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Character analysis on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
Academic essays on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
Character analysis on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
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“A Streetcar Named Desire” An analysis of the role adversity plays in shaping an individual's identity, in Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire Jayse Shaw English 30-1 Block 2 Mr. Deck Facing adversity can make people stronger, and their reaction to it can reveal who they truly are. An individual's identity can be drastically affected by the adversity that one has overcome. The influence it has upon them becomes ingrained in their existence. However, when faced with a substantial amount of adversity, it can become damaging to their mental health. This can be seen in Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche DuBois, the protagonist, has faced numerous hardships and dealt with a great …show more content…
deal of adversity. Initially, Blanche appears dressed in white, which is a symbol of purity. This represents Blanche’s innocence. Married to a young man, Blanche was living a happy life. Throughout the play, Blanche is confronted with many adverse situations which have had a strong effect on her actions and state of mind. Her husband committed suicide after she discovered he was having an affair with another man. Blanche also lost her home and all of her money. These events caused Blanche to turn to alcohol to try to forget about her current situation. She avoided admitting her problems for such a long time, that it is no surprise that she became mentally unstable. However, she doesn’t want to accept life's challenges and as a result, tries to disguise her true self, and mask all of her problems from everyone else. The innocence in Blanche is slowly taken away as tragic events start occurring.
“I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action”. The naked light bulb is the bare truth of Blanche's life which she is able to cover up to make her life easier. The paper lantern is able to hide the dark past from Blanches present. Mitch is able to uncover the history of Blanche resulting in her greatest fear. Blanche explains to Mitch that she lies because she refuses to accept the reality of her current situation. The luxurious life Blanche used to live was drastically altered. The adversity she faced in her early life results in Blanche turning to an imaginary world. “I don't want realism. I want magic!” Blanche uses perfume to mask her problems and create an illusion that she is still a perfect, innocent woman. She has faced so much adversity, and her life has been flipped upside-down. Blanche covered up her problems because she was too afraid to face her harsh reality. Covering herself with perfume was a tool to help her and others forget the real problems. “A hot bath and a long, cold drink always give me a brand new outlook on life!”The baths that Blanche frequently takes represent her efforts to cleanse herself of her past. It is Blanches way to temporarily find relief from her everyday issues. She continues to take baths because she is never able to get “clean”. Blanche can not erase what has occurred. She attempts to remove her mistakes from her past …show more content…
and start new, but every time Stanley reminds her of reality, she is forced to recall all she has been through. "I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth, and this is the truth: I haven't cheated my sister or you or anyone else as long as I have lived." We chose this picture of a face, because it also spells out the word liar, if you look sideways. This represents Blanche referring to herself as an illusion. She is hiding what she really is, the truth is covered by a false image. Her feelings, everything she has been through, is all suppressed under her perfume and expensive clothing. Blanche has lost her home in belle reve, her family, and husband; after going through everything she is still attempting to move on. “She is. She was. You didn't know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.” The Blanche that Stella knew when she lived in Belle Reve had changed since they last saw each other. She knows that Blanche has faced difficult situations, the trauma and abuse she endured is no secret. These circumstances would deeply affect anyone and Blanche is not at fault for it, infact she is the victim herself. Despite knowing why Blanche has become the way she is Stella sends her away, this not only breaks Blanche, but it leaves her alone, broken and with no support.. “You need somebody.
And I need somebody, too. Could it be - you and me, Blanche” Blanche endures a lot throughout the entire play. Early in her life she is confronted with many incidents that have a direct effect on her in the end. All the deaths, separations, hardships, and the effort of trying to mask them result in her finally taking the disguise off. She cannot bear all the pain anymore. It becomes evident to Stella that Blanche is mentally unstable and the reason behind it is the lack of trust. Mitch and Stella both abandon Blanche in a moment where she needed them the most. The punishment Blanche receives to telling the truth is going to a mental asylum. Separated from everyone, she may finally be able to start
fresh.
