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Streetcar named desire themes
Streetcar named desire themes
Themes in streetcar named desire
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Adrian Jones G Gennari English 112 11 March 2016 Throughout “A Streetcar Named Desire” we have learned about many characters and their un-usual personalities. While reading the story, a character named Blanche is introduced and is defined as a person who is an alcoholic, has many sexual desires, and is crazy. Blanche seems as if she is living in her own fantasies based on the decisions and actions she chose to make by not living in her reality. She tells many lies throughout the story, but I believe that she is not nearly as crazy as she is perceived to be. I feel that Blanche needed support and was often misunderstood by her family and peers. When a person is going through severe life changes, it is normal to be in denial and not be their …show more content…
She is seen as a moth-like creature (Pg. 3 scene 1). She is delicate, sophisticated, and sensitive. She would never willingly hurt someone although she comes across as a bit snobbish and judgmental as she is disappointed to see the neighborhood in which Stella lives is not quite what she is used to being that it is small and trashy. She lies to Stella and says that she is visiting because she’s simply taking a “leave of absence” from her job as a schoolteacher, but in reality she is visiting for many reasons. She had lost all of her family’s fortune, the family estate, and she was fired from her job as a schoolteacher for having a sexual relationship with a student and was forced to leave the town. I believe that her insecurities played a part of her decision to visit Stella. She was in need of comfort and didn’t know where else to turn. She didn’t have any money and knew that she couldn’t take care of herself. Everyone in her town already knew what was going on in her life and if she were to visit Stella, it would be an opportunity to start fresh and still keep up her persona of being the rich, well together person she once was. I can understand why Blanche would want to live in her past and not accept her reality. She was embarrassed and didn’t want to be judged for the mistakes she
However Blanche is unable to get attention or protection throughout the story be cause of all the lies she's told. She also ends up hurting the people who are closest to her when she tries to hide who she really is. For example when she says " I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes magic!
Blanche’s immoral and illogical decisions all stem from her husband's suicide. When a tragedy happens in someone’s life, it shows the person’s true colors. Blanche’s true self was an alcoholic and sex addict, which is displayed when “She rushes about frantically, hiding the bottle in a closet, crouching at the mirror and dabbing her face with cologne and powder” (Williams 122). Although Blanche is an alcoholic, she tries to hide it from others. She is aware of her true self and tries to hide it within illusions. Blanche pretends to be proper and young with her fancy clothes and makeup but is only masking her true, broken self.
The way that Blanche’s character was written shows a strong tendency towards a mental health issue known as Histrionic Personality Disorder. The earmarks of this illness are as follows: excessively emotional, need for an audience, shallow and rapidly shifting emotions, inappropriate sexual or provocative behavior, and does not form strong relational bonds amongst a wh...
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.
This gradual fall and loss of her sense of reality is truly tragic. Blanche is a person largely driven by the part of her that wants to be liked and be accepted. She cares greatly about how she is viewed and how she looks which is seen throughout the play. Even at the end when she’s living almost completely in the imaginations of her mind she asks Stella and Eunice how she looks before being taken away to an insane asylum. Tennessee Williams, the author of the play, uses all the conflict between Blanche and others, specifically Stanley, to show that fantasy is unable to overcome reality. Stanley and Blanche are both the epitomes of fantasy and reality. Stanley is a man focused on sexual drive, work, and fighting. He is exhibited as animalistic and strongly driven by his desires which is shown when he says, “Be comfortable. That's my motto up where I come from.” Stanley loves and searches after reality which is why he is so set on breaking down the facade he sees in Blanche. Blanche on the other hand is running from her reality and her past. Her fantasy of being high class and chaste is the exact opposite of her reality which is why she wants a life like that so badly. She wants marriage and stability, two things she was jealous of Stella having after arriving in New Orleans. Her fantasy she was building in her new life is shattered when Stanley is able to learn of her past and bring reality crashing down on her. Williams
During scene one, the audience is introduced to Blanche as Stella's sister, who is going to stay with her for a while. Blanch tries her best to act normal and hide her emotion from her sister, but breaks down at the end of scene one explaining to Stella how their old home, the Belle Reve, was "lost." It is inferred that the home had to be sold to cover the massive funeral expenses due to the many deaths of members of the Dubois family. As Blanche whines to her sister, "All of those deaths! The parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way!" (21). The audience sees this poor aging woman, who has lost so many close to her, and now her home where she grew up. How could anyone look at her, and not feel the pain and suffering that she has to deal with by herself? Williams wants the audience to see what this woman has been through and why she is acting the way she is. Blanche's first love was also taken from her. It seems that everyone she loves is dead except for her sister. Death plays a crucial role in Blanche's depression and other mental irregularities. While these circumstances are probably enough for the audience to feel sympathy for Blanche, Williams takes it a step further when we see Blanche's...
