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Blanche dubois character analysis
Character analysis of blanche dubois
Character analysis of blanche dubois
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This is Blanche’s birthday, and she takes a hot bath in the bathroom all the afternoon. Stanley goes into the kitchen and tells something about Blanches to Stella. Blanche is not a gentle, soft and pure lady, and everything she shows to others is her camouflage. He lists what Blanche lies to others. Lie number one: she lies to Mitch to make him believe that she has never kissed more than one person, but the truth is that she used to date many strangers in the Flamingo Hotel. Lie number two: Blanche is out of her job at the high school not because she wants to quit by herself, it is because she has gotten mixed up with a seventeen year old boy, so the school kicked her out before the spring term ends. Stella does not believe what her husband …show more content…
In addition, he thinks Blanche breaks their ordinary life, so he gives her a ticket to send her back. There is no doubt that Stanley is a fascinating character. The usually reaction to see him as brute because of the way he treats graceful and delicate Blanche. Some people may dislike Stanley because of the way he treat Blanche. However, I believes that Stanley has different actions among he treats his wife, friends, and Blanche because he thinks Stella and Mitch are in his life, and they are in the same level, but Blanche is foreign element, and he feels threat of his ordinary life and his marriage. Therefore, he decides to do something to keep his current condition. Stanley lives in the basic of the world, he is not considerate to his wife Stella because even though she is pregnant, he still speak loudly and rude to her. He would like to do anything as his please. He likes to lay his card on the table, so after Blanche stays in his house, he thinks Blanche may Moreover, they have many unhappy conversations because of Blanche. Belle Reve. However, Stanley does not trust what Blanche says, and he believes that Blanche sold the Belle Reve which they own this real property together in law. In addition, he thinks
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 ...
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.
Firstly, the reader may initially feel Blanche is completely responsible or at least somewhat to blame, for what becomes of her. She is very deceitful and behaves in this way throughout the play, particularly to Mitch, saying, ‘Stella is my precious little sister’ and continuously attempting to deceive Stanley, saying she ‘received a telegram from an old admirer of mine’. These are just two examples of Blanches’ trickery and lying ways. In some ways though, the reader will sense that Blanche rather than knowingly being deceitful, actually begins to believe what she says is true, and that she lives in her own dream reality, telling people ‘what ought to be the truth’ probably due to the unforgiving nature of her true life. This will make the reader begin to pity Blanche and consider whether these lies and deceits are just what she uses to comfort and protect herself. Blanche has many romantic delusions which have been plaguing her mind since the death of her husband. Though his death was not entirely her fault, her flirtatious manner is a major contributor to her downfall. She came to New Orleans as she was fired from...
Blanche’s developmental history or character development points to her diagnosis. Blanche comes to New Orleans to stay with her sister Stella after being fired from her job as a schoolteacher due to having an inappropriate affair with a teenage student. When she arrives to see her sister, she is consumed with insecurities regarding her appearance and is condescending to her sister’s humble lifestyle. Stella’s husband Stanley immediately has distrust and dislike for Blanche and treats her
Blanche’s immoral and illogical decisions all stem from her husband's suicide. When a tragedy happens in someone’s life, it shows the person’s true colors. Blanche’s true self was an alcoholic and sex addict, which is displayed when “She rushes about frantically, hiding the bottle in a closet, crouching at the mirror and dabbing her face with cologne and powder” (Williams 122). Although Blanche is an alcoholic, she tries to hide it from others. She is aware of her true self and tries to hide it within illusions. Blanche pretends to be proper and young with her fancy clothes and makeup but is only masking her true, broken self.
