams presents within the play, such as desire and death, and the conflict between the old America and the new.
Relationships in A Streetcar Named Desire In many modern day relationships between a man and a woman, there is usually a controlling figure that is dominant over the other. It may be women over men, men over women, or in what the true definition of a marriage is an equal partnership. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Stanley is clearly the more dominant figure over Stella.
"A Streetcar Named Desire," a play by Tennessee Williams, is a story not only about
Scientists, for years, have been trying to uncover the secrets of reality. For example, Einstein has been known to say “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Furthermore, many experiments have been conducted to determine what reality is, and how much our senses actually deceive us. After a complex thought, everything around us is man made or an illusion; our jobs are man made, time is man made, even people’s hopes and dreams are fueled by society’s opinions. Due to the fact, that these things we call real are made up of things that would have never been possible without the human mind, our reality can be perceived to be an illusion. Yet, crowds of humans are unsatisfied with this illusion. In the modern play, A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams, Blanche DuBois is a schoolteacher from Belle Reve who moves to New Orleans to live with her sister, Stella Kowalski, and her brutish brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Suffering from a traumatic event and a troublesome reputation, she derives her self-worth from the opinions of others and relies heavily on illusions to compose a more pleasant reality of herself.
Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most popular plays in American history. The play contains this theme of Old South versus New South where old southern ideals and way of life clashes against newly formed ideals of the late 19th and early 20th century. The distinctions between the Old South’s emphasis on tradition, social class, and segregation versus the New South’s emphasis on hard work can be seen throughout the play. It is manifested in the main characters of the play. Blanche DuBois’s civilized and polished nature makes her a symbol of the Old South while Stanley Kowalski’s brutish, direct, and defying nature represents the New South. Tennessee Williams uses the characters of his play to present a picture of the social, gender role, and behavior distinctions that existed between the Old South versus the New South. Furthermore, the two settings provided in the play, Belle Reve and Elysian Fields can also be seen as different representations of the Old versus the New with the way both places are fundamentally different.
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.
In "A Streetcar Named Desire", Tennessee Williams leaves a large amount of stage direction to the actor and the director. The choices in the performance made by the latter can neither be right nor wrong, as there are so many options open for artistic interpretation. The extract from Scene three is no exception and within the dialogue there are numerous suggestions for explanation of characters, music, setting and forewarning for the audience.
When she was young, "sixteen, I made the discovery - love. All at once and
Tennessee Williams' Use of Dramatic Devices To Create Contrast And Conflict In "A Streetcar Named Desire"
Tennessee Williams' Use of Imagery and Symbolism in A Streetcar Named Desire Throughout the play symbolism is used to capture attention and to appeal to viewers' emotions. It is expressed through music, colour and imagery all of which help to heighten tension and reflect the atmosphere created by an impending force. The actions involved in the development of imagery and symbolism in the characters are, for example, Blanche's sitting, her whisky drinking, her jumping, etc, actions which show her nervous personality of a stressed woman. " Blanche sits in a chair very stiffly with her shoulders slightly hunched and her legs pressed together…as if she were quite cold…" (page 6).