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Blanche streetcar named desire character analysis
Characterisation in a streetcar named desire
Blanche streetcar named desire character analysis
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In “A Streetcar Named Desire” the appearance vs. reality also has to do with the sanity of each character. The marriage between Stella and Stanley is one example of this. One of the fundamental messages of the play regarding marriage is how the collapse of traditional roles might allow for abuse and the pretense for it to take place in private: “...I know how it must have seemed to you and I’m awful sorry.. he didn’t know what he was doing…. He was as good as a lamb when I came back..”(Tennessee Williams 71). Blanche recognizes that what Stella might take for passion and brooding intensity might just be good, old fashioned abuse.Blanche cannot deal with the difference between appearance and reality. Another example is Stella agrees to sign
the commitment papers for Blanche; she does so under the impression that it is the right thing to do. This appearance is something that she repudiates with her line, "What have I done to my sister? Oh, God, what have I done to my sister?"(Williams 176). Blanche detaches from reality and sees life only as she wishes to perceive. However, because she has seen reality before, and cannot cope with reality and this she does insane.
told Allan "I saw, I know, you disgust me…"( p.96). To Allan, Blanche seemed to
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.
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.
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.
Scene One of A Streetcar Named Desire What is the dramatic significance of scene one of the play A Streetcar named Desire? Scene 1 of this play has great dramatic significance. In this essay, I will be looking at key points throughout the scene that reveal the key features of the plot, characters, theme and imagery plus how it is used to give the audience a taster for what is to come.
The era of the play is also set by the costume that the actors wear to
“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces” (Sigmund Freud). Illusion can be a part of our lives; however, if taken to the extreme, it can lead one to forget reality. Every individual has problems in life that must be faced with reality and not with illusion, even though it might throw one into flames of fires. Tennessee Williams' play of a family reveals the strength of resistance between reality and desire, judgment and imagination, and between male and female. The idea of reality versus illusion is demonstrated throughout the play. Blanche's world of delusion and fantastical philosophy is categorized by her playful relationships, attempts to revive her youth, and her unawareness in the direction of reality of life. In Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, through the study of character and tropology, fantasy and illusion allow one to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is.
One main usage of symbolism that Williams implements is the use of the symbolism of blindness. When Blanche first arrives at Stella’s house, she is blinded by the sun, which symbolizes her start of being blind to others and her own problems (Williams 16). Blanche throughout the play has instances of blindness, which all together demonstrate the blindness that Blanche has towards her own sanity and the circumstances that she is in. Even when the blind street peddler arrives at the door Blanche exclaims that “the blind are even leading the blind” (Williams 44). What Blanche said is even true to herself and her circumstances where Blanche is blindly following her path and too is setting herself up for in the future a mental breakdown. Blanche’s
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”.
This gradual fall and loss of her sense of reality is truly tragic. Blanche is a person largely driven by the part of her that wants to be liked and be accepted. She cares greatly about how she is viewed and how she looks which is seen throughout the play. Even at the end when she’s living almost completely in the imaginations of her mind she asks Stella and Eunice how she looks before being taken away to an insane asylum. Tennessee Williams, the author of the play, uses all the conflict between Blanche and others, specifically Stanley, to show that fantasy is unable to overcome reality. Stanley and Blanche are both the epitomes of fantasy and reality. Stanley is a man focused on sexual drive, work, and fighting. He is exhibited as animalistic and strongly driven by his desires which is shown when he says, “Be comfortable. That's my motto up where I come from.” Stanley loves and searches after reality which is why he is so set on breaking down the facade he sees in Blanche. Blanche on the other hand is running from her reality and her past. Her fantasy of being high class and chaste is the exact opposite of her reality which is why she wants a life like that so badly. She wants marriage and stability, two things she was jealous of Stella having after arriving in New Orleans. Her fantasy she was building in her new life is shattered when Stanley is able to learn of her past and bring reality crashing down on her. Williams
In “A Street Car Named Desire”, Williams depicts a realistic atmosphere that many readers would be familiar or relate with. He wrote this play under the assumptions that due to an illness it may be his last. “He set out to explore the far recesses of his mind to establish his main philosophy of life, "The apes shall inherit the earth." Williams was a very sickly and sensitive person in his youth and very easily subjected to the harshness and cruelty of others” (Marotous 2006). Williams filled his two main characters, Stanley and Blanche, with different attitudes toward sex, love, and opposing social status, allowing a power struggle to arise between them. The play at first look may appear to surely end on a happy note but after review it is clearly a tragedy.
her rich friends that could send her some money and get her out of her
2. What causes Mitch and Blanche to take a "certain interest" in one another? That is, what is the source of their immediate attraction? What seems to draw them together? What signs are already present to suggest that their relationship is doomed/problematic?
sub-plot of the play. The play is set during the era in which it was
In the story Alice in Wonderland, the world of Wonderland represents the main antagonist Alice’s fantasy that is fueled by her desire of staying in the past and remaining a child. Ultimately, she fears the changes that come with becoming an adult; thus, she resists reality and embraces the lies of her fantasy of staying a child by staying in Wonderland. Furthermore, this is similar to how the main antagonist in A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois, resists reality by lying to herself and everyone she knows because she also fears reality. Unlike Blanche, Alice soon realizes that by embracing her fantasies and desires she would be led down a path of destruction because fantasy and reality are incompatible. Likewise, Tennessee Williams covers the topic of the incompatibility of fantasy and reality in A Streetcar Named Desire by making the character Blanche DuBois, which represents fantasy, resist and have a conflict with the character Stanley Kowalski, which represents reality, because he wants to convey that it is natural to fear and resist reality and take solace in desire and fantasy.