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American tragedy in streetcar named desire
American tragedy in streetcar named desire
American tragedy in streetcar named desire
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Sympathy for Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire
Can we view Stanley sympathetically in scene 3?
However to be able to view Stanley sympathetically we need to
understand his emotion and mentality, before we make a full judgment
on him. I personally feel Stanley is a harsh character but I also
believe he is pushed into doing such actions and I cannot help feel
that if Blanche had not visited none of this would have happened. In
this particular scene I do sympathise with Stanley and I will go into
greater detail to explain why I commiserate with his character.
Stanley Kowalski is a very interesting and controlling character,
although the usual reaction is to see him as a brute because of the
way that he treats the delicate Blanche. But this dislike would stem
from too much identification with Blanche. Stanley Kowalski lives in a
basic, fundamental world which does not allow any form of disruption.
He is the sort of man that likes to lay his cards on the table, and
does not appreciate people who put on airs.
To the over-sensitive person, such as Blanche, Stanley represents a
holdover from the Stone Age. He is brutal and determined to destroy
that which is not his. His animal-like actions reinforce this idea, he
eats like an animal and grunts his approval or disapproval. When
aroused to anger, he strikes back throwing things, such as the radio
in scene three, “with a shouted oath, he tosses the instrument out of
the window”. or he strikes his wife, “there is a sound of a blow,
Stella cries out”. Stanley is a man of physical action.
However I consider Stanley to have more feelings than Blanche cares to
admit or even consider. Blanche is a foreign element, who Stanley
feels is a threat to his marriage...
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...s belittled
him and has opposed him. She has never conceded to him his right to be
the “king” in his own house. Thus, he must sit idly by and see his
marriage and home destroyed, and himself belittled, or else he must
strike back. His attack is slow and calculated. He begins to compile
information about Blanche’s past life. He must present her past life
to his wife so that she can determine who is the superior person. When
he has his information accumulated, he is convinced that however
common he is, his life and his past are far superior to Blanche’s. Now
that he feels his superiority again, he begins to act. He feels that
having proved how degenerate Blanche actually is, he is now justified
in punishing her directly for all the indirect insults he has had to
suffer from her. Thus he buys her the bus ticket back to Laurel and
reveals her past to Mitch.
one page 11) this indicates that he is a selfish man and cares for his
told Allan "I saw, I know, you disgust me…"( p.96). To Allan, Blanche seemed to
Identity in Contemporary American Drama – Between Reality and Illusion Tennessee Williams was one of the most important playwrights in the American literature. He is famous for works such as “The Glass Menagerie” (1944), “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947) or “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)”. As John S. Bak claims: “Streetcar remains the most intriguing and the most frequently analyzed of Williams’ plays.” In the lines that follow I am going to analyze how the identity of Blanche DuBois, the female character of his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, is shaped. Firstly, we learn from an interview he gave, that the character of Blanche has been inspired from a member of his family.
Later in the letter King alludes to Socrates. He is clever in doing this because he knows that the clergymen will be exceptionally hesitant to disagree with Socrates. He agrees with Socrates' idea on tension being good and necessary for change. The tension will create men who will rise to the occasion and fight for what they believe in. He further illustrates and tri...
According to Charles Darwin, the father of the modern theory of evolution, “it is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” Based on the example set forth in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, the principle that adaptability is the key to survival holds true in modern society. Streetcar chronicles the bitter struggle for survival between Blanche Dubois, a sophisticated but fading southern beauty, and Stanley Kowalski, her brutish brother-in-law. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams uses Stanley to represent an organism perfect adapted to life in the French Quarter. By showing that a person with primitive and animalistic traits can triumph over a more refined, intelligent individual, Williams demonstrates the idea of environment-specific adaptations being more important to survival than one’s place in the evolutionary line.
In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, a main theme was domestic violence and how women were not respected before the 1970’s. Beating your wife was considered “family matters” and many people ignored this huge issue. Women were supposed to take care of the situation by themselves or ignore it. Ruby Cohn argues that Stanley is the “protector of the family” and that his cruelest gesture in the play is “to tear the paper lantern off the light bulb” (Bloom 15). Even though critics tend to ignore the ongoing domestic violence occurring in the play, it is a huge issue that even the characters in the play choose to ignore. This issue does not surface because of the arrival of Blanche and her lunacy. While the audience concentrates on Blanche’s crumbling sanity, it virtually ignores Stanley's violence.
are examined closer, it is evident that he is a limited and vain person who is overly concerned with
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.
Character Conflict in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. 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.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a play of multifaceted themes and diverse characters with the main antagonists of the play, Blanche and Stanley infused by their polarized attitudes towards reality and society ‘structured on the basis of the oppositions past/present and paradise lost/present chaos’(*1). The effect of these conflicting views is the mental deterioration of Blanche’s cerebral health that, it has been said; Stanley an insensitive brute destroyed Blanche with cruel relish and is the architect of her tragic end. However, due to various events in the play this statement is open to question, for instance, the word ‘insensitive’ is debatable, ‘insensitive’ can be defined as not thinking of other people’s feelings but Stanley is aware of what he’s doing understanding the mental impairment he causes Blanche.
Tragedy is when something is lost in a terrible manner. The tragedy of a character named Blanche is the eventual loss of her mind and of her reality. Events throughout the tragic play A Streetcar Named Desire are what lead to Blanche become adrift in the seas of dreams within her head. Along her path to becoming this way Blanche does not only suffer herself, but causes the suffering of others around her. The author of this play uses Blanche as an instrument to carry out the tragic vision of the play itself. You see tragedy within herself and the people she comes into contact with throughout the play.
Tennessee Williams has said, “We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.” Betrayal is prevalent in life and literature and creates uncertainty. According to Williams, without questioning people, one will eventually be betrayed. Characters deceive each other and, occasionally, themselves as they try to mend their lives. In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, betrayal is evident in every relationship — Blanche and Mitch, Blanche and Stella, and Blanche and Stanley — and contributes to the theme of uncertainty in the novel. Blanche Dubois is the ultimate example of betrayal because she ends up being betrayed and betraying others throughout the play, which serves as a basic model of the effects betrayal can have on a person.
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.
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.