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Symbolism of light and darkness in heart of darkness
Symbolism of light and darkness in heart of darkness
Essay on tennessee williams
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Throughout the classic American play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams utilizes light and dark symbolism in order to highlight the role that deception plays in Blanche’s interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. Blanche and Mitch share a tumultuous romance. Although Mitch initially believes that Blanche may be the woman who can fill the void in his life where a partner is expected to be, he is blinded by the revelation of Blanche’s blatant lies. These lies are not only fueled by Blanche’s disillusionment and struggle to differentiate between fantasy and reality, but by her intense craving to receive validation from others. Williams extensively employs light and dark symbolism in regards to the colored paper lantern, Blanche …show more content…
shining light on her former partnership with Allan, and Blanche allowing the doctor at the end of the play to serve as her eyes in order to highlight how what is actually true will ultimately triumph over the truth one constructs or wishes to believe. The colored paper lantern serves as a representation of the adored, beautiful woman Blanche desires others to believe she is. Blanche asks Mitch to put the colored lantern she purchased over a hanging lightbulb because she “can’t stand a naked light bulb” (Williams 60; scene 3). Blanche is incredibly self-conscious about her fragile appearance and worries about what other people will think about her plain looks. More so, she does not want her past, including her prostitution stint at the Flamingo and her affair with a seventeen year-old student, to be exposed. Blanche is ashamed of the person she has become. She has been consumed with guilt ever since her husband’s untimely death and thus seeks validation from other men to perpetuate the idea that she still is the exuberant, vivacious lady she once was. She vies for Mitch to accept her for the person she makes herself out to be because she believes that Mitch would not accept her for who she really is. Asking Mitch to cover the dusty, unadorned light bulb with an elegant, vibrant covering symbolizes Blanche's attempts to transform herself into an energetic and interesting person through a web of lies and mass manipulation. Blanche’s reality is not like the idealized fantasy she constructs for herself in her head.
Blanche once expected her life as a woman in her early thirties to be parallel to Stella’s: married with a roof over her head, friends, and a child on the way. However, like the naked light bulb, Blanche is pale and plain and will eventually burn-out. Her lies can only fuel her enjoyment until this paper lantern, which protects her lies, is ripped off. Immediately after Mitch confronts Blanche about how she refuses to go on dates with him during the daytime when it is light, “he tears the paper lantern off the light bulb” in order to see Blanche clear and plain (Williams 144; scene 9). Mitch rips off Blanche’s symbolic protective shield and she then begins to shed light on the truth behind her previous affairs with men. She can no longer hide behind her lies, as she has been exposed for the manipulative woman she really is. Nonetheless, while on her relentless search for unattainable perfection Blanche does not want to be seen in the light because she prefers to keep the truth about her rocky past hidden in the …show more content…
dark. Blanche is afraid of being seen in direct light.
However, when she discovered what love is with Allan at sixteen years-old, she embraced this light, symbolic of the joy she experienced when she was in a relationship with Allan. Blanche exclaims that the love and passion she experienced in her youth with Allan was like turning “a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow” (Williams 114; scene 6). However, this love transforms into anger and guilt as Blanche discovers that Allan is gay, causing her to hastily express her disgust toward Allan and leading to his suicide. Allan once served as a ray of guidance and hope for Blanche. However, since his untimely death “the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this-kitchen-candle…” (Williams 115; scene 6). Blanche feels compelled to create this put-together persona as a way to shield the pain of her past and to live an idealized life where she can act in a youthful manner to make up for the years of innocence she lost after Allan’s death. Blanche forms a persona using very little light, or truth, as an attempt to hide the painful memories of her romantic affairs. Furthermore, she attempts to bring the light Allan brought to her back into her life through having sexual relations with a multiplicity of men. Her attempt is ultimately unsuccessful as Blanche, just like the candle, eventually burns out when she
is sent to a mental institution to live out the rest of her days. Williams emphasizes Blanche’s instability toward the play’s end to highlight the ambiguity surrounding her trip to the institution. Blanche allows for the doctor “to lead her as if she were blind” (Williams 178; scene 11). The ambiguity surrounding Blanche’s ending is important to the meaning of the work because the audience, as well as Mitch, Stella, and Stanley throughout the majority of the play’s course, do not have knowledge of the truth behind Blanche’s background. The characters are kept in the dark because Blanche refuses to shine a light on her past and reveal her vulnerability until she is threatened with alienation. Williams equates blindness with darkness. Blanche’s lies have unraveled before her eyes and her attempts to wear the facade of a boisterous, popular woman have ultimately failed. Blanche is blind in the sense that she is now depending on others to dictate her future and to make decisions for her as her lies can no longer determine how she acts and how others treat her in response. Blanche’s state of disillusionment is heightened by her inability to take control over her life. Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams employs light and dark symbolism in order to highlight the role that deception plays in Blanche’s romance with Mitch and her construction of elaborate lies. Blanche spreads intricate lies not only to conceal the pain of her past and her previous questionable actions, but to create a likeable image of herself in order to gain the approval of others who otherwise would despise Blanche for her sickening behavior. Williams extensively utilizes light and dark symbolism in regards to the colored paper lantern, Blanche’s relationship with Allan, and Blanche allowing the male doctor at the end of the play to guide her out of the house in order to stress how there is a gray area when it comes to differentiating between fantasy and reality and how the ultimate truth tends to triumph over a fabricated truth.
