Fantasy and Illusions in "A Streetcar Named Desire" "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams is a play which has many issues, one of the largest issues being fantasy vs. illusions. This conflict which is evident throughout the play is very important because it decides how each character effects the outcome of the play. Fantasy and Illusion play a very large role, and it characterize Stella Kowalski, and Blanche DuBois, respectively. This conflict is brought up through the lives of Blanche and Stella, and the clear contrast in personalities between the two sisters. Fantasy is knowing that that something is not real but believing it is, and Stella Kowalski lives a life of fantasy. The biggest example of this issue is how Stella lives …show more content…
Blanche 's life is full of illusions, which take the forms of lies, which then get told to Stella, who in turn creates her own fantasies. One fantasy created by this conflict is Stella 's fantasy that Blanche is just having a hard time because she lost Belle Reve, and that she just need time to recover. In reality, there are many reasons why Blanche is going through a rough patch in life, including getting fired from work for having an affair with a minor, getting kicked out of Laurel, Mississippi, and fighting alcoholism. The illusions that Blanche is then sharing with Stella become lies in her and Stanley 's eyes which later encourages Stanley to find out the truth. Stella did not know from the beginning that Blanche was lying, but once she found out, she still believed that Blanche just needed some time. This fantasy that Stella possessed is what differentiated her from Stanley, and is the reason why Blanche was allowed to live with them for so long. Unlike Blanche, Stella still had a hold on reality, and what was right or wrong. This hold on reality is very important when it comes to the final scene of the …show more content…
The illusions of Blanche 's life are treated in a similar way to the fantasies of Stella. Illusions such as Blanche 's relationship with a Texas oil millionaire Shep Huntling, and those of Blanche 's past and present lovers, all lead to fantasies being made, and then lies being exposed. Blanche and her illusions act as the antagonizing force against all the characters of the book, one example of this being Blanche and Shep 's current relationship. Blanche is under the illusion that Shep is still secretly in love with her and that he will take her and Stella away and give them a shop, or simply live with Blanche. When Stella was recently hit by Stanley, Blanche tries to convince Stella that Shep will give them a shop, but Stella 's fantasies are too strong to break. This is the first true contrasting point where Stella 's fantasies and Blanche 's illusions fight each
In Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams uses the suicide of Blanche's husband to illuminate Blanche's insecurities and immoral behavior. When something terrible happens to someone, it often reveals who he or she truly is. Blanche falls victim to this behavior, and she fails to face her demons. This displays how the play links a character’s illogical choices and their inner struggles.
Or, as Mary Ann Corrigan later puts it [as does Judith J. Thompson, 38], the Blanche-Stanley struggle is purely an external dramatization of what is going on inside Blanche’s head: “the external events of the play, while actually occurring, serve as a metaphor for Blanche’s internal conflict” [Corrigan, 392]. Critics who share Sharp’s and Corrigan’s views feel that Streetcar is essentially a psychological drama about Blanche’s internal struggle with herself.”
When Stanley beats Stella in Scene 3, the abusive side becomes noticed and readers come to the conclusion that it was not the first time that this act of violence has occurred. (Williams 40). But Stella ends up coming back to him after he cries out to her, and their relationship resumes as it did in the times prior. He is also the one who investigates the protagonists’ (Blanche’s) past; as he knows there are things she is hiding. This need to know about Blanche’s history is driven by his hatred for her aristocratic ways. Furthermore, Stanley makes his dominance apparent through the expression of his sexuality. At the end of the play, he rapes Blanche as a way to regain his dominance in the household. Throughout the play, Blanche slowly gains some control over Stella, and causes disruption to Stanley’s
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.
... ignorance; and this was the undeniable tragedy that caused her downfall in the end. Stanley was angry when Blanche told Stella that she did not like him, but he never gave her a chance. Stanley despised her from the beginning. Neither Stanley nor Mitch was intelligent enough to comprehend that not everything is black and white. They perceived her as a deceitful whore. Stella chose her violent husband over her sister. Also, Mitch could not overlook her mistakes. Mitch focused on her flaws which blinded him from seeing the beauty and love Blanche had to offer. Blanche wanted their love, but each of their individual flaws sunk her deeper into a hole. The people around Blanche were unwilling to change and develop an open-minded way of dealing with her situation. Blanche needed kindness and affection, but nobody was able to give it to her when she needed it the most.
