In "A Streetcar Named Desire", Tennessee Williams leaves a large amount of stage direction to the actor and the director. The choices in the performance made by the latter can neither be right nor wrong, as there are so many options open for artistic interpretation. The extract from Scene three is no exception and within the dialogue there are numerous suggestions for explanation of characters, music, setting and forewarning for the audience.
"The game is still going on" (page 144). The opening quote of this extract is key in foreshadowing the events of the poker night scene. It refers not only to the game Blanche plays with Stanley by belittling and flirting with him but also makes reference to Scene two ..."Lay...her cards on the table" (page.137) which Stanley says in reference to what a women would have to do to gain his interest, something which Blanche fails to do. Blanches haughty and self-important pretence around Stanley, her insistent ridicule of Stella, and constant criticism concerning their life, all provide seeds for later conflict.
The world according to Blanche is one that differs from that of others and she also seems to be the most fictional character of the four in this extract. Many comments made by Blanche require cultural de-coding; for example her line "One that's been picked a few days" in reference to looking ."..done in..." make reference to her promiscuity. However this does not cause her illusion to dissipate in any way, it is simply blatant probing for further compliments from Stella. This is something which Stella, who seems to have the patience of a saint, complies with every time. Stanley language, on the other hand, greatly supports what he is saying. His bluntness is what makes...
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...tionship is impossible as we are dealing with a women who is lost in the psychological maze of her mind.
Throughout this scene I would utilize sounds and music to differ the atmosphere, to foreshadow future events and to expose the internal works a character. The music should not dictate the play, merely support it and inspire a sense of the mood of a particular scene or moment. A combination of subtlety such as the physicality of the characters, the timing, tone, spatial relationships and music would let the audience know what is taking place in the story itself. The latter details would also explain the more profound meaning behind what is occurring at that precise moment in the play. Whether it be foreshadowing, or have other such structural purposes, nothing should be spelt out to the audience, as this is partly the thrill of going to the theatre.
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 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
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 ...
During the confrontation during the poker game, which immediately ends it, readers are exposed to the reality of Stella and Stanley’s
From the first moment the Williams introduces Blanche, it is evident that she believes herself to be of a higher class, and this is shown with how uncomfortable she is around those of a lower class. When Blanche is shown an act of kindness from Eunice, “Why don’t you set down?” her response to this person of a lower class than herself is dismissive, “…I’d like to be left alone.” She instantly expects too much from a place called ‘Elysian Fields’. Blanche feels uneasy about being around those that are of a lower class, especially of those who she does not know, which is clear when she is reunited with her sister. She immediately becomes ostentatious in her actions, and begins to speak with “feverish vivacity”, “Stella, Oh Stella, Stella! Stella for Star!” Perhaps she is relieved to be with her sister once again, or it could be that she feels she now has someone to be dominant over, since she has little control over her own life. Blanche comes across as being very motherly towards Stella, “You messy child” in spite of the fact that Stella is soon to beco...
The writer, Tennesse Williams uses symbolism and imagery to help convey the idea that Blanche is deceptive, egotistical and seductive. We can clearly discover how deceptive Blanche is by the symbolism that Williams uses throughout the play. One can note how Blanche continually wears white dresses or a red kimono when she is being especially flirtatious, so that she makes people think that she is innocent and pure. In Scene Five Blanche's white dress, a symbol of purity is stained which is symbolic of the fact that Blanche if far from being pure. Blanche's world hinges on illusion and deception as can be seen when Blanche pours her heart out to Stella in scene five, "soft people... have got to be seductive... make a little - temporary magic". Blanche feels that she must trick and deceive in order to survive in a world where she is "fading now!" and her looks are leaving her. We are introduced to Blanche as a "delicate beauty" that "must avoid strong light". Williams, portrays Blanche as an uncertain character who hides behind the veneer of outer beauty and who when is placed under the spotlight, fails to live up to the person she would like people to think that she is. Williams also provides strong imagery of her as a moth, as she is dressed in white clothes and is fluttering. This imagery of Blanche as a moth is further emphasised when Blanche herself later states, "put on soft colours, the colours of butterfly wings and glow".
...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.
After two world wars, the balance of power between the genders in America had completely shifted. Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a harsh, yet powerful play that exposes the reality of the gender struggle. Williams illustrates society’s changing attitudes towards masculinity and femininity through his eloquent use of dramatic devices such as characterization, dialogue, setting, symbolism, and foreshadowing.
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
In this passage, Williams’ emphasises the nature of Blanche’s demise through the contrapuntal mode of the scene juxtaposing Blanche’s bathing with Stanley and Stella’s conversation. Williams wrote in a letter to Elia Kazan, who was to direct the film production of the play, that ‘It is a thing (misunderstanding) not a person (Stanley) that destroys (Blanche) in the ends’. This passage is significant as it shows the extent of Stanley’s misunderstanding of Blanche and his stubbornness to ascertain his condemnations to Stella. Furthermore, the use of colloquial lexis shows the true feebleness of Stanley’s claim because his judicial façade is diminished and shows the dangerous influence of claims as he sways Mitch away from Blanche. Stella’s character
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 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.
Stella Dubois is unconcerned about her survival and is more concerned about her life with Stanley. The plot is introduced when Stella’s sister Blanche moves in with Stella and her husband. Blanche is a dynamic character and that causes conflict with other characters, revealing the other character’s true nature, including Stella’s. Blanche consistently comments to Stella about Stanley’s character stating that “he’s common… He’s like an animal…Yes, something- ape-like about him”(Williams, 82-83). Despite Blanche and Stella’s wealthy and privileged upbringing, she’s head over heels in love with Stanley, who even described himself as unrefined. In Scene three, Blanche stirs trouble with Stanley by turning on the radio when he told her to turn it off.
...itome of southern aristocracy, a world dominated by old-fashioned laws and conservative morals, whilst Stanley embodies the fast-moving, vigorous asperity of the modern world and New Orleans. Blanche, quite literally, summarises her attitude to such cultural differences in the line "maybe he's what we need to mix with our blood now that we've lost Belle Reve and have to go on without Belle Reve to protect us." In this sense, she views the male to be a figure of security and protection, perhaps the only worldly perception that she shares with her opposition whose chauvinism exposes a characteristically defined view of the universal man and his role as predator, protector and guardian. Otherwise, their notions are so diverse that their incompatibility drives the plot along and fuels arguments in every scene.
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.