McGlinn addresses the third dialectic taking hold of Blanche: illusion versus reality. McGlinn points out that, like all the women in Williams’s plays between 1940 and 1950, Blanche “refuses to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion.” [Tharpe, 513]. Although McGlinn is accurate in noting Blanche’s conflict between gentility and promiscuity, the result of which is “self-defeat instead of survival” [Tharpe, 513], she fails to see that Blanche lives in both illusion and reality simultaneously, and it is this dialectic that is the slow poison which destroys her. This death-instinct gives us the fourth and last dialectic in Blanche: her struggle between death and desire.”
To conclude, the author portrays Blanche’s deteriorating mental state throughout the play and by the end it has disappeared, she is in such a mental state that doctors take her away. Even at this stage she is still completely un-aware of her surroundings and the state she is in herself.
Stella states that Blanche’s life has been heavily affected by the death of her husband, Allan. Blanche’s marriage “killed her illusions” which can be interpreted literally. Blanche states that she fell in love “all at once and much, much too completely,” however, her love was unrequited since instead of returning the love Blan... ... middle of paper ... ... o have experienced some sorrow,” which Mitch agrees with, thus revealing that he has been affected by the loss of this girl.
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, 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.
Blanche’s lampshade is the filter for all the harsh realities of life that she would rather not deal with. In a scene with Stanley’s friend Mitch, Blanche tells Mitch to cover up a light bulb with a Chinese lampshade, “I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action” (1837). In this scene Blanche blatantly tells the other characters and the a...
As one can see, Tennessee Williams used colours in several ways. The significance of colours reveals the real appearance of Blanche throughout the play. The colours have their own meanings. The significance of colours is a central theme in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire; the author uses colours to reflect states of mind, make further commentary on particular characters, and what sorts of things specific colours represent.
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...
...es and thinks that her hopes will not be destroyed. Thirdly, Blanche thinks that strangers are the ones who will rescue her; instead they want her for sex. Fourthly, Blanche believes that the ones who love her are trying to imprison her and make her work like a maid imprisoned by them. Fifthly, Blanche’s superiority in social status was an obscure in her way of having a good social life. Last but not least, Blanche symbolizes the road she chose in life- desire and fantasy- which led her to her final downfall.
Blanche uses her fantasies as a shield; and her desires as her motivation to survive. Her fading beauty being her only asset and chance of finding stability. Stella’s relationship with Stanley also emphasis the theme Williams created in this book. They’re only bond is physical desire and nothing at all intellectual or deep rooted. Tennessee Williams exemplifies that their relationship which only springs from desire doesn’t make it any weaker. He also creates a social dichotomy of the relationship between death and desire.
This can be symbolized by light. Blanche hates to be seen by Mitch, her significant other, in the light because it exposes her true identity. Instead, she only plans to meet him at night or in dark places. Also, she covers the lone light in Stella and Stanley’s apartment with a Chinese paper lantern. After Blanche and Mitch get into a fight, Mitch rips off the lantern to see what Blanche really looks like. Blanche angrily replies that she’s sorry for wanting magic. In the play, Blanche states “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 the truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!”(Williams 117). Blanche wants to escape reality, but this only leads to her self-destruction. It is the men in her life and past experiences that is the main cause of her self - destruction. One of these being the death of her young love, Allen Grey. During their marriage, Blanche, attached to the hip to this man, walked in on him with another man. She then brought the incident up at a bad time; soon after, Allen took his own life, which I believe was the first step to this so called “self-destruction. Blanche could never forgive herself of this. This is the truth of her past, therefore,
Right away, Blanche is introduced with a comparison to light when Williams says “her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth” (1779). If light represents the truth and reality, this passage can be deciphered as her avoiding the truth and would rather
Blanche’s avoidance of light is made known in scene one when she demands that Stella “turn that over-light off! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” (96). This reaction is because Blanche feels the need to hide her true self as well as her aged appearance which lacks beauty. In hiding from the light, Blanche can escape the reality of her less than pleasing appearance and true age. In the third scene, Blanche covers the light with a “little colored paper lantern” because she “can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than [she] can a rude remark or vulgar action” (114). Her comment shows that she prefers pleasantries and false, polite words to reality and the truth. But like the lantern, Blanche’s illusions are fragile as paper, and they could rip or fall apart at any time. In Blanche’s past, light was representative of love. After the suicide of the man she had married, Blanche said, “the search-light which had been turned on the world was turned off again” (133). For Blanche, light was the love she had for husband, and without her love there was to be no light. His suicide stole her light or love, and thus she is constantly trying to escape the light and consequently