A Street Car Named Desire Analysis

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Recommended: Shakespeare literary techniques

1. Throughout the play, the playwright Edward Albee made it so there is a clear showing of several different literary allusions. But in this case, in that particular scene, the focus is on Tennessee Williams A Street Car Named Desire. First of all, In the beginning of the scene, the point where she is talking to herself, you can spot that she makes some references to “The Poker Game” the painting based on the scene in which fragile Blanche comes in on her animalistic brother-in-law Stanley's poker game. And secondly, George, when he enters with the flowers in hand, or snapdragons, he is seen quoting a line of dialogue that comes from Williams play, the famous line "Flores para los muertos," which means flowers for the dead. Now here is the explanation or the comparison that can be made here. We all know that, in the play Streetcar, this particular line is used to foreshadow Blanches death. Not her physical death though, more so, it is used to foreshadow her emotional and spiritual death. In Woolf, George is using that line to foreshadow his announcement of "sonny-Jim's" death. Not only that, but it is also used to proceed the spiritual decimation of his and Martha's marriage. In addition to that, there is m ore death foreshadowing that can be seen, when we think or the part where Martha yells "Pansies! Rosemary! Violence! My wedding bouquet!" This line is making a reference to Hamlet, the part where Ophelia does her crazy speech where she offers imaginary flowers. Martha is heard using the word violence instead of violets in order to characterize her marriage. This offers shadowing of death also since Ophelia gives her mad speech before drowning herself. I think the greatest theme that this scene, this Act and the play in... ... middle of paper ... ... At the start, Nick and Honey seem to paint the perfect picture of of the American Dream. We have here a good looking young couple, and Nick is an ambitious young man that appears to have inevitable success coming down his way, and Honey seems to be a supportive, polite woman. But, as the play goes on, we can see that everything isn’t that nice! We learn the very sad truth that the only reason why Nick married Honey was for money, and also because she was preggos. He even cheats on her with Martha, and Honey ends up drinking. All of these examples shows us how Albee’s thoughts of the America Dream was not that of the mainstream, and again, this shows validates once more his unwillingness to sell out. So I get the feeling that the creation of this play was settled on truthfulness and a want to express the truth regardless of it being transferred to the big screen.

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