“Her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed… looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district. (Page 15) Blanche makes it a point to hide her alcoholism and true life from her sister, by telling her about her fictional life Blanche purposely points out to Stella that she is not an alcoholic and says, “Now don’t get worried, your sister hasn’t turned into a drunkard, she’s just all shaken up and hot and tired and dirty!” (Page 19) Blanche speaks to Stella in third person disassociating herself from the reality of her problem. She also feels the need to tell Stella that one drink is her limit, then pours herself a third. She continues her version of reality when she tells Stella that she is on a leave of absence from teaching. Stella listens to her sister and never questions her actions or motives. After a few drinks Blanche’s instability is easier to decipher. She says, “I want to be near you, got to be near somebody, I can’t be alone! Because—as you must have noticed—I’m – not very well…” (Page 23) Blanche tells Mitch, “There’s so much—so much confusion in the world.” (Page 61) Her world is confusing she also says, “I need kindness.” These are important comments the first shows her mental state the second tells what she is in search of. Mitch and Stella are both kind to her, but when Blanche no longer has their kindness she
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.
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 very important moral lesson that I gained from A Streetcar Named Desire is to always tell the truth. Telling lies ultimately got Blanche Dubois nowhere. She was lonelier than ever at the end of the play. She starts off lying intentionally. For example, she tells Stella at the beginning that the school superintendent, “suggested I take a leave of absence” from her job as a teacher (Williams 14). In reality, the principal fired her for having an affair with a student. It is suspected that she is lying and later our suspicions are confirmed. Even though a reason isn’t mentioned as to why she lies, it is probably to save herself grief from her sister or to possibly keep up her appearance. Towards the end, Blanche says she received a telegram from “an old admirer of mine... An old beau” who invited her to “A cruise of the Caribbean on a yacht” (Williams 152, 153). At this point, she even begins to believe her own lies. She has lied for so long to others and even to herself that she ultimately ends up believing them. When Tennessee Williams shows us through the sound of the polka music and the shadows on the wall what is going on in Blanche’s head, we are left to wonder if something is truly wrong. She even told Mitch that she didn’t lie in her ...
[More laughter and shouts of parting come from the men. Stanley throws the screen door of the kitchen open and comes in. He is of medium height, about five feet eight or nine, and strongly, compactly built. Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes. Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependency, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens. Branching out from this complete and satisfying center are all the auxiliary channels of his life, such as his heartiness with men, his appreciation of rough humor, his love of good drink and food and games, his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears his emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer. He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them.] Blanche is uncomfortable and draws involuntarily back from his stare. She is keenly aware of his dominant position and reacts as women of the day did. Through all of this he is the leader of his group and in full control of his household. Any opposition to his leadership is quickly put down by physical force. He beats his wife, fights his friends and eventually humiliates Blanche by raping her.
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 faces pain.
Up until the moment she sees the doctor at the end of the play, she is convinced her former man, Shep Huntleigh, now a millionaire, is coming to get her and take her away to a life of stability and ease. As the doctor leads her away she says, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” This deluded calmness and happiness that Blanche has while being lead away to the insane asylum she still doesn’t know about, is suggestive that despite reality’s eventual and definite victory, fantasy is a strong and vital thing that is used by all individually in their own circumstances. Williams uses Blanche as one way to demonstrate and explore his points on the tragedy of reality versus
I believe that her insecurities played a part of her decision to visit Stella. She was in need of comfort and didn’t know where else to turn. She didn’t have any money and knew that she couldn’t take care of herself. Everyone in her town already knew what was going on in her life and if she were to visit Stella, it would be an opportunity to start fresh and still keep up her persona of being the rich, well together person she once was. I can understand why Blanche would want to live in her past and not accept her reality.
Blanche who had been caring for a generation of dying relatives at Belle Reve has been forced to sell the family plantation. Blanche is a great deal less realistic than Stanley and lives in illusions which bring upon her downfall.
Stanley has no remorse for his abusive actions which can be very misconstrued and allude to similar behavior within adolescent students. Additionally, Blanche is very sensual and craves the affection of men, making it seem like she desired or deserved to get raped. In scene three Stanley and his friends are playing a game of poker and Blanche is depicted undressing in the adjacent