She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and shields her past. The essential conflict of the story is between Blanche, and her brother-in-law Stanley. Stanley investigates Blanche’s life to find the truth of her promiscuity, ruining her relationships with Stella, and her possible future husband Mitch, which successfully obtain his goal of getting Blanche out of his house. Blanche attempts to convince Stella that she should leave Stanley because she witnessed a fight between the two. Despite these instances, there is an essence of sexual tension between the two, leading to a suspected rape scene in which one of their arguments ends with Stanley leading Blanche to the bed.
Stanley rape Blanche, so she can not reclaim her purity anymore. Her only solution is by living in her imaginary world which she can create free of adversity. She no longer survive in the harsh world of reality . Stanley decided to send her away to a mental institution. When Blanche is told that she will be leaving. Blanche further expand her imagination to Shep Huntleigh. She believed that Shep Huntleigh will take her away. The only thing that she can conquer her adversity is by using her imagination ,which result her a complete loss of identity. She is send away to her last exile and entrapment. Having proven unable to adapt her identity in order to overcome
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.
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...
One of the first major themes of this book is the constant battle between fantasy and reality. Blanche explains to Mitch that she fibs because she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her. Lying to herself and to others allows her to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is. Stanley, a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world, disdains Blanche’s fabrications and does everything he can to unravel them. The relationship between Blanche and Stanley is a struggle between appearances and reality. It propels the play’s plot and creates an overarching tension. Ultimately, Blanche’s attempts to rejuvenate her life and to save Stella from a life with Stanley fail. One of the main ways the author dramatizes fantasy’s inability to overcome reality is through an explorati...
In “A Streetcar Named Desire” the appearance vs. reality also has to do with the sanity of each character. The marriage between Stella and Stanley is one example of this. One of the fundamental messages of the play regarding marriage is how the collapse of traditional roles might allow for abuse and the pretense for it to take place in private: “...I know how it must have seemed to you and I’m awful sorry.. he didn’t know what he was doing…. He was as good as a lamb when I came back..”(Tennessee Williams 71). Blanche recognizes that what Stella might take for passion and brooding intensity might just be good, old fashioned abuse.Blanche cannot deal with the difference between appearance and reality. Another example is Stella agrees to sign
In the story Alice in Wonderland, the world of Wonderland represents the main antagonist Alice’s fantasy that is fueled by her desire of staying in the past and remaining a child. Ultimately, she fears the changes that come with becoming an adult; thus, she resists reality and embraces the lies of her fantasy of staying a child by staying in Wonderland. Furthermore, this is similar to how the main antagonist in A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois, resists reality by lying to herself and everyone she knows because she also fears reality. Unlike Blanche, Alice soon realizes that by embracing her fantasies and desires she would be led down a path of destruction because fantasy and reality are incompatible. Likewise, Tennessee Williams covers the topic of the incompatibility of fantasy and reality in A Streetcar Named Desire by making the character Blanche DuBois, which represents fantasy, resist and have a conflict with the character Stanley Kowalski, which represents reality, because he wants to convey that it is natural to fear and resist reality and take solace in desire and fantasy.
Blanche is a delusional character who creates life from her imagination to help her pass through the hardness of life. Blanche admits that living in fantasy is much better than living in reality. When she was talking to her lover “Mitch”, she admits that the world of fantasy is much kinder as she says, “I don't want realism. I want magic!” (Williams, 117). Blanche does not care if this magic is factual or not. The importance of magic to Blanche is that she has the choice to choose fantasy which allows her to believe in and hope for something better than harsh world. She is aware of that, making the world as attractive as sh...
Blanche uses her dilutions and tries to sway Stella away from Stanley, yet Stella takes all these slanders and belittles them. Stella does this because she loves Stanley and since she is pregnant with his baby.
A Streetcar Named Desire sets the decaying values of the antebellum South against those of the new America. The civil, kindly ways of Blanche’s past are a marked contrast to the rough, dynamic New Orleans inhabited by Stella and Stanley, which leads Tennessee Williams’s “tragedy of incomprehension” (qtd. in Alder, 48). The central protagonist, Blanche, has many flaws; she lies, is vain and deceitful, yet can be witty and sardonic. These multifaceted layers balance what Jessica Tandy, who played Blanche in the first stage production in 1947, “saw as her ‘pathetic elegance’ . . . ‘indomitable spirit and ‘innate tenderness’” (Alder 49). Through a connected sequence of vignettes, our performance presented a deconstruction of Blanche that revealed the lack of comprehension and understanding her different facets and personas created. Initially Blanche is aware of what she is doing and reveals