Blanche Dubious and A Streetcar Named Desire
Blanche Dubious, appropriately dressed in white, is first introduced as a symbol of innocence and chastity. Aristocratic, refined, and sensitive, this delicate beauty has a moth-like appearance. She has come to New Orleans to seek refuge at the home of her sister Stella and her coarse Polish husband, Stanley. With her nervous and refined nature, Blanche is a clear misfit in the Kowalski's apartment.
Blanche represents a deep-seated attachment to the past. She has lived her whole life in Laurel, a small southern town; her family had aristocratic roots and taught Blanche about some of the finer things in life. Unfortunately, she cannot cope with life outside Laurel. Her life is a lesson in how a single tragic event can ruin the future; her refusal to come out of the time warp and cope with the real world, makes her unrealistic and flighty. At the age of sixteen, she fell in love with, worshipped, and eloped with a sensitive boy. She believed that life with Allan was sheer bliss. Her faith is shattered when she discovers he is a bi-sexual degenerate. She is disgusted and expresses her disappointment in him. This prompts him to commit suicide. Blanche cannot get over this. She holds herself responsible for his untimely death. His death is soon followed by long vigils at the bedside of her dying relatives. She is forced to sell
Belle Reve, the family mansion, to pay for the many funeral expenses. She finds herself living at the second-rate Flamingo Hotel.
In an effort to escape the misery of her life in Laurel, Blanche drinks heavily and has meaningless affairs. She needs alcohol to stop the polka music, symbolic of Allan's death, from running on in her head and to avoid the truth of her life. She surrenders her body to various strangers in an attempt to lose herself. She seduces young boys in memory of Allan. But her empty heart finds no peace, and her bad reputation ends her teaching career.
Blanche is an escapist who says, "I don't want realism". She hides from bright lights, just as she hides from the truth. Her delicate nature simply cannot bear the reality of present-day existence; she finds it too painful. She, therefore, convinces herself that she has remained pure because "inside, I never lied". She knows that her soul, or inner self, remained uninvolved in her physical encounters.
Boone had little formal education, but he did learn the skills of a woodsmen early in life. By age 12 his hunting skill and skill with a rifle helped keep his family well provided with wild game. In 1756 Boone married Rebecca Bryan, a pioneer woman with great courage and patience. He spent most of the next ten years hunting and farming to feed his family. In 1769 a trader and old friend, John Findley, visited Boone's cabin. Findley was looking for an overland route to Kentucky and needed a skilled woodsman to guide him. In 1769 Boone, Findley and five men traveled along wilderness trails and through the Cumberland gap in the Appalachian mountains into Kentucky. They found a "hunter's paradise" filled with buffalo, deer, wild turkey and meadows ideal for farming. Boone vowed to return with his family one day.
Blanches childhood was not an easy one for her. After both of her parents died and her sister Stella left her alone in Belle Reve she was helpless and could not keep it alive by herself. This ended up with her losing Belle Reve all together as she was left alone with it. “Oh, I guess he’s just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume, but maybe he’s what we need to mix with our blood now that we’ve lost Belle Reve”. Blanche comments on the fact that she and her sister no longer own Belle Reve and have to settle for
The loss of her beloved husband kept Blanche’s mental state in the past, back when she was 16, when she only cared about her appearance. That is why at the age of 30 she avoids bright lights that reveal her wrinkles. Blanche does not want to remember the troubles of her past and therefore she attempts to remain at a time when life was simpler. This is reinforced by the light metaphor which illustrates how her life has darkened since Allan’s suicide and how the light of love will never shine as brightly for Blanche ever again. Although, throughout the play Blanche sparks an interest in Mitch, a friend of Stanley’s, who reveals in Scene three that he also lost a lover once, although his lover was taken by an illness, not suicide, and therefore he still searches for the possibility of love, when Blanche aims to find stability and security.
When he was fifteen, the family moved to the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina, a trek that took over a year. At nineteen or twenty he left his family home with a military expedition in the French and Indian War. There he met John Finley, a hunter who had seen some of the western wilds, who told him stories that set him dreaming. But Boone was not quite ready to pursue the explorer's life. Back home on his father's farm he began courting a neighbor's daughter, Rebecca Bryan, and soon they were married.
Alot of people think of Daniel Boone as the brave pioneer wearing a coonskin hat, but he never wore a coonskin hat. You may have heard about him fighting in the Alamo, but Daniel Boone died before the battle at the Alamo took place. Although there are a lot of stories that aren't true, he did accomplish a lot in his life (Daniel Boone: Legend). Boone never stayed in one place for too long, but he stayed in one place long enough to marry Rebecca Bryan in 1756. “All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife” Boone once said (Daniel Boone Biography). In 1768 Daniel took his first trip to Kentucky to collect hides to pay off his debts. When he got enough, he left Kentucky for three years. In 1773, he persuaded five families to come with him and settle in Kentucky. While they searched for a place to settle, Indians attacked and killed most of the settlers, including one of Daniel’s sons. Violence in Kentucky raged against the settlers and Native Americans. One day Indians raided Daniel’s Settlement, and captured three girls, including...
