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A streetcar named desire characters' portrayal
Analysis of a streetcar named desire
Analysis of a streetcar named desire
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Tennessee Williams; poignant modern play “A Streetcar Named Desire” explores the relationship between an individual’s capacity for resilience and their ability to empathize with others. Williams characterizes Stanley Kowalski as a rough and stubborn man in order to depict how an individual’s lack of empathy for others can negatively affect their ability to handle hardship. Stanley’s loyalty to his friends, and passion for his wife, are all endangered by Blanche’s arrival and her judgmental view of him and his life. Stanley’s “animal” and “primitive” nature are central to his identity, which is evident in his work, and of brawling. He doesn't appreciate when Blanche calls him a ‘polack’. He lacks resilience because when Blanche calls him a …show more content…
Conflicts first arise when Blanche reached at Stanley’s house and right away Stanley’s empowerment is challenged who always had control over his house, and more importantly on Stella, his wife. Stanley’s complicating nature was first hinted when he beats his wife, which is not alarming and is evident that he molested his sister-in-law. Blanche offended Stanley right away as he was called a ‘polack’ by him. Blanche also opposes Stanley as she described him ‘animal thing’. A visible section of conflict between Blanche and Stanley occurred over ‘Belle Reve’ and Stanley’s ‘Napoleonic code’ argument. Blanche repeatedly told Stanley that she lost everything in ‘Belle Reve’ but she didn't have any validation to go with her fiction. Another precise conflict is when Stanley ‘investigated’ Blanche past in which he found out that Blanche is a prostitute as she doesn't want ‘light’ to shine on her ‘realism’ and how Blanche was always dependent on the ‘kindness’ of ‘strangers’ because no one empathized with her. Blanche’s presence was so unacceptable for Stanley that he even had to buy her a ‘bus ticket’ so she could leave, this indicates that Stanley neither had empathy left for Blanche nor was resilient to what happened at the start. In the end their personalities did not go hand in hand, neither of them views their life the same way. There were too many differences among them to allow them to get along. They were directly created to foil each
Resiliency is one concept that has never been the human races forte. Many things that happen in our current day and age require a great deal of perseverance and resiliency. People often will give in to the problems in their lives and learn to accept them, instead of persevering through them and working out the issues. The fact of the matter is, if you learn to persevere through problems, your life will be a lot more happy and pleasant to live. In Tennessee Williams’ play, “ A Streetcar Named Desire” suggests that you cannot give up on issues; you must be resilient to those issues and persevere to be happy.
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.”
Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire is a overly dramatic play that concludes in a remarkable manner. The play takes off by introducing Stanley and Stella, a married couple whom live in New Orleans. They have a two-sided relationship, very loving but abusive. Then suddenly Blanche shows up, Stella’s sister, and informs Stella that their home in Belle Reve was lost. A few days later, Blanche meets and becomes attracted to Mitch, a friend of Stanley. Blanche sees Stanley as an abusive husband and contrasts him to Mitch. Blanche immediately begins to develop deep emotions for Mitch because he is very romantic and a gentleman. Blanche begins to talk to Stella because she does not want her sister to be abused.
During early times men were regarded as superior to women. In Tennessee William’s play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Stanley Kowalski, the work’s imposing antagonist, thrives on power. He embodies the traits found in a world of old fashioned ideals where men were meant to be dominant figures. This is evident in Stanley’s relationship with Stella, his behavior towards Blanche, and his attitude towards women in general. He enjoys judging women and playing with their feelings as well.
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.
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
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”.
Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a play wrought with intertwining conflicts between characters. A drama written in eleven scenes, the play takes place in New Orleans over a nine-month period. The atmosphere is noisy, with pianos playing in the distance from bars in town. It is a crowded area of the city, causing close relations with neighbors, and the whole town knowing your business. Their section of the split house consists of two rooms, a bathroom, and a porch. This small house is not fit for three people. The main characters of the story are Stella and Stanley Kowalski, the home owners, Blanche DuBois, Stella’s sister, Harold Mitchell (Mitch), Stanley’s friend, and Eunice and Steve Hubbell, the couple that lives upstairs. Blanche is the protagonist in the story because all of the conflicts involve her. She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and with shielding her past.
In one conversation with Blanche, Blanche subtly insults him. He realizes this and thunders “Now let’s cut the re-bop!” (40) and scaring Blanche in the moment. With his loud, booming voice, Stanley is able to cause Blanche to cover her ears in pain and exhibit that he is powerful enough to be able to cause discomfort by merely raising his voice and putting her back in her place. Stanley obviously doesn’t do well with insults to his name because when Stella calls him a drunk animal, “Stanley charges after Stella… There is the sound of a blow… [and] the men rush forward and there is grappling and cursing” (63). It is obvious here that Stanley doesn’t like to be compared to an animal and began to take action to prove that that isn’t what you say to someone like him. However, it is ironic that his reaction is very animalistic in order to convey his strength and the magnitude of his masculinity towards his woman and towards the other men as he shakes them off. Another similar instance is when they were at the dinner table for Blanche’s birthday supper and he exclaims “Don’t you ever talk that way to me… I am the king around here, so don’t forget it” (131)!
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.
Empathy is a fundamental human connection, it allows us to strengthen relationships and build a stronger character. In Tennessee Williams play Streetcar Named Desire Blanche is weakened by the lack of a basic human trait. The lack of empathy that Blanche gives and receives greatly affects her poor resilience to Hardships in her life. Thus, causing her to be an emotional train wreck and a highly flawed character. Blanche often receives no empathy through her character because of her inability to empathize with others; this is demonstrated by her relationship with her husband, her sister, brother in law Stanley, and the death of her family. Through these Devastating events she searches for empathy in all the wrong places. Her struggle without
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 ...
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.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a play of multifaceted themes and diverse characters with the main antagonists of the play, Blanche and Stanley infused by their polarized attitudes towards reality and society ‘structured on the basis of the oppositions past/present and paradise lost/present chaos’(*1). The effect of these conflicting views is the mental deterioration of Blanche’s cerebral health that, it has been said; Stanley an insensitive brute destroyed Blanche with cruel relish and is the architect of her tragic end. However, due to various events in the play this statement is open to question, for instance, the word ‘insensitive’ is debatable, ‘insensitive’ can be defined as not thinking of other people’s feelings but Stanley is aware of what he’s doing understanding the mental impairment he causes Blanche.