Each and every individual develops some sort of perspective and opinion on many different subjects, objects, and people throughout life. However, these perspectives are prone to change. The play, A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams is a great example of new outlooks on life making an effect on personal beliefs. It shows the denouement of two opposing perspectives and how they can eventually damage or even destroy an individual. Some ideas established by Tennessee Williams are shown by incidents such as Blanche's gay husband committing suicide, Stanley and his perspective of reality revealing the fantasy in which Blanche confides herself in, and Mitch's aspect that every individual is to be given an equal opportunity in life.
Blanche was awfully spoiled as a young girl. She lived in a huge house named Belle Reve, where servants would wait on her every want and need. This led her to never experience any hardships or adversity as a child. She had no previous experience of when she was forced to deal with any difficulties. She just had other people to take care of them for her. This is why, as an adult, Blanche doesn’t know how to overcome adve...
In this play the character blanche exhibits the theme of illusion. Blanche came from a rocky past. Her young husband killed himself and left her with a big space in her heart to fill. Blanche tried to fill this space with the comfort of strangers and at one time a young boy. She was forced to leave her hometown. When she arrives in New Orleans, she immediately begins to lie and give false stories. She takes many hot bathes, in an effort to cleanse herself of her past. Blanche tries also to stay out of bright lights. She covers the light bulb (light=reality) in the apartment with a paper lantern. This shows her unwillingness to face reality but instead live in an illusion. She also describes how she tells what should be the truth. This is a sad excuse for covering/lying about the sinful things she has done. Furthermore, throughout the story she repeatedly drinks when she begins to be faced with facts. All these examples, covering light, lying, and alcoholism show how she is not in touch with reality but instead living in a fantasy world of illusion.
Blanche had a desire for sex in general to cope with her divorce and the loss of her family; she just needed to feel loved. Stanley expressed his hidden desire for Blanche by being cruel to her through the whole story, and then having sex with her. Mitch showed his desire for Blanche by asking her to marry him. Stella had a desire for Stanley’s love and for Blanche’s well-being. The play is a display of the drama involved in families, and it shows that sometimes people have to make decisions and choose one relationship over another.
From the first moment the Williams introduces Blanche, it is evident that she believes herself to be of a higher class, and this is shown with how uncomfortable she is around those of a lower class. When Blanche is shown an act of kindness from Eunice, “Why don’t you set down?” her response to this person of a lower class than herself is dismissive, “…I’d like to be left alone.” She instantly expects too much from a place called ‘Elysian Fields’. Blanche feels uneasy about being around those that are of a lower class, especially of those who she does not know, which is clear when she is reunited with her sister. She immediately becomes ostentatious in her actions, and begins to speak with “feverish vivacity”, “Stella, Oh Stella, Stella! Stella for Star!” Perhaps she is relieved to be with her sister once again, or it could be that she feels she now has someone to be dominant over, since she has little control over her own life. Blanche comes across as being very motherly towards Stella, “You messy child” in spite of the fact that Stella is soon to beco...
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...
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.
...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.
Tennessee Williams gives insight into three ordinary lives in his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” which is set in the mid-1930’s in New Orleans. The main characters in the play are Blanche, Stanley, and Stella. All three of these characters suffer from personalities that differentiate each of them to great extremes. Because of these dramatic contrarieties in attitudes, there are mounting conflicts between the characters throughout the play. The principal conflict lies between Blanche and Stanley, due to their conflicting ideals of happiness and the way things “ought to be”.