Early in Blanche’s life before she arrived at the Kowalski’s residence, Blanche already led a life of promiscuity and alcoholism, which is exhibited when “she pours a half tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down.” Additionally, Blanche loses her job due to an inappropriate relationship with a student, and her excessive drinking throughout the play was triggered when she unknowingly married a homosexual man that later committed suicide after the discovery of his sexual preference. These events show who Blanche is as a person and how she operates in the world. She relies on her ability to act as an object of male sexual desire since her interactions with the males in the play always commence with flirtation. This is demonstrated when Blanche tells St...
...lled believed the verdict was right (“The Trial”). Another reason this trial has been important to the American judicial system and overall history is because although there was much evidence pointing to Simpson for committing the murder, he did have some of the best attorneys in the business and that showed the American public that possibly money or even celebrity status could get you out of murder. People began to think that if money has something to do with whether or not you’re guilty of something, poverty will ensure you injustice (“OJ”). The case brought into question fundamental tenets of U.S. law as the presumption of innocence, the adversarial trial, and the right to trial by jury (Kronenwetter). Many people believe that you can not understand the law system until you understand the O.J Simpson trial, and it is a trial that will always be remembered (“OJ”).
...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.
John, Davy's father, moved to Greene County where Davy was born. While Davy was still in dresses, his father moved the family to Cove Creek in Greene County, Tennessee, where he built a mill in partnership with Thomas Galbreath. When Davy was eight years old, the mill was washed away with his home. After this disaster John Crockett removed his family to Jefferson County where he built and operated a log-cabin tavern on the Knoxville-Abingdon Road. (This cabin has been restored and is now located at Morristown, 30 miles Southwest of Greeneville.) The young Davy no doubt heard tales told by many a westbound traveler - tales which must have sparked his own desire for adventure in the great western territories. In his dealings with his father's customers, Davy must also have learned much about human nature and so refined his natural skills as a leader. While Davy lived there he spent four days at the school of Benjamin Kitchen. He had a fight with a boy at school and left home to escape a "licking" from his dad.
Daniel Boone was born on October 22, 1734 and later died on September 26, 1820. He was an American pioneer and hunter whose frontier explorations made him one of the first heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the state of Kentucky. Despite resistance from American Indians, for whom Kentucky was a traditional hunting ground, in 1775 Boone blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky. There he founded Boonesborough, one of the first English-speaking settlements beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 people entered Kentucky by following the route marked by Boone.
Blanche represents a deep-seated attachment to the past.5 Her life is a lesson how tragic events events in the past can ruin a person's future. Her husband's death affects her the most.
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.
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 the play written by Tennessee Williams, "A Streetcar Named Desire", the use of his remarkable writing tactics and motifs are used to develop the main character Blanche throughout the play. As the play progresses, we gradually gain knowledge pertaining to Blanche and the type of individual she actually is in juxtapose to the facade she puts on. With clever usage of motifs such as lighting and flirtation, we can draw countless conclusions about Blanche throughout the play. Using the fore mentioned motifs we can contemplate that Blanche is developed into a deceiving, narcissistic and seductive being because of the use of motifs Williams amalgamated throughout the play.
A common theme often portrayed in literature is the individual vs. society. In the beginning of Robinson Crusoe , the narrator deals with, not society, but his family's views on how he was bound to fail in life if his parents' expectations of him taking the family business were not met. However, Defoe's novel was somewhat autobiographical. "What Defoe wrote was intimately connected with the sort of life he led, with the friends and enemies he made, and with the interests of natural to a merchant and a Dissenter" (Sutherland 2). These similarities are seen throughout the novel. "My father...gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design," says Crusoe (Defoe 8-9) . Like Crusoe, Defoe also rebelled against his parents. Unlike Crusoe, however, Defoe printed many essays and papers that rebelled against the government and society, just as Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, did in England by depicting society languishing in social malaise (Marowski 231). It were these writings that eventually got Defoe charged with libel and imprisoned (DIScovering Authors). In Defoe's life it was the ministry that his father wanted him to pursue (Sutherland 2), but, instead, Defoe chose to become a tradesman (DIScovering Biography). The depth of the relationship between Crusoe and his parents in the book was specifically not elaborated upon because his parent's become symbolic not only of all parents, but of society. In keeping this ambiguous relationship, Defoe is able to make Crusoe's abrupt exodus much more believable and, thus, more humane.