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Symbolism of light and darkness in heart of darkness
Symbolism of light and darkness in heart of darkness
Essay on tennessee williams
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Throughout the classic American play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams utilizes light and dark symbolism in order to highlight the role that deception plays in Blanche’s interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. Blanche and Mitch share a tumultuous romance. Although Mitch initially believes that Blanche may be the woman who can fill the void in his life where a partner is expected to be, he is blinded by the revelation of Blanche’s blatant lies. These lies are not only fueled by Blanche’s disillusionment and struggle to differentiate between fantasy and reality, but by her intense craving to receive validation from others. Williams extensively employs light and dark symbolism in regards to the colored paper lantern, Blanche …show more content…
Blanche once expected her life as a woman in her early thirties to be parallel to Stella’s: married with a roof over her head, friends, and a child on the way. However, like the naked light bulb, Blanche is pale and plain and will eventually burn-out. Her lies can only fuel her enjoyment until this paper lantern, which protects her lies, is ripped off. Immediately after Mitch confronts Blanche about how she refuses to go on dates with him during the daytime when it is light, “he tears the paper lantern off the light bulb” in order to see Blanche clear and plain (Williams 144; scene 9). Mitch rips off Blanche’s symbolic protective shield and she then begins to shed light on the truth behind her previous affairs with men. She can no longer hide behind her lies, as she has been exposed for the manipulative woman she really is. Nonetheless, while on her relentless search for unattainable perfection Blanche does not want to be seen in the light because she prefers to keep the truth about her rocky past hidden in the …show more content…
However, when she discovered what love is with Allan at sixteen years-old, she embraced this light, symbolic of the joy she experienced when she was in a relationship with Allan. Blanche exclaims that the love and passion she experienced in her youth with Allan was like turning “a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow” (Williams 114; scene 6). However, this love transforms into anger and guilt as Blanche discovers that Allan is gay, causing her to hastily express her disgust toward Allan and leading to his suicide. Allan once served as a ray of guidance and hope for Blanche. However, since his untimely death “the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this-kitchen-candle…” (Williams 115; scene 6). Blanche feels compelled to create this put-together persona as a way to shield the pain of her past and to live an idealized life where she can act in a youthful manner to make up for the years of innocence she lost after Allan’s death. Blanche forms a persona using very little light, or truth, as an attempt to hide the painful memories of her romantic affairs. Furthermore, she attempts to bring the light Allan brought to her back into her life through having sexual relations with a multiplicity of men. Her attempt is ultimately unsuccessful as Blanche, just like the candle, eventually burns out when she
McGlinn addresses the third dialectic taking hold of Blanche: illusion versus reality. McGlinn points out that, like all the women in Williams’s plays between 1940 and 1950, Blanche “refuses to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion.” [Tharpe, 513]. Although McGlinn is accurate in noting Blanche’s conflict between gentility and promiscuity, the result of which is “self-defeat instead of survival” [Tharpe, 513], she fails to see that Blanche lives in both illusion and reality simultaneously, and it is this dialectic that is the slow poison which destroys her. This death-instinct gives us the fourth and last dialectic in Blanche: her struggle between death and desire.”
The loss of her beloved husband kept Blanche’s mental state in the past, back when she was 16, when she only cared about her appearance. That is why at the age of 30 she avoids bright lights that reveal her wrinkles. Blanche does not want to remember the troubles of her past and therefore she attempts to remain at a time when life was simpler. This is reinforced by the light metaphor which illustrates how her life has darkened since Allan’s suicide and how the light of love will never shine as brightly for Blanche ever again. Although, throughout the play Blanche sparks an interest in Mitch, a friend of Stanley’s, who reveals in Scene three that he also lost a lover once, although his lover was taken by an illness, not suicide, and therefore he still searches for the possibility of love, when Blanche aims to find stability and security.
The loss of her beloved husband keeps Blanche’s mental state in the past, back when she was 16, when she only cared about her appearance. That is why at the age of 30 she avoids bright lights that reveal her wrinkles. Blanche does not want to remember the troubles of her past and therefore she attempts to remain at a time when life was simpler. This is reinforced by the light metaphor which illustrates how her life has darkened since Allan’s suicide and how the light of love will never shine as brightly for Blanche ever again. Although, throughout the play Blanche sparks an interest in Mitch, a friend of Stanley’s, who reveals in Scene three that he also lost a lover once, although his lover was taken by an illness, not suicide, and therefore he still searches for the possibility of love, when Blanche aims to find stability and security.
Blanche, in particular, is much more of an anachronism than Stella, who has, for the most part, adapted to the environment of Stanley Kowalski. Finally, both Stella and Blanche are or have been married. It is in their respective marriages that we can begin to trace the profound differences between these two sisters. Where Blanche's marriage, to a man whom she dearly loved (Miller 43), proved catastrophic to her, Stella's marriage seems to be fulfilling her as a woman. Blanche's marriage to a young homosexual, and the subsequent tragedy that resulted from her discovery of her husband's degeneracy and her inability to help him, has been responsible for much of the perversity in her life.
Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it. She was passionately in love with Alan; but after discovering that he was gay, she could not stomach the news. When she revealed how disgusted she was, it prompted Alan to commit suicide. She could never quite overcome the guilt and put it behind her. Blanche often encountered flashbacks about him. She could hear the gun shot and polka music in her head. After Alan’s death, she was plagued by the deaths of her relatives. Stella moved away and did not have to deal with the agony Blanche faced each day. Blanche was the one who stuck it out with her family at Belle Reve where she had to watch as each of her remaining family members passed away. “I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths—not always” (Scene 1, page 1546). Blanche lost Belle Reve because of all the funeral expenses. Belle Reve had been in her family for generations, and it slipped through her fingers while she watched helplessly. Blanche’s anguish caused her loneliness. The loneliness fueled her abundance of sexual encounters. Her rendezvous just added to her problems and dirtied her rep...
