A Streetcar Named Desire Fantasy Vs Reality Essay

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Fantasy worlds are fun until reality surfaces and the truth is revealed. In Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche Dubois is an aging Southern Belle trying to run from her past. Blanche refuses to admit to the poor decisions she has made along the way and creates a fantasy world in her head to cover the truth. Blanche’s continuous conflict with her poor decisions and her desires cause a battle of fantasy versus reality. Blanche often tries to escape reality through motifs: light, bathing, and alcohol. Blance avoids appearing in bright light throughout the play to help her escape reality. Her reaction to light can be viewed as an attempt to hide her true nature and her fading beauty and youth. Blanche covers the naked bulb with a Chinese paper lantern: BLANCHE. I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a action” (Williams 60). Rather than facing the truth on why she is avoiding the light, she hides behind excuses. Blanche never allows for Mitch to see her in daylight. Blanche tells Mitch about her husband Allan: BLANCHE. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery-love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in the shadow, that’s how it struck the world to me” (Williams 114). In her past, light …show more content…

“Blanche seems to have a problem with drinking since the beginning, when she is in the bar with her sister” states critic Irina-Ana Drobot (Drobot 155). Stella offers Blanche a lemonade but instead Blanche requests a scotch. Blanche claims throughout the play that she is not much of a drinker but had the continuous tendency to drink. She attempts to keep her drinking a secret. Blanche uses alcohol as a coping mechanism to escape stress and withdraw from reality. When Blanche first shows up at Stella’s and is awaiting her arrival, she finds some

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