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Character analysis on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
Academic essays on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
Character analysis on a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
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“A Streetcar Named Desire” An analysis of the role adversity plays in shaping an individual's identity, in Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire Jayse Shaw English 30-1 Block 2 Mr. Deck Facing adversity can make people stronger, and their reaction to it can reveal who they truly are. An individual's identity can be drastically affected by the adversity that one has overcome. The influence it has upon them becomes ingrained in their existence. However, when faced with a substantial amount of adversity, it can become damaging to their mental health. This can be seen in Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche DuBois, the protagonist, has faced numerous hardships and dealt with a great …show more content…
“I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action”. The naked light bulb is the bare truth of Blanche's life which she is able to cover up to make her life easier. The paper lantern is able to hide the dark past from Blanches present. Mitch is able to uncover the history of Blanche resulting in her greatest fear. Blanche explains to Mitch that she lies because she refuses to accept the reality of her current situation. The luxurious life Blanche used to live was drastically altered. The adversity she faced in her early life results in Blanche turning to an imaginary world. “I don't want realism. I want magic!” Blanche uses perfume to mask her problems and create an illusion that she is still a perfect, innocent woman. She has faced so much adversity, and her life has been flipped upside-down. Blanche covered up her problems because she was too afraid to face her harsh reality. Covering herself with perfume was a tool to help her and others forget the real problems. “A hot bath and a long, cold drink always give me a brand new outlook on life!”The baths that Blanche frequently takes represent her efforts to cleanse herself of her past. It is Blanches way to temporarily find relief from her everyday issues. She continues to take baths because she is never able to get “clean”. Blanche can not erase what has occurred. She attempts to remove her mistakes from her past …show more content…
And I need somebody, too. Could it be - you and me, Blanche” Blanche endures a lot throughout the entire play. Early in her life she is confronted with many incidents that have a direct effect on her in the end. All the deaths, separations, hardships, and the effort of trying to mask them result in her finally taking the disguise off. She cannot bear all the pain anymore. It becomes evident to Stella that Blanche is mentally unstable and the reason behind it is the lack of trust. Mitch and Stella both abandon Blanche in a moment where she needed them the most. The punishment Blanche receives to telling the truth is going to a mental asylum. Separated from everyone, she may finally be able to start
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,
Each and every individual develops some sort of perspective and opinion on many different subjects, objects, and people throughout life. However, these perspectives are prone to change. The play, A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams is a great example of new outlooks on life making an effect on personal beliefs. It shows the denouement of two opposing perspectives and how they can eventually damage or even destroy an individual. Some ideas established by Tennessee Williams are shown by incidents such as Blanche's gay husband committing suicide, Stanley and his perspective of reality revealing the fantasy in which Blanche confides herself in, and Mitch's aspect that every individual is to be given an equal opportunity in life.
Adversity can cause an individual to overcome their challenges and strengthen their identity, however, it can also have the opposite negative effect. Adversity can trigger an individual to lose their identity in their attempt to escape from their problems. In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, Blanche DuBois is unable to face adversity, which leads her to lose her individual identity during her attempt to escape reality. Blanche had experienced numerous hardships such as the deaths of many family members and the loss of her young husband, Allan. Instead of overcoming these challenges and becoming stronger, Blanche tried to run away from them.
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.
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.
Tennessee Williams gives insight into three ordinary lives in his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” which is set in the mid-1930’s in New Orleans. The main characters in the play are Blanche, Stanley, and Stella. All three of these characters suffer from personalities that differentiate each of them to great extremes. Because of these dramatic contrarieties in attitudes, there are mounting conflicts between the characters throughout the play. The principal conflict lies between Blanche and Stanley, due to their conflicting ideals of happiness and the way things “ought to be”.
Blanche had a desire for sex in general to cope with her divorce and the loss of her family; she just needed to feel loved. Stanley expressed his hidden desire for Blanche by being cruel to her through the whole story, and then having sex with her. Mitch showed his desire for Blanche by asking her to marry him. Stella had a desire for Stanley’s love and for Blanche’s well-being. The play is a display of the drama involved in families, and it shows that sometimes people have to make decisions and choose one relationship over another.
