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Character analysis on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
Character analysis on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
Character analysis on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
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Tennessee Williams wrote in a letter that "It ('Streetcar') is a tragedy with the classic aim of producing a catharsis of pity and terror and in order to do that, Blanche must finally have the understanding and compassion of the audience. This without creating a black-dyed villain in Stanley. It is a thing (misunderstanding) not a person (Stanley) that destroys her in the end." In your opinion, to what extent has Williams succeeded in his aims. Although there are many different viewpoints on a conventional tragic heroine, Aristotle made his views clear that a hero must fall from fortune and power, due to a tragic flaw, allowing an audience to feel catharsis at the end of the play. It can be argued that Stanley causes Blanche's downfall, however,
it is clear that Blanche had brought this upon herself by creating a conflict between them and ensures her own downfall by other means such as her promiscuity and flux into fantasies. Williams makes it clear that a misunderstanding destroys Blanche in the end. This misjudgement can be seen in her aggressive teasing of Stanley and her uncomfortable belonging in multi-cultural New Orleans. From the beginning of the play, Williams makes it clear that 'the Kowalski and the DuBois have different notions' with Blanche withholding the Southern Belle attitude of 'Belle Reve'.
I believe that Williams passes on a strong message through the play, “Desire deteriorates our lives while our greatest fears stare us in the eye, the only reward we find is in knowing why we regret.” In the end, Blanche Dubois of A Streetcar Named Desire is a tragic figure. All she ever desired was a good, clean life. What she acquired was pain and illusion. One can only be relieved that Blanche finally emptied her secrets and came clean. Whether she ever actually got what she wanted or not, at least her torture even ours conclusively came to an end.
Relationships in A Streetcar Named Desire In many modern day relationships between a man and a woman, there is usually a controlling figure that is dominant over the other. It may be women over men, men over women, or in what the true definition of a marriage is an equal partnership. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Stanley is clearly the more dominant figure over Stella.
Our lives are consumed by the past. The past of what we once did, what we once accomplished, and what we once could call our own. As we look back on these past memories we seldom realize the impact these events have on our present lives. The loss of a past love mars are future relationships, the loss of our family influences the choices we make today, and the loss of our dignity can confuse the life we live in the present. These losses or deaths require healing from which you need to recover. The effects of not healing can cause devastation as apparent in the play A Streetcar Named Desire. The theme of A Streetcar Named Desire is death. We encounter this idea first with the death of Blanche and Stella's relationship as sisters. Blanche and Stella had a life together once in Bel Reve and when Stella decided to move on in her life and leave, Blanche never could forgive her. This apparent in the scene when Blanche first arrives in New Orleans and meets Stella at the bowling alley. Stella and Blanche sit down for a drink and we immediately see Blanche's animosity towards Stella. Blanche blames Stella for abandoning her at Bel Reve, leaving Blanche to handle the division of the estate after their parents die. As result of Stella's lack of support, we see Blanche become dependent on alcohol and lose her mental state. Blanche comes to be a a terrible reck through out the play as we learn of the details of her life at Bel Reve. Her loss of the entire estate and her struggle to get through an affair with a seventeen year old student. This baggage that Blanche carries on her shoulders nips at Stella through out eventually causing the demise of her relationship. As Blanche's visit goes on with Stella, the nips become too great and with the help of Stanley, Stella has Blanche committed to a mental hospital, thus symbolizing the death of the realtionship they once had. The next death we encounter in the film is the death of Stella and Stanley's marriage. Our first view of Stanley is of an eccentric man, but decent husband who cares deeply for his wife. However, as as Blanche's visit wears on, we come to see the true Stanley, violent and abusive.
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.
In "A Streetcar Named Desire", Tennessee Williams leaves a large amount of stage direction to the actor and the director. The choices in the performance made by the latter can neither be right nor wrong, as there are so many options open for artistic interpretation. The extract from Scene three is no exception and within the dialogue there are numerous suggestions for explanation of characters, music, setting and forewarning for the audience.
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.
When she was young, "sixteen, I made the discovery - love. All at once and
Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest American dramatists of the 20th century. Most of his plays take us to the southern states and show a confused society. In his works he exposes the degeneration of human feelings and relationships. His heroes suffer from broken families and they do not find their place in the society. They tend to be lonely and afraid of much that surrounds them. Among the major themes of his plays are racism, sexism, homophobia and realistic settings filled with loneliness and pain.1 Tennessee Williams characters showed us extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior.2 One of his most popular dramas was written in 1947, and it is called A Streetcar Named Desire.
Tennessee Williams’ play “A Streetcar Named Desire” illustrates his past through sadistic poetry – in his play he portrays himself as a god that has absolute control of the story; additionally, he constructs a numerous amount of tragedies for his fictional characters to suffice his pleasure. In this specific play “A Streetcar Named Desire” the characterization of Blanche Dubois was a result of his tragic past, using this fictional character as an emotional outlet; subsequently, creating multiple astounding plays for the audience to experience. Consequently, both Williams and Blanche have a strikingly similar story; although, Williams has denied that his plays were about him – he was an abuser of drugs and alcohol and unsurprisingly uses them
“Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama…the purest language of plays.” Once, quoted as having said this, Tennessee Williams has certainly used symbolism and colour extremely effectively in his play, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. A moving story about fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois and her lapse into insanity, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ contains much symbolism and clever use of colour. This helps the audience to link certain scenes and events to the themes and issues that Williams presents within the play, such as desire and death, and the conflict between the old America and the new.
Tennessee Williams' Use of Dramatic Devices To Create Contrast And Conflict In "A Streetcar Named Desire"
Tennessee Williams' Use of Imagery and Symbolism in A Streetcar Named Desire Throughout the play symbolism is used to capture attention and to appeal to viewers' emotions. It is expressed through music, colour and imagery all of which help to heighten tension and reflect the atmosphere created by an impending force. The actions involved in the development of imagery and symbolism in the characters are, for example, Blanche's sitting, her whisky drinking, her jumping, etc, actions which show her nervous personality of a stressed woman. " Blanche sits in a chair very stiffly with her shoulders slightly hunched and her legs pressed together…as if she were quite cold…" (page 6).
Scientists, for years, have been trying to uncover the secrets of reality. For example, Einstein has been known to say “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Furthermore, many experiments have been conducted to determine what reality is, and how much our senses actually deceive us. After a complex thought, everything around us is man made or an illusion; our jobs are man made, time is man made, even people’s hopes and dreams are fueled by society’s opinions. Due to the fact, that these things we call real are made up of things that would have never been possible without the human mind, our reality can be perceived to be an illusion. Yet, crowds of humans are unsatisfied with this illusion. In the modern play, A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams, Blanche DuBois is a schoolteacher from Belle Reve who moves to New Orleans to live with her sister, Stella Kowalski, and her brutish brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Suffering from a traumatic event and a troublesome reputation, she derives her self-worth from the opinions of others and relies heavily on illusions to compose a more pleasant reality of herself.
"A Streetcar Named Desire," a play by Tennessee Williams, is a story not only about