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Blanche streetcar named desire character analysis
Character Analysis of A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee williams essay life and work
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Tennessee Williams was a well known Modern English playwright. He was born in Columbus, Mississippi and moved to St. Louis, then to Memphis, and later graduated from the University of Iowa in 1983. Williams began to turn his short stories into plays and later on into films. His wildest audiences were in contemporary dramatic literature. Williams’s plays have been produced in England, France, Hally, Germany, Greece, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Cuba and Mexico. One of William’s most intriguing plays is Streetcar named Desire. Streetcar was produced around 1947. The “setting of Streetcar” is a combination of raw realism and deliberate fantasy” (Riddel 16). The main character of the play is Ms. Blanche Dubois, a widowed, middle age, “southern bell” hiding from her own reality. Stella, Blanche’s younger sister is married to an animal, Stanley Kowalski. Mitch, Stanley’s friend, is Blanche’s last chance at happiness that she will never reach. According to Joseph Riddel, “Life is a living division of two warring principles, desire and decorum, and she is the victim of civilizations attempt to reconcile the two in a morality” (17). In the play Blanche is stuck between two different worlds; one world in her own mind which is completely her own make believe fairytale of a perfect life she lives, and the real world of harsh reality. “Her indulgent past is a mixture of sin and romance, reality and illusion, the excesses of the self and the restraints of society” (Riddel 17). This world of illusion is her escape from the harsh reality of her real life situation. According to Ruby Cohn, “Blanche Dubois is trapped by the poverty of her imagery which reflects the poverty of her dreams” (82). In a Street...
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...fume in Streetcar Named Desire” Modern Art History. NewYork April 4 2011. Web.
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Oklopcic, Biljana. “Southern Bellehood (De) constructed: A Case Study of Blanche Dubois”. 2008. Web.
Riddel, Joesph. “A Streetcar Named Desire”. Modern Critical views of Tennessee Williams. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea, 1999. 13-18. Print.
Smith, Nicholas A. “Idealism and Insanity: The Subversion of a Sothern Belle through ` Blanche Dubois”. Iowa. Web.
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At first glance, the reader could not imagine a more incompatible and diverse pair than Blanche DuBois and Fernie Mae Rosen, two women from very contrasting backgrounds and racial standings. However, these two women share similar passions and mental disorders, showing both their vulnerability to the world and mutual personal energies. Both weave an alternate reality inside their psyches that deceive them into believing that life is not worthwhile, and yet both appear to live life to various sexual and emotional extremes. Such compatibility shows the correlation in their mutual lifestyles despite incongruous backgrounds. Men always seem to be at the root of their problems, despite their clear and discernible negative reactions to the opposite sex. The examples of a virginal aura that eclipses their sexual promiscuity, their mutual hatred for the world and the people that surround them, and their transformation from passion into real madness show the reader that they have more in common than one would think.
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.
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.
Tennessee Williams is known to be a Southern playwright of American drama. Williams knew how to show haunting elements like psychological drama, loneliness, and inexcusable violence in his plays. Critics say Williams often depicted women who were suffering from critical downfalls due to his sister Rose Williams. Rose was always fighting with a mental health condition known as schizophrenia all her life. The character Laura in The Glass Menagerie is always compared to Rose, because they were both socially awkward and very quiet girls. This may be true, but one can look at Blanche DuBois from A Street Car Named Desire shadows his sister’s life and characteristics more than Laura did. In the obituary of Rose Williams that was written by Philip Hoare, he says, “She grew up outgoing, using make-up earlier than other girls, and was remembered as “very pretty and a bit standoffish” (Hoare). This parallel sounds remarkably like Blanche and does not sound like Laura’s characteristics. Laura never wore make up and her personality did not keep others distant. She was distant to others, because of her disability. Also Roses down fall is very similar to Blanche DuBois down fall in the play and end result. Laura never has a down fall in The Glass Menagerie. Laura seems to have hope in the end of the play. Laura was a tribute to show Rose’s innocence, but Blanche was to show Rose’s true colors. Tennessee Williams uses elements of appearance, age, gentleman callers, sexuality, and the fear of homosexuality to show his sisters down fall in the character Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Shakespeare specifically leaves out key details on her character. Was she in an affair with Claudius before the murder? Does she know Claudius was the one to kill King Hamlet? Did she plot with him?
Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire is a overly dramatic play that concludes in a remarkable manner. The play takes off by introducing Stanley and Stella, a married couple whom live in New Orleans. They have a two-sided relationship, very loving but abusive. Then suddenly Blanche shows up, Stella’s sister, and informs Stella that their home in Belle Reve was lost. A few days later, Blanche meets and becomes attracted to Mitch, a friend of Stanley. Blanche sees Stanley as an abusive husband and contrasts him to Mitch. Blanche immediately begins to develop deep emotions for Mitch because he is very romantic and a gentleman. Blanche begins to talk to Stella because she does not want her sister to be abused.
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.
Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a play wrought with intertwining conflicts between characters. A drama written in eleven scenes, the play takes place in New Orleans over a nine-month period. The atmosphere is noisy, with pianos playing in the distance from bars in town. It is a crowded area of the city, causing close relations with neighbors, and the whole town knowing your business. Their section of the split house consists of two rooms, a bathroom, and a porch. This small house is not fit for three people. The main characters of the story are Stella and Stanley Kowalski, the home owners, Blanche DuBois, Stella’s sister, Harold Mitchell (Mitch), Stanley’s friend, and Eunice and Steve Hubbell, the couple that lives upstairs. Blanche is the protagonist in the story because all of the conflicts involve her. She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and with shielding her past.
Written in 1947, A Streetcar Named Desire has always been considered one of Tennessee William’s most successful plays. One way for this can be found is the way Williams makes major use of symbols and colours as a dramatic technique.
Throughout Tennessee Williams’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Blanche Dubois exemplified several tragic flaws. She suffered from her haunting past; her inability to overcome; her desire to be someone else; and from the cruel, animalistic treatment she received from Stanley. Sadly, her sister Stella also played a role in her downfall. All of these factors ultimately led to Blanche’s tragic breakdown in the end. Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it.
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.
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”.
Tennessee Williams explores in his play” A Streetcar Named Desire”, suggests the main protagonist, Blanche, who has ruins her reputation due to her adversity. She is kick out of Laurel. She have no choice, but to move to her sister’s house. This place can allow her to create a new identity and new life. However when Blanche is revealed , it cause her to choose to live in her own fantasy world , because she cannot face the harsh reality. The Play” A Streetcar Named Desire”, by Tennessee Williams illustrates that sensitive people may succumb to fantasy to survive when they faced adversity, ,which forsake their identity to find an acceptable existence.
Blanche DuBois is a character full of life tragedies and struggles with her internal conflicts throughout the play. The first introduction of Blanche portrays her as a more cultured and highly sophisticated individual, than the average local in Elysian Fields. Dubois was quick to claim to be from an upper class of society, by daintily dressing in white suite with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earnings of pearl, white gloves and hat (Williams 95). The color white usually signified something that was pure and blameless, which was the total opposite with Blanche, all this was part of an image she was trying to portray. She tried covering up the truths of her life like; her sexual deviants, the loss of her job, and her alcoholism. All these events foreshadows the downfall of Blanche’s character which eventually led her to the insane asylum. She is an extremely complicated character who seems to be out of her element both physically and mentally, and seems to be stuck in her youthful years. Blanche’s mind is all disarrayed leaving her so lost and confused about life allowing her to lash out in ways that are sexual in nature. Her sexual tendencies are exceedingly inappropriate do to the nature of her actions. Balance tries to avoid the true reality of what was going on in her life, it was as if it was problematic for her to differentiate between reality and the desires of her heart. She just wanted a better future for herself, by trying to submerge herself in a life that was constructed off lies and deception. She captivated herself in romantic fantasies that begun as something that was harmless, then escalates into something that is morally unacceptable.
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.