How Does Williams Use Symbols In A Streetcar Named Desire

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams shows that when one chooses to blind themselves in order to obtain desire, one sets up ruin. He emphasizes his meaning with symbols. Williams focuses on symbols that suggest enlightenment or ignorance in order to make his audience aware of the main characters chosen blind spots; as well as, their desires and the impacts that their blind spots and desires have.
Williams’ uses symbols associated with light in order to expose Stella’s blindness. Williams’ meaning first appears when Stanley hits Stella. For a short moment after he strikes her, Williams allows Stella to see Stanley clearly. This enables her to ascend the stairs into enlightenment. Williams makes Stella’s short transformation obvious

by illuminating the upstairs much better lit region than the area below. However, when Stanley goes to win her back by screaming, “STELL-LAHHHHH!” (60), she descends the stairs. Her descent down the stairs into the dark, metaphoric hell shows her reverting back as “...her eyes go blind with tenderness...” (60). In addition, Williams makes it clear that Stella’s blindness is completely her own decision. In the entirety of the play, Stanley does not attempt to hide his true nature. In the play’s most famous line, Stanley’s animalistic screams reflect Stanley’s true nature, the same nature that caused him to harm Stella. Instead of taking Stanley in his entirety, Stella chooses to ignore the malevolent portion of his personality. Williams continues to emphasise Stella’s loss of vision, by having Stanley bear “her into the dark flat” (60). The flat represents Stella’s desire to enter the dark, which represents her choice to be blind to Stanley's faults. Stella blinds herself yet again, while in the dark bedroom, she tells Eunice that she “...couldn’t believe…” Blanche’s “...story and go on living with Stanley” (133). This shows that Stella’s desire for Stanley is so overpowering that it is enough to blind her from her own sister’s rape. Only when she walks Blanche outside with the doctor Stella begins to question her actions. When she sits on the stairs, part of the way towards enlightenment, she asks herself, “What have I done to my sister?” (141). Stella’s choice to be blind to Stanley’s faults resulted in the destruction of her family.
In addition to Stella, Williams uses symbols associated with light to demonstrate that Blanche is blind to the people she loves, as well.

When Stella goes back to Stanley, Blanche becomes concerned about her. Blanche's love for Stella blinds her to the truth about Stella’s relationship with Stanley. This is shown when Blanche talks about how she is going to rescue both of them from Stanley, even when Stella says, “... I am not in anything that I have a desire to get out of” (65). Stella tries to explain, that “things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark - that sort of make everything else seem - unimportant” (70). This statement, however, only supports Blanche’s belief that Stella chose to blind herself for “brutal desire” (70), and that this choice will only lead Stella down a disastrous path. Blanche compares this brutal desire to the streetcar, Desire, that both of them rode to this run down part of New Orleans. In this one line Williams is able reveal the transgression each of the characters with chosen blindnesses will go through. Blanche does not fully realize how Stella feels until they step outside into the better lit living space, where she can see Stella hug

Stanley.
Blanche also tries to hide many of her faults, which Williams shows with the symbolic light, music and perfume.

She works so hard to hide at this, that she begins to believe in some of the lies that she tells to other people. Her charade drives her to madness. Williams emphasizes Blanche’s attempts to hide her true nature by showing her trying to change her surroundings, when she is lying or omitting the truth. This can be seen in the paper lantern that she uses to cover up the lamp, which prevents others from seeing her properly. Williams also uses Blanche’s perfume to indicate to his audience when Blanche tries to hide her past. Williams demonstrates this when Stanley threatens to expose Blanche. When Stanley mentions the flamingo, a darker part of Blanche’s past, she begins to spray herself with perfume. She even mentions that it cost “Twenty-five dollars an ounce...” and that she is “...nearly out” (77). This quote shows that Blanche has covered up her past often. Blanche’s constant concern about her past drives her to madness, which Williams represents with the Varsouviana music that Blanche associates with her dead husband. This Polka music, that runs through Blanche's head, prevents her from hearing correctly. In addition, the music is accompanied by human like shapes that cannot be seen properly, which shows another form of both Blanche’s blindness, as well as her

madness.
The symbols in A Streetcar Named Desire, from the lighting the play uses to the streetcar in the title, display the meaning that when one chooses to blind themselves in order to obtain desire, one sets up ruin. As the symbols transform from representing desire and blindness to begin to represent the chaos the characters begin to feel as they face the consequences of their chosen blindness.