Character Analysis: A Streetcar Named Desire

In “A Street Car Named Desire”, Williams depicts a realistic atmosphere that many readers would be familiar or relate with. He wrote this play under the assumptions that due to an illness it may be his last. “He set out to explore the far recesses of his mind to establish his main philosophy of life, "The apes shall inherit the earth." Williams was a very sickly and sensitive person in his youth and very easily subjected to the harshness and cruelty of others” (Marotous 2006). Williams filled his two main characters, Stanley and Blanche, with different attitudes toward sex, love, and opposing social status, allowing a power struggle to arise between them. The play at first look may appear to surely end on a happy note but after review it is clearly a tragedy.

Throughout the play Blanche struggles with her past sexual desires and when she meets Mitch, who like herself has also lost love, she sees a possibility of hope that she may be able to close the chapter of her deviant past and start a fresh, new life. The new hope of love is stopped when Stanley intervenes and tells Mitch of Blanche’s undesirable past. It seems all realistic thoughts have been completely lost for her and her reality fades completely. Ultimately, she is unable to overcome her desires, holier than though attitude, and after a heated argument is raped by her brother-in-law Stanley. With no one believing her side of the story, she is sent to a mental hospital in hopes of recovery. Although you may pity Blanche as the hopeless victim there are times where you are shown the role she plays in her own demise of reality. Williams’s themes of gambling, bowling, sexual desires, and drinking set the tone of this play expressing an ideal form of masculinity. Once Stanley enters into the play you automatically understand him as the everyday working class, dominant, possessive head of household. Stanley’s rough attitude towards