In addition, she uses a paper lantern to block out the light of the naked bulb in Stella’s Apartment. The obvious conclusion is that she doesn’t want anyone to know, particularly Mitch, to see that she is no longer a young woman like she used to be. Furthermore, Mitch points out, "I don’t think I ever seen you in the light. That’s a fact... You never want to go out in the afternoon.… You never want to go out till after six and then it’s always some place that’s not lighted much… What it means is I’ve never had a real good look at you” (143-144). What the lack of light shows in this circumstance is the shadier and untruthful side of this relationship, especially from Blanche. Despite the light motif in this book being mainly geared to Blanche herself, it also does help formulate the complicated relationship between Mitch and Blanche. This quote shows the literal shade aspect of their relationship. While it shows how she hides her true age from him, it also shows she has a knack for not letting Mitch see her in anything besides shade or darkness. On a slightly different note, we see a more sensitive and honest side that the light shows in Blanche’s past love life and love in general. She describes falling in love as though love had, "... suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that’s how it struck the world for me" (114). The light symbolizes her love life in the way that, without love, there is no light and the world is dark. In her mind, love and happiness are linked with light, and light is only present when she feels in love. Possibly, if she finally fell in love with Mitch, she would feel comfortable again and would loosen up and see herself as more of a gem than an ugly old lady. However, when Blanche finds out about
Right away, Blanche is introduced with a comparison to light when Williams says “her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth” (1779). If light represents the truth and reality, this passage can be deciphered as her avoiding the truth and would rather
Stella states that Blanche’s life has been heavily affected by the death of her husband, Allan. Blanche’s marriage “killed her illusions” which can be interpreted literally. Blanche states that she fell in love “all at once and much, much too completely,” however, her love was unrequited since instead of returning the love Blan... ... middle of paper ... ... o have experienced some sorrow,” which Mitch agrees with, thus revealing that he has been affected by the loss of this girl.
To conclude, the author portrays Blanche’s deteriorating mental state throughout the play and by the end it has disappeared, she is in such a mental state that doctors take her away. Even at this stage she is still completely un-aware of her surroundings and the state she is in herself.
Blanche’s lampshade is the filter for all the harsh realities of life that she would rather not deal with. In a scene with Stanley’s friend Mitch, Blanche tells Mitch to cover up a light bulb with a Chinese lampshade, “I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action” (1837). In this scene Blanche blatantly tells the other characters and the a...
As Stanley continues torturing Blanche and draws Stella and Mitch away from her, Blanche’s sanity slowly dwindles. Even though she lied throughout the play, her dishonesty becomes more noticeable and irrational due to Stanley's torment about her horrible past. After dealing with the deaths of her whole family, she loses Belle Reve, the estate on which her and her sister grew up. This is too much for Blanche to handle causing her moral vision to be blurred by “her desperate need to be with someone, with ancestors for models who indulged in “epic fornications” with impunity, [Blanche] moves through the world filling the void in her life with lust” (Kataria 2). She also loses a young husband who killed himself after she found out he was gay when she caught him with another man. After that traumatic experience she needed “a cosy nook to squirm herself into because ...
As one can see, Tennessee Williams used colours in several ways. The significance of colours reveals the real appearance of Blanche throughout the play. The colours have their own meanings. The significance of colours is a central theme in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire; the author uses colours to reflect states of mind, make further commentary on particular characters, and what sorts of things specific colours represent.
...es and thinks that her hopes will not be destroyed. Thirdly, Blanche thinks that strangers are the ones who will rescue her; instead they want her for sex. Fourthly, Blanche believes that the ones who love her are trying to imprison her and make her work like a maid imprisoned by them. Fifthly, Blanche’s superiority in social status was an obscure in her way of having a good social life. Last but not least, Blanche symbolizes the road she chose in life- desire and fantasy- which led her to her final downfall.
Blanche uses her fantasies as a shield; and her desires as her motivation to survive. Her fading beauty being her only asset and chance of finding stability. Stella’s relationship with Stanley also emphasis the theme Williams created in this book. They’re only bond is physical desire and nothing at all intellectual or deep rooted. Tennessee Williams exemplifies that their relationship which only springs from desire doesn’t make it any weaker. He also creates a social dichotomy of the relationship between death and desire.
Blanche’s avoidance of light is made known in scene one when she demands that Stella “turn that over-light off! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” (96). This reaction is because Blanche feels the need to hide her true self as well as her aged appearance which lacks beauty. In hiding from the light, Blanche can escape the reality of her less than pleasing appearance and true age. In the third scene, Blanche covers the light with a “little colored paper lantern” because she “can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than [she] can a rude remark or vulgar action” (114). Her comment shows that she prefers pleasantries and false, polite words to reality and the truth. But like the lantern, Blanche’s illusions are fragile as paper, and they could rip or fall apart at any time. In Blanche’s past, light was representative of love. After the suicide of the man she had married, Blanche said, “the search-light which had been turned on the world was turned off again” (133). For Blanche, light was the love she had for husband, and without her love there was to be no light. His suicide stole her light or love, and thus she is constantly trying to escape the light and consequently