Image is everything, the words we speak and how we present ourselves have an impact on how others view us. In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams we see how image affects the character of Blanche. The play is set in New Orleans, it is about a married couple, Stella and Stanley, and Stella’s sister, Blanche. In Scene One, Blanche comes to visit her sister under less than ideal circumstances, Blanche has to tell Stella that she lost Belle Reve. In this extract, Blanche tries her best to prolong the news. Throughout the play, Blanche’s mental health is questioned constantly. This extract is the first example we have of Blanche’s mental health deteriorating. In this extract, Williams shows how imagery, personification and agitated speech …show more content…
Blanche describes the deaths she witnessed compared to what Stella saw,“Funerals are quiet, but deaths- not always. Sometimes their breathing is hoarse, and sometimes it rattles, and sometimes they even cry out to you, ‘Don’t let me go.’...As if you were able to stop them!”(lines 32-35). Blanche’s deteriorating mental state is evident here, she refers to death as if it were a person. She acts as if it is death calling out to her not the person dying. Blanche gives death the attributes of a dying person, this is her dehumanizing the deaths in order for her mind to better process her losses. After all the deaths, Blanche comes up with the conclusion that death follows her, she says “Why, the Grim Reaper had put up his tent on our doorstep!... Stella. Belle Reve was his headquarters!” (lines 40-41). William’s use of personification shows that Blanche refers to death as if it were a real person with a personal vendetta against her. The distinction between reality and fantasy for Blanche is blurred, she believes that the Grim reaper is following her, which emphasizes her hysteria and anxiousness. Blanche’s paranoia stems from her believing that she caused these deaths, so used the Grim Reaper to disassociate these deaths from herself. She needs someone to blame because she could not handle that kind pressure. Blanche’s personification of death emphasizes her declining mental …show more content…
For example, Blanche starts to defend herself even before she admits she lost Belle Reve, “Well, Stella-- you’re going to reproach me, I know what you’re bound to reproach--but before you do --take into consideration-- you left! I stayed and struggled!” (lines 5-6). Williams use of hyphens indicate that Blanche takes many pauses in between her words. She does this because she is coming up with what to say on the spot. Her sentences are short, which shows that she is talking fast because she does not want to hear Stella’s response. Blanche is scared that Stella might blame her for the loss of Belle Reve. This fear causes Blanche to appear crazy because she is rambling on and on while Stella is still unaware about the status of Belle Reve. Furthermore, Stella is still confused about Blanche’s scatteredness, when she questions it Blanche says “I knew you would, Stella. I knew you would take this attitude about it!” (line 15). The use of repetition shows that Blanche is getting defensive, she has no reason to because she didn’t admit that she lost Belle Reve yet. Once again, Blanche is deferring the blame from herself, Blanche’s inability to take responsibility consumes her, she is more worried about how others think about her than anything else. She is working harder to convince Stella she is sane, yet comes off crazy. Blanche’s defensiveness makes her seem mentally
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,
In conclusion, Blanche’s desire for love and “magic” is unattainable because of her unforgettable past. Blanche’s history led her down a path of depression, alcohol and promiscuity and although she attempts to hide her past behind her clothes and paper lanterns, she battles with reality everyday. In the end however, Williams’ idea that love leads to destruction appears to lead to Blanche’s downfall, where as she walks out of the apartment and Stanley along with his entourage stand up to offer their respect/condolences to her as if she was dead.
Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it. She was passionately in love with Alan; but after discovering that he was gay, she could not stomach the news. When she revealed how disgusted she was, it prompted Alan to commit suicide. She could never quite overcome the guilt and put it behind her. Blanche often encountered flashbacks about him. She could hear the gun shot and polka music in her head. After Alan’s death, she was plagued by the deaths of her relatives. Stella moved away and did not have to deal with the agony Blanche faced each day. Blanche was the one who stuck it out with her family at Belle Reve where she had to watch as each of her remaining family members passed away. “I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths—not always” (Scene 1, page 1546). Blanche lost Belle Reve because of all the funeral expenses. Belle Reve had been in her family for generations, and it slipped through her fingers while she watched helplessly. Blanche’s anguish caused her loneliness. The loneliness fueled her abundance of sexual encounters. Her rendezvous just added to her problems and dirtied her rep...
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.
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...
She passionately raves at length about the horrible deaths and her experience of loved ones dying around her; “all of those deaths… Father, Mother, Margaret, that dreadful way!” The horrific visions of bloated bodies and “the struggle for breath and breathing” have clearly cast a permanent effect on Blanche’s mind. She talks of the quiet funerals and the “gorgeous boxes” that were the coffins, with bitter, black humour. The deaths of Blanche and Stella’s family are important to the play as they highlight the desperation of Blanche’s situation through the fact that she has no other relative to turn to. This makes Stella’s decision at the end of the play seem even harsher than if Blanche had just simply shown up on her doorstep instead of going elsewhere.
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
To conclude, the author portrays Blanche’s deteriorating mental state throughout the play and by the end it has disappeared, she is in such a mental state that doctors take her away. Even at this stage she is still completely un-aware of her surroundings and the state she is in herself.
Tennessee Williams uses motifs to help convey his idea that Blanche is deceiving, narcissistic and seductive. One can note how Blanche repeatedly wears extravagant white dresses or her red robe when she is acting particularly seductive, so that she makes people ponder that she is in fact guiltless and wholesome. Blanche's white dress is blemished which is representative of the fact that Blanche if far from being pure and wholesome even though the dress is a symbol of purity. Her world clings on misapprehension and trickery as can be understood by her emptying her heart out to Stella in scene three, "soft people have got to be seductive make a little temporary magic". She feels as if is it crucial to trick and deceive in order to persist in a world where she is "fading now" and her youthful beauty is departing. Tennessee Williams depicts Blanche as uncertain, self-conscious and hides behind her semblance of superficial beauty. With the use of the motif lighting, we can see how Blanche disappoints to live up to the facade that she po...
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...
There are 3 major themes in the play A Streetcar Named Desire, the first is the constant battle between fantasy and reality, second we have the relationship between sexuality and death, and lastly the dependence of men plays a major role in this book.
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.
...es and thinks that her hopes will not be destroyed. Thirdly, Blanche thinks that strangers are the ones who will rescue her; instead they want her for sex. Fourthly, Blanche believes that the ones who love her are trying to imprison her and make her work like a maid imprisoned by them. Fifthly, Blanche’s superiority in social status was an obscure in her way of having a good social life. Last but not least, Blanche symbolizes the road she chose in life- desire and fantasy- which led her to her final downfall.
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.
Blanche uses her fantasies as a shield; and her desires as her motivation to survive. Her fading beauty being her only asset and chance of finding stability. Stella’s relationship with Stanley also emphasis the theme Williams created in this book. They’re only bond is physical desire and nothing at all intellectual or deep rooted. Tennessee Williams exemplifies that their relationship which only springs from desire doesn’t make it any weaker. He also creates a social dichotomy of the relationship between death and desire.