“A Streetcar Named Desire'; and “The Glass Menageries were written by Tennessee William in the late Thirties, where the depression made countless of people struggled in poverty. Both of the plays used the typical American family during the Thirties as the background setting. There were many similarities between the plays: including characters and events. Did Tennessee William write the same play twice? Or, did the plays each hold a different meaning underneath?
Before analyzing the two plays, we must first analyze the characters. Blanche Dubois in “A Streetcar Named Desire'; and Laura Wingfield in “The Glass Menageries'; have a lot of similarities throughout the two plays. Blanche and Laura are both living in a separate world from other people. Blanch is living in a world of fantasies, while Laura is living in her world with all the glass Menagerie. Blanche seeks for desires and fantasies only because she feels she murdered her husband. Laura lives in her world of glass animals only because of a disease that gives her a slight physical defect. They are mentally and physically crippled, and they want to use illusions to deceive other people. In P.117 Blanch said “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 truth, I tell what ought to be truth.'; Laura does the same thing, where she deceives her mother. She lies to her mother about going to the Business Collage, just like Blanche lies to everyone else about her past.
In “The Glass Menagerie'; the unicorn represents Laura. She is different from all the others, and she would not be able to fit in with the others. She is too sensitive and shy, a very fragile being. Blanche in the play does not fit in with the rest of the people in the community either. She cannot tolerate the way husbands treat their wives in New Orleans, and she is shocked when Stella goes back with Standley after the Polka Night. The same thing happens to
Eunice(Stella’s neighbor) a few scene after. In P. 63 Stella tells Blanche “You are making much too much fuss about this.'; And later says “it wasn’t anything as serious as you seem to take it.'; Blanche will never understand how, or why Stella would go back to Stanley because she doesn’t fit into their community, just like Laura will never fit into hers either.
Laura unable to survive in the outside world - retreating into their apartment and her glass collection and victrola. There is one specific time when she appears to be progressing when Jim is there and she is feeling comfortable with being around him. This stands out because in all other scenes of the play Laura has never been able to even consider conversation with a "Gentleman Caller."
Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in 1911. As a successful playwright, his career was greatly influenced by events in his life. He was noted for bringing the reader "a slice of his own life and the feel of southern culture", as his primary sources of inspiration were "the writers he grew up with, his family, and the South." The connection between his life and his work can be seen in several of his plays.
Blanche, in particular, is much more of an anachronism than Stella, who has, for the most part, adapted to the environment of Stanley Kowalski. Finally, both Stella and Blanche are or have been married. It is in their respective marriages that we can begin to trace the profound differences between these two sisters. Where Blanche's marriage, to a man whom she dearly loved (Miller 43), proved catastrophic to her, Stella's marriage seems to be fulfilling her as a woman. Blanche's marriage to a young homosexual, and the subsequent tragedy that resulted from her discovery of her husband's degeneracy and her inability to help him, has been responsible for much of the perversity in her life.
... ignorance; and this was the undeniable tragedy that caused her downfall in the end. Stanley was angry when Blanche told Stella that she did not like him, but he never gave her a chance. Stanley despised her from the beginning. Neither Stanley nor Mitch was intelligent enough to comprehend that not everything is black and white. They perceived her as a deceitful whore. Stella chose her violent husband over her sister. Also, Mitch could not overlook her mistakes. Mitch focused on her flaws which blinded him from seeing the beauty and love Blanche had to offer. Blanche wanted their love, but each of their individual flaws sunk her deeper into a hole. The people around Blanche were unwilling to change and develop an open-minded way of dealing with her situation. Blanche needed kindness and affection, but nobody was able to give it to her when she needed it the most.
Blanche Dubois is known as a southern belle and grew up in a rich high-class southern society with her sister Stella. Once Blanche decides to visit her sister Stella and her husband Stanley in Elysian Fields, New Orleans she is introduced as an outsider. "Her appearance is incongruous with this setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit... with necklaces and earrings of pearl" (Williams 15). Blanche's portrays her self as being a southern bell through her appearance. She dresses of wealth trying to show her social class. When Blanche first visits Elysian Fields we see the differences between social classes collide. Blanche portrays her self as high-class with wealth and is entering a difference social environment that can be seen as lower class. This causes a tension between herself and other characters in the play. This tension between classes can further seen when Blanche and Stella first meet in Elysian Fields. "Why, that you had to live in these conditions" (Williams 20). When Blanche first talks with Stella about her living conditions i...
In Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire the characters represent two opposing themes. These themes are of illusion and reality. The two characters that demonstrate these themes are Blanche, and Stanley. Blanche represents the theme of Illusion, with her lies, and excuses. Stanley demonstrates the theme of reality with his straightforward vulgar ness. Tennessee Williams uses these characters effectively to demonstrate these themes, while also using music and background characters to reinforce one another.
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
She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and shields her past. The essential conflict of the story is between Blanche, and her brother-in-law Stanley. Stanley investigates Blanche’s life to find the truth of her promiscuity, ruining her relationships with Stella, and her possible future husband Mitch, which successfully obtain his goal of getting Blanche out of his house. Blanche attempts to convince Stella that she should leave Stanley because she witnessed a fight between the two. Despite these instances, there is an essence of sexual tension between the two, leading to a suspected rape scene in which one of their arguments ends with Stanley leading Blanche to the bed.
In today's rough and tough world, there seems to be no room for failure. The pressure to succeed in life sometimes seems unreasonable. Others often set expectations for people too high. This forces that person to develop ways to take the stress and tension out of their lives in their own individual ways. In the plays "The Glass Menagerie" and " A Streetcar Named Desire" written by Tennessee Williams, none of the characters are capable of living in the present and facing reality. Two of the characters are Amanda Wingfield and Blache Dubios. In order for these characters to deal with the problems and hardships in their lives they retreat into their own separate worlds of illusion and lies.
Another aspect of Laura’s personality, which is portrayed by the glass menagerie, is her extreme fragility. At first, Laura calls this “a blessing in disguise” – that he has made her normal. But when he reveals to her that he is engaged to another woman, her hopes are shattered, just like the unicorn’s horn. Now the unicorn is just like all the other horses, therefore, she decides it is more fitting for Jim than it is for her.
Generally when some one writes a play they try to elude some deeper meaning or insight in it. Meaning about one's self or about life as a whole. Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" is no exception the insight Williams portrays is about himself. Being that this play establishes itself as a memory play Williams is giving the audience a look at his own life, but being that the play is memory some things are exaggerated and these exaggerations describe the extremity of how Williams felt during these moments (Kirszner and Mandell 1807). The play centers itself on three characters. These three characters are: Amanda Wingfield, the mother and a women of a great confusing nature; Laura Wingfield, one who is slightly crippled and lets that make her extremely self conscious; and Tom Wingfield, one who feels trapped and is looking for a way out (Kirszner and Mandell 1805-06). Williams' characters are all lost in a dreamy state of illusion or escape wishing for something that they don't have. As the play goes from start to finish, as the events take place and the play progresses each of the characters undergoes a process, a change, or better yet a transition. At the beginning of each characters role they are all in a state of mind which causes them to slightly confuse what is real with what is not, by failing to realize or refusing to see what is illusioned truth and what is whole truth. By the end of the play each character moves out of this state of dreamy not quite factual reality, and is better able to see and face facts as to the way things are, however not all the characters have completely emerged from illusion, but all have moved from the world of dreams to truth by a whole or lesser degree.
The characters in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, most notably Blanche, demonstrates the quality of “being misplaced” and “being torn away from out chosen image of what and who we are” throughout the entirety of the play.
“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.
Both William Shakespeare 's Othello and Tennessee William 's A Streetcar Named Desire are both theatre productions. Othello was written in 1603 and contains themes of betrayal and loyalty, whilst Streetcar was written in 1947 and both contain themes of social standing. Streetcar was intended to be received by an educated adult audience, whereas Othello was intended to be watched by a mixture of educated and uneducated adults. Both pieces possess a serious narrative tone, and were intended to entertain an audience whilst presenting the author 's themes and ideas.
Blanche uses her dilutions and tries to sway Stella away from Stanley, yet Stella takes all these slanders and belittles them. Stella does this because she loves Stanley and since she is pregnant with his baby.