Obsession is longing for something a person desires for and is unable to let go. Therefore, people go to certain lengths to protect those they love in order to feel satisfied in their life. Blanche and Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire look for love to satisfy the love they lost. Their obsession is a result of fighting for Stella’s attention when Blanche interferes with Stella and Stanley’s relationship, which causes tension between one another. Thus, Stanley disrupts Blanche’s arrival to illustrate the changes he faces because he goes through sudden interruptions in his love life. Blanche and Stanley seek out each other’s weakness to show their power against one another and achieve their bond. As a result, Blanche and Stanley play a game in their relationships that create more tension to hurt each other. In order to fulfill their obsession with love, Stanley and Blanche interfere with each other’s lives to search for the love they lost. …show more content…
Initially, Stanley and Blanche love life is a game they play. The seven-card game Stanley and Blanche play is the object of the seven-deadly-sins because it explains the violations both Stanley and Blanche commit with each other. The seven-deadly-sins are the subjects of; wrath, envy, sloth, gluttony, greed, pride and lust. These violations exemplify Blanche’s and Stanley’s relationship with one another; in their search to find love. When they obtain their love, they initially want what the other does not have and therefore create tension. Therefore, Stanley and Blanche play a game because they get on each other’s nerves in hope to establish and gain attention for themselves. “Yes, I had many intimates with strangers.” (Williams 1165) Blanche reveals her obsession with love, and therefore search to satisfy her
In the beginning Tennessee Williams formed Stanley and Blanche from the soil of repression and indulgence; he breathes desire into their nostrils causing them to become living souls. In the mist of the Elysian Fields garden was the tree of knowledge of death and redemption. Stanley the merciless predator of Blanche used the knowledge of the death of Belle Reve to expose Blanche’s nakedness. Blanche covers herself with puritanical fig leaves inadvertently exposing the primitive beast like qualities in Stanley. Tennessee Williams infuses Stanley and Blanche with contradictions of opposing class, differing attitudes about sex and the incongruent perspective on reality. Effortlessly these expressions of desire moves like a pendulum back and forth between Blanche and Stanley, the clock stops, ultimately exposing the neurosis of their souls. The author’s emancipation proclamation reveals how their contradictions became complementaries thus transcending the imagery of death into a pious redemption. Emphatically the author’s soul cries out from the grave, “Out beyond right-doing and wrong-doings there is a field I’ll meet you there,” (Rumi).
In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, main character Blanche Dubois to begin with seems to be a nearly perfect model of a classy woman whose social interaction, life and behavior are based upon her sophistication. The play revolves around her, therefore the main theme of drama concerns her directly. In Blanche is seen the misfortune of a person caught between two worlds-the world of the past and the world of the present-unwilling to let go of the past and unable, because of her character, to come to any sort of terms with the present.
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 man, man 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. Throughout the play there are numerous examples of the power he possesses of her. Williams portrays Stella as a little girl who lives around in Stanley’s world. She does what he wants, takes his abuse yet still loves him. Situations likes these may have occurred in the 1950’s and lasted, but in today’s time this would only end up in a quick divorce.
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 ...
Our lives are consumed by the past. The past of what we once did, what we once accomplished, and what we once could call our own. As we look back on these past memories we seldom realize the impact these events have on our present lives. The loss of a past love mars are future relationships, the loss of our family influences the choices we make today, and the loss of our dignity can confuse the life we live in the present. These losses or deaths require healing from which you need to recover. The effects of not healing can cause devastation as apparent in the play A Streetcar Named Desire. The theme of A Streetcar Named Desire is death. We encounter this idea first with the death of Blanche and Stella's relationship as sisters. Blanche and Stella had a life together once in Bel Reve and when Stella decided to move on in her life and leave, Blanche never could forgive her. This apparent in the scene when Blanche first arrives in New Orleans and meets Stella at the bowling alley. Stella and Blanche sit down for a drink and we immediately see Blanche's animosity towards Stella. Blanche blames Stella for abandoning her at Bel Reve, leaving Blanche to handle the division of the estate after their parents die. As result of Stella's lack of support, we see Blanche become dependent on alcohol and lose her mental state. Blanche comes to be a a terrible reck through out the play as we learn of the details of her life at Bel Reve. Her loss of the entire estate and her struggle to get through an affair with a seventeen year old student. This baggage that Blanche carries on her shoulders nips at Stella through out eventually causing the demise of her relationship. As Blanche's visit goes on with Stella, the nips become too great and with the help of Stanley, Stella has Blanche committed to a mental hospital, thus symbolizing the death of the realtionship they once had. The next death we encounter in the film is the death of Stella and Stanley's marriage. Our first view of Stanley is of an eccentric man, but decent husband who cares deeply for his wife. However, as as Blanche's visit wears on, we come to see the true Stanley, violent and abusive.
appropriately with the consequent events which take place. Using madness to escape from feelings which are "too great to contain" is strongly associated with Blanche but to some extent, I believe. with Stella. Although Stella decides to believe that Stanley is telling the truth that Blanche is in actual fact "insane" is. Stella's own way of avoiding the actual truth of the events of scene.
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.
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.
In both works, the power of desire to blind and replace is present in relationships that are physical and carnal. In The Great Gatsby, Myrtle’s affair with Tom is full of lost and violence; In “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Stella’s marriage to Stanley is also passionate and chaotic. In both relationships, the men beat their women, but the women do not leave. Stella’s lust for Stanley blinds her to his barbarism. After Stanley punches Stella and bellows her name, Stella seems entranced by lust:
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.
3. How might we get to the bald truth/reality of Stanley and Stella 's relationship during the poker game? How are we supposed to understand Stella 's motivation for being/staying with Stanley, despite his physical abusiveness? (that is, on what is their relationship based/founded/sustained)? How does the discovery of these things affect the relationship between Blanche and Stella, and why is this important?
In 'A Streetcar Named Desire' we focus on three main characters. One of these characters is a lady called Blanche. As the play progresses, we gradually get to know more about Blanche and the type of person she really is in contrast to the type of person that she would like everybody else to think she is. Using four main mediums, symbolism and imagery, Blanche's action when by herself, Blanche's past and her dialogue with others such as Mitch, Stanley and the paperboy, we can draw a number of conclusions about Blanche until the end of Scene Five. Using the fore mentioned mediums we can deter that Blanche is deceptive, egotistical and seductive.
The seven deadly sins are well established as being detrimental; nevertheless, humanity naturally gravitates towards the inhuman. The life of Blanche DuBois, the protagonist of Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire is derailed by lust: the lechery of her ancestors causes the loss of the family home, her husband’s lust leads to suicide, and her own sexuality forces her to leave her occupation and her hometown in disgrace. After taking the streetcars Desire and Cemeteries, Blanche seeks refuge from reality in the home of her sister Stella and her masculine and somewhat barbaric husband Stanley. Despite her attempts to start an unblemished life with a new persona and love interest, Mitch, Blanche’s dark past begins to resurface after
In Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" two of the main characters Stanley and Blanche persistently oppose each other, their differences eventually spiral into Stanley's rape of Stella.