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.
After two world wars, the balance of power between the genders in America had completely shifted. Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a harsh, yet powerful play that exposes the reality of the gender struggle. Williams illustrates society’s changing attitudes towards masculinity and femininity through his eloquent use of dramatic devices such as characterization, dialogue, setting, symbolism, and foreshadowing.
Blanche is often found bathing, which she uses as a way to purify herself from her difficult past and her dishonesty. When Blanche states that her “nerves are in knots” she says she thinks she “will bathe,” (Williams 51). Again, Blanche mentions that she takes “hot baths for my nerves,” (Williams 134) because she always feels “so good after my long, hot bath, I feel so good and cool and - rested!” (Williams 128). Bathing is a way of relaxation and purification for Blanche when she is particularly affected by her anxiety.
This play exemplified the remnant cultural tensions of the horrors of World War II. America attempted, and succeeded, to cease the threat made by Nazi Germany, in order to prove its superiority and authority. A Streetcar Named Desire was released soon after the country concluded its battle through the Great Depression of the 1930s. During this time the lower and middle classes were the epitome of individuals who contain the heroic American spirit. The Great Depression resulted in high unemployment and interest rates. This inclined many American writers to expound on the stories of those individuals who represented the lower and middle classes. These writers respected their willpower, ambitious mindsets and strong work ethics. After this catastrophic war, individuals were ready to settle down and build a family. Williams ensured to incorporate this time period into his play. Stanley Kowalski, the antagonist of the play, has just returned from the war. After he exemplified his masculinity on the battlefield, Stanley was eager to return home to flaunt and declare his manhood. The male superiority that is prominent throughout this play is also a characteristic of America during this time. The male characters within this play emulate the average American man. They are men who worked for what they wanted and believed in. They were never
From the first moment the Williams introduces Blanche, it is evident that she believes herself to be of a higher class, and this is shown with how uncomfortable she is around those of a lower class. When Blanche is shown an act of kindness from Eunice, “Why don’t you set down?” her response to this person of a lower class than herself is dismissive, “…I’d like to be left alone.” She instantly expects too much from a place called ‘Elysian Fields’. Blanche feels uneasy about being around those that are of a lower class, especially of those who she does not know, which is clear when she is reunited with her sister. She immediately becomes ostentatious in her actions, and begins to speak with “feverish vivacity”, “Stella, Oh Stella, Stella! Stella for Star!” Perhaps she is relieved to be with her sister once again, or it could be that she feels she now has someone to be dominant over, since she has little control over her own life. Blanche comes across as being very motherly towards Stella, “You messy child” in spite of the fact that Stella is soon to beco...
“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces” (Sigmund Freud). Illusion can be a part of our lives; however, if taken to the extreme, it can lead one to forget reality. Every individual has problems in life that must be faced with reality and not with illusion, even though it might throw one into flames of fires. Tennessee Williams' play of a family reveals the strength of resistance between reality and desire, judgment and imagination, and between male and female. The idea of reality versus illusion is demonstrated throughout the play. Blanche's world of delusion and fantastical philosophy is categorized by her playful relationships, attempts to revive her youth, and her unawareness in the direction of reality of life. In Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, through the study of character and tropology, fantasy and illusion allow one to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is.
The first principle character in this play is Blanche DuBois. She is a neurotic nymphomaniac that is on her way to meet her younger sister Stella in the Elysian Fields. Blanche takes two 2 streetcars, one named Desire, the other Cemeteries to get to her little sisters dwelling. Blanche, Stella and Stanley all desire something in this drama. Blanche desired a world without pain, without suffering, in order to stop the mental distress that she had already obtained. She desires a fairy tale story about a rich man coming and sweeping her off her feet and they ride away on a beautiful oceanic voyage. The most interesting part of Blanche is that through her unstable thinking she has come to believe the things she imagines. Her flashy sense of style and imagination hide the truly tragic story about her past. Blanche lost Belle Reve but, moreover, she lost the ones she loved in the battle. The horror lied not only in the many funerals but also in the silence and the constant mourning after. 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 faced pain.
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.