"It said all that I needed to say," was Tennessee Williams ' remark on his play A Streetcar Named Desire. Subsequent to experiencing an operation that brought about the expulsion of three inches of his digestive system, Williams persuaded that his next play would be his last. He set out to investigate the furthest openings of his psyche to set up his fundamental rationality of life, "The gorillas might acquire the earth." Williams was a wiped out and touchy individual in his childhood and effectively subjected to the brutality and remorselessness of others. In A Streetcar Named Desire, clearly, he sees most men as savages and that his sensitivities lie with the delicate, tender, unprotected beneficiary of the world 's remorselessness, who expects …show more content…
Blanche 's part in the suicide of her husband cause her to be wracked with guilt. Blanche reveals to Mitch she found out about her husband’s affair with another man. Blanche reveals her angry remark, her husband’s motivation for suicide, as she states, "It was on the grounds that on the moving floor not able to stop myself-I 'd abruptly said-I saw! I know! You nauseate me… '" (Williams 96). Understandably, Blanche rapidly endeavors to pursue another life. She quickly alters her life and hides her truth. Not long afterwards the accurate details of her life not only become blurred, they also become concealed to her friends and family who surround her but to Blanche herself; genuine reality seems inconvenient and difficult to her. Blanche goes from the place where she grew up to her sister, Stella 's, home in New Orleans. This trek introduces an ideal time for Blanche to get a clear slate to write another life and all the while pick up backing from Stella. By utilization of her psychotic untruths, it is here in New Orleans that Blanche changes occasions of her past and her identity. Blanche shrouds her genuine self behind a veil. She acts and depicts a …show more content…
From Stanley, Mitch takes in reality about Blanche 's past. She is surely not the kind, unassuming woman that he has been led to believe she is. Once Mitch makes it evident to Blanche, amid their discussion, that he is convinced she has been lying, that he will not deceive him, and that he now sees through her veil, she pointlessly shouts "I don 't need authenticity, I need magic!...I distort things to them. I don 't come clean" (Williams 117). Blanche is admitting to Mitch that she has been lying. Not only is Blanche giving validation to Stanley 's claim, her announcement is additionally uncovering her refusal to see the truth of her actions. Reality starts to crash downward on her. Her capacity to carry on with her imagine, pretend life is blurring quickly; her transition from illusion to reality is rapidly unwinding. Blanche no more can utilize hallucination as a shield to ensure
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,
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.
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...
Soon after Blanche arrives to live with her sister in New Orleans, she comes up with the plan for her pregnant sister, Stella, and herself to
She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and shields her past. The essential conflict of the story is between Blanche, and her brother-in-law Stanley. Stanley investigates Blanche’s life to find the truth of her promiscuity, ruining her relationships with Stella, and her possible future husband Mitch, which successfully obtain his goal of getting Blanche out of his house. Blanche attempts to convince Stella that she should leave Stanley because she witnessed a fight between the two. Despite these instances, there is an essence of sexual tension between the two, leading to a suspected rape scene in which one of their arguments ends with Stanley leading Blanche to the bed.
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...
Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest American dramatists of the 20th century. Most of his plays take us to the southern states and show a confused society. In his works he exposes the degeneration of human feelings and relationships. His heroes suffer from broken families and they do not find their place in the society. They tend to be lonely and afraid of much that surrounds them. Among the major themes of his plays are racism, sexism, homophobia and realistic settings filled with loneliness and pain.1 Tennessee Williams characters showed us extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior.2 One of his most popular dramas was written in 1947, and it is called A Streetcar Named Desire.
Given Blanche’s hysterical behavior, and due to her history of lying and deceit, Blanche is difficult to believe. Not to mention, the other people around Blanche becoming convinced of Blanche’s mental instability does not help Blanche’s case. Stanley refers to Blanche as “downright loco - nuts,” (Williams 121). Mitch, then, asks Blanche is she is “boxed out of your mind?” (Williams 141). Later, the audience discovers that Blanche also suffers from hallucinations. She sees “lucid reflections appear on the walls: that are in “odd, sinuous shapes,” (Williams
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.
She looks for empathy in all the wrong places. She looks for it when with strangers, with Stanley, Mitch, and Stella. The tragedy of Alan’s death is a leading cause for Blanche’s desire for attention and empathy. After his death he becomes involved with the hotel “flamingo”. It is here where she mistakenly thinks that sex, is a form of empathy. This empathy causes her character to have a blackened image of how to gain empathy from others. Once she gets run out of the flamingo she attempts to gain attention from Stanley. “It 's mine, too. It 's hard to stay looking fresh. I haven 't washed or even powdered my face and here you are!” Blanche understands that Stanley is a man who can at least support his wife. She flirts with Stanley, in a desperate need to feel, safe and cared for. Stanley understands that Blanche is manipulative, and he does not give empathy towards her. The tragic Irony with Blanche is that she does not recognize true empathy when it is given to her, Mitch has a deep care for Blanche, to the extent that he is willing to marry her. “You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be—you and me, Blanche?” Mitch shows a great amount of compassion towards Blanche, but blanche cannot recognize this empathy and sees it more as an opportunity to manipulate him, which doesn’t turn out well in the end. Stella is the
Relationships in A Streetcar Named Desire In many modern day relationships between a man and a woman, there is usually a controlling figure that is dominant over the other. It may be women over men, men over women, or in what the true definition of a marriage is an equal partnership. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Stanley is clearly the more dominant figure over Stella.
Stanley’s treatment of Blanche leaves her alone once again, with what little dreams of returning to her previous status destroyed like the paper lampshade that once gave her the shield from the real her she desperately craved. Stella, the one person Blanche believed she could rely on, sides against her husband after Blanche’s ordeal, leading Blanche to be taken away, relying on the “kindness of strangers”. This final image that Williams leaves us with fully demonstrates that Blanche has been cruelly and finally forced away from her “chosen image of what and who” she is, leaving an empty woman, once full of hope for her future.
Significant events will have drastically different effects on each of us. When faced with challenges, some individuals are inclined enough to adapt in order to overcome these obstacles, whereas others will find themselves unable to do so, and ultimately stumble along the road leading to their destiny. Tennessee Williams explores a female protagonist’s reaction to the cataclysmic events that befall her throughout the modern drama, A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche Dubois suffered from a lack of financial security, and a tarnished reputation that continued to befall her. Nonetheless, her resourcefulness never faltered. Blanche’s life is impacted by several significant events which ultimately alters the course of her destiny. Through Blanche, Tennessee Williams develops the idea that we are all faced with challenges that impact our lives, but in the end, it’s how we deal with those circumstances that truly determine our destiny.
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 faces pain.
A very important moral lesson that I gained from A Streetcar Named Desire is to always tell the truth. Telling lies ultimately got Blanche Dubois nowhere. She was lonelier than ever at the end of the play. She starts off lying intentionally. For example, she tells Stella at the beginning that the school superintendent, “suggested I take a leave of absence” from her job as a teacher (Williams 14). In reality, the principal fired her for having an affair with a student. It is suspected that she is lying and later our suspicions are confirmed. Even though a reason isn’t mentioned as to why she lies, it is probably to save herself grief from her sister or to possibly keep up her appearance. Towards the end, Blanche says she received a telegram from “an old admirer of mine... An old beau” who invited her to “A cruise of the Caribbean on a yacht” (Williams 152, 153). At this point, she even begins to believe her own lies. She has lied for so long to others and even to herself that she ultimately ends up believing them. When Tennessee Williams shows us through the sound of the polka music and the shadows on the wall what is going on in Blanche’s head, we are left to wonder if something is truly wrong. She even told Mitch that she didn’t lie in her ...