The first principle character in this play is Blanche DuBois. She is a neurotic nymphomaniac that is on her way to meet her younger sister Stella in the Elysian Fields. Blanche takes two 2 streetcars, one named Desire, the other Cemeteries to get to her little sisters dwelling. Blanche, Stella and Stanley all desire something in this drama. Blanche desired a world without pain, without suffering, in order to stop the mental distress that she had already obtained. She desires a fairy tale story about a rich man coming and sweeping her off her feet and they ride away on a beautiful oceanic voyage. The most interesting part of Blanche is that through her unstable thinking she has come to believe the things she imagines. Her flashy sense of style and imagination hide the truly tragic story about her past. Blanche lost Belle Reve but, moreover, she lost the ones she loved in the battle. The horror lied not only in the many funerals but also in the silence and the constant mourning after. One cant imagine how it must feel to lose the ones they love and hold dear but to stay afterwards and mourn the loss of the many is unbearable. Blanche has had a streak of horrible luck. Her husband killing himself after she exposed her knowledge about his homosexuality, her advances on young men that led to her exile and finally her alcoholism that drew her life to pieces contemplated this sorrow that we could not help but feel for Blanche throughout the drama. Blanche’s desire to escape from this situation is fulfilled when she is taken away to the insane asylum. There she will have peace when in the real world she only faced pain.
After two world wars, the balance of power between the genders in America had completely shifted. Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a harsh, yet powerful play that exposes the reality of the gender struggle. Williams illustrates society’s changing attitudes towards masculinity and femininity through his eloquent use of dramatic devices such as characterization, dialogue, setting, symbolism, and foreshadowing.
Blanche is often found bathing, which she uses as a way to purify herself from her difficult past and her dishonesty. When Blanche states that her “nerves are in knots” she says she thinks she “will bathe,” (Williams 51). Again, Blanche mentions that she takes “hot baths for my nerves,” (Williams 134) because she always feels “so good after my long, hot bath, I feel so good and cool and - rested!” (Williams 128). Bathing is a way of relaxation and purification for Blanche when she is particularly affected by her anxiety.
The arts stir emotion in audiences. Whether it is hate or humor, compassion or confusion, passion or pity, an artist's goal is to construct a particular feeling in an individual. Tennessee Williams is no different. In A Streetcar Named Desire, the audience is confronted with a blend of many unique emotions, perhaps the strongest being sympathy. Blanch Dubois is presented as the sympathetic character in Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire as she battles mental anguish, depression, failure and disaster.
This can be symbolized by light. Blanche hates to be seen by Mitch, her significant other, in the light because it exposes her true identity. Instead, she only plans to meet him at night or in dark places. Also, she covers the lone light in Stella and Stanley’s apartment with a Chinese paper lantern. After Blanche and Mitch get into a fight, Mitch rips off the lantern to see what Blanche really looks like. Blanche angrily replies that she’s sorry for wanting magic. In the play, Blanche states “I don’t want realism, I want magic! [..] Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!”(Williams 117). Blanche wants to escape reality, but this only leads to her self-destruction. It is the men in her life and past experiences that is the main cause of her self - destruction. One of these being the death of her young love, Allen Grey. During their marriage, Blanche, attached to the hip to this man, walked in on him with another man. She then brought the incident up at a bad time; soon after, Allen took his own life, which I believe was the first step to this so called “self-destruction. Blanche could never forgive herself of this. This is the truth of her past, therefore,
This play exemplified the remnant cultural tensions of the horrors of World War II. America attempted, and succeeded, to cease the threat made by Nazi Germany, in order to prove its superiority and authority. A Streetcar Named Desire was released soon after the country concluded its battle through the Great Depression of the 1930s. During this time the lower and middle classes were the epitome of individuals who contain the heroic American spirit. The Great Depression resulted in high unemployment and interest rates. This inclined many American writers to expound on the stories of those individuals who represented the lower and middle classes. These writers respected their willpower, ambitious mindsets and strong work ethics. After this catastrophic war, individuals were ready to settle down and build a family. Williams ensured to incorporate this time period into his play. Stanley Kowalski, the antagonist of the play, has just returned from the war. After he exemplified his masculinity on the battlefield, Stanley was eager to return home to flaunt and declare his manhood. The male superiority that is prominent throughout this play is also a characteristic of America during this time. The male characters within this play emulate the average American man. They are men who worked for what they wanted and believed in. They were never