Blanche wanted to start fresh when she went to visit her sister but Stanley would not give up on trying to bring her down. Stanley brings it up to Blanche that he has his suspicions about her when he says, “If I didn't know that you was my wife's sister I'd get ideas about you!”. Stanley investigating into Blanche is out of her control as she can not stop him from doing so. Blanche did things in her past but is trying to change her ways and her past is coming back to haunt her. Without Stanley’s countless efforts to bring down Blanche, she would be in a better situation than she ended up being in. Even the first time Blanche saw Stanley she knew he would try to bring her down. “The first time I laid eyes on Stanley I thought to myself, that man is my executioner! That man will destroy me”. Stanley does end up being her executioner and is the main reason for Blanche's downfall. In the end Blanche is left with nothing as everything she cared about is gone. This is the result of Stanley looking into her life and exposing her past. Stanley and his relentless efforts to bring down Blanche is out of her control and caused Blanche’s final
The first reason is lying that cause Blanche to go insane. Blanche is like the boy who cried wolf, she kept lying and lying. Blanche’s little sister Stella is always by her side an always gets protected by Blanche. But this time a quote I found was Stella saying “I couldn’t believe
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...
stayed behind and took care of the family while Stella ran off to find a new life, Blanche is
She is introduced as a fragile woman, who the readers begin to feel sympathy for her. She had been asked to leave her job, and she lost the family estate. The readers also learn that Blanche is conflicted with her past; she tries to hide who she was.... ... middle of paper ...
However, as her backstory is introduced Blanche is developed as a character. Because Blanche is shown to be a victim of the events from her past, readers can sympathize with Blanche and see that she has gone through more suffering than she deserved. As Stella had said, “You didn’t know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.”
which, as Williams suggests, "was too great for her to contain". As to whether her escape was "madness" can be debatable - although Blanche is clearly unstable at many points, some believe that Blanche is not. actually insane, suggested by Stella's comment in Scene 11 - "I. couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley. " From her first appearance on stage, Blanche is presented as being.
In A Street Car Named Desire, the whimsical dialogues that Blanche Dubois embarks on throughout conversations with characters such as Stella and Stanley, work in tandem to leave the victims distraught by verbal lashes and painstakingly ardent dissertations of there personal motives for continuing to travel down the various dissipate inroads of there life. The often-demoralizing manner in which Blanche convolutes the actions of these characters, seemingly labels her with the nominal reputation as the two-faced, conflicted observer. There is the depiction of a critically honest blanche who will speak her mind in a manner that is oblivious to the thoughts and feelings of her recipients, vs. the caricature of an innocent, delirious blanche, whose deliberations delude and shroud her ability to maintain a unaltered, open-minded consciousness when engaging in conversations with characters. However, amidst Blanches barrage of demoralizing criticism that leaves her victims in a dumbfounded manner, she presents her critiques with painstakingly well-acclimated spurs of unrepressed honesty that brandishes her assertions and accompanies them with an intrinsically meaningful compassion that at times is mistaken by other characters to be uncultivated regressions of disenchanting rancor, vehemence, and indignation expressed towards the welfare and manifestos of the characters she is persistent upon contending with.