A Streetcar Named Desire is a play of multifaceted themes and diverse characters with the main antagonists of the play, Blanche and Stanley infused by their polarized attitudes towards reality and society ‘structured on the basis of the oppositions past/present and paradise lost/present chaos’(*1). The effect of these conflicting views is the mental deterioration of Blanche’s cerebral health that, it has been said; Stanley an insensitive brute destroyed Blanche with cruel relish and is the architect of her tragic end. However, due to various events in the play this statement is open to question, for instance, the word ‘insensitive’ is debatable, ‘insensitive’ can be defined as not thinking of other people’s feelings but Stanley is aware of what he’s doing understanding the mental impairment he causes Blanche. From the moment Stanley and Blanche met the contrast between the two characters was apparent, Stanley even points out ‘The Kowalskis and the DuBois have different notions’ (S2:pg.135*). Williams uses the dramatic device of colors to symbolize a distinction between Stanley and Blanche; Stanley wears vivid colors ‘roughly dressed in blue denim’(S1:pg.116*) representing his masculinity and authority he possesses in the Kowalski household, before Blanche arrived, in contrast to Blanche who ‘is daintily dressed in a white suit’ (S1:pg.117*) representing purity and femininity. Blanche wears white at the beginning of the play thinking she will be able to hide her impure behaviour but Stanley saw right her act and knew she would be a threat to his marriage with Stella. The reason being is that Blanche constantly criticizes Stanley making derogatory comments about him calling him a ‘common’ and ‘bestial’(S4:pg.163*) along with conde... ... middle of paper ... ...roke down and her sister hadn’t believed that she was raped she felt isolated in her illusion which concealed reality with her final words being ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’ showing that she had no family to turn to. Works Cited *Quotes from the play: Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar named Desire and Other Plays, Penguin Twentieth-Century, ISBN 0-14-018385-X *(1)- Critic- Harkness, 24- source (http://www.cercles.com/n10/bak.pdf): CRITICISM ON A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A Bibliographic Survey, 1947-2003, JOHN S. BAK, Université de Nancy II-C.T.U. *(2)- Critic- Tharpe, 513- source (http://www.cercles.com/n10/bak.pdf): CRITICISM ON A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A Bibliographic Survey, 1947-2003, JOHN S. BAK, Université de Nancy II-C.T.U. *(3) Critic- Shirley Galloway 1993- source (http://www.cyberpat.com/shirlsite/essays/street.html)
Williams, Tennessee. "A Streetcar Named Desire." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 2337-2398.
Her first problem is with the heroine of the play, Blanche DuBois, who, she claims, is "ironically made guilty for her own victimization. No longer fully human, she is simply a metaphor of all that is vile about women. Blanche cannot, then, claim tragic stature or even our sympathy precisely because she is a victim of rape. And as she becomes responsible for her own victimization, Stanley is left to glory in his ascendancy. This aspect of Streetcar arises from the misogyny which colors the play…" (Lant 226). Admittedly, Blanche does flirt with Stanley briefly at the beginning of the play—just as many women playfully flirt with their brothers-in-law. But as her relationship with Stanley deteriorates, she makes it quite obvious to him that she loathes the sight of him. Though the world in which Lant lives may be one in which a woman, playfully sprinkling her brother-in-law ...
In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, main character Blanche Dubois to begin with seems to be a nearly perfect model of a classy woman whose social interaction, life and behavior are based upon her sophistication. The play revolves around her, therefore the main theme of drama concerns her directly. In Blanche is seen the misfortune of a person caught between two worlds-the world of the past and the world of the present-unwilling to let go of the past and unable, because of her character, to come to any sort of terms with the present.
In Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, its form of a Southern Gothic enables the playwright to base the play on sexual identity and judgement and the female characters all experience their struggle to liberate from their current position. For example, Blanche is notably known for her situation – The ‘polka dot’ which recurs throughout the play as a testimony to Blanche’s past. The playwright presents these situations using the play’s structure of a recurring cycle of a daily life of the characters. Unlike Alfieri in A View from the Bridge, A Streetcar Named Desire has no narrator and mostly focuses on the characters to establish Williams’ point of view. Perhaps, t...
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.
In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams uses his brilliant writing to bring life to his characters in the story. I will be composing a character sketch on Stanley, one of the main actors in the play. I will focus on evaluating Stanley's ever changing character traits in the role he plays. They consist of different moods that he demonstrates during the play: his aggressiveness, his love for Stella and also his rudeness and cruelty towards Blanche.
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.
During the time period Tennessee Williams, author of the play A Streetcar Named Desire, lived in, men were typically portrayed as leaders of the household. Through Williams' usage of dialogue, specific descriptions of each characters, as well as sound, he illustrates to readers of today's society how differently a man and woman coexisted in the mid-1900s, compared to today. Through the eyes of a topical/historical theorist, who stresses the relationships between the story and the time period it takes place, the distinction between today's society and that of five decades past, can be observed with depth and precision.
Character Conflict in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. 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.
In Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Stella and Stanley Kowalski live in the heart of poor, urban New Orleans in a one-story flat very different from the prestigious home Stella came from. This prestige is alive and well inside Stella’s lady-like sister, Blanche Du Bois. Over the course of Blanche’s life, she has experienced many tragedies that deeply affected her, such as the death of her gay husband, the downward spiral in her mental health that followed, and most recently the loss of her wealth and therefore social status. She constructs a proverbial lampshade to mask her pain and to control the last part of her world that she is able to, the image she projects into the world for herself and others to see. The brooding prince of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” chooses a very similar way of coping with the hand life has dealt him. When his mother remarries his uncle only a month after his father’s passing, the ghost of Hamlet’s father visits the young prince demanding avengement. These events cause Hamlet to try to replace the old lampshade that helped him cope with reality by changing his own image and fooling himself and others into thinking he’s crazy. An examination of both plays reveals that the importance of subjective truths and the way in which Blanche and Hamlet use them to cope transcends the context of both plays.
Written in 1947, A Streetcar Named Desire has always been considered one of Tennessee William’s most successful plays. One way for this can be found is the way Williams makes major use of symbols and colours as a dramatic technique.
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.
Human conflict is ever-present in sex and desire. But, not until the streetcar named Desire was first shown in 1947 had the corporeal act of sex been so openly depicted on stage as a basis of dominance and power. The streetcar in the New Orleans Street, Elysian Fields, is an urban harsh world, where the laws of nature are the enduring rules of engagement. As the wild sex and violence are intimately connected, Intercourse is a product of aggressive dominance, competition and submission to a certain extent than romance. Although Williams repeatedly claimed that his piece cautioned against the world where brutes were permitted to reign, the play 's end, shows the sexually imposing dominance placed upon Blanche by Stanley, whom demolished her illusions
In 'A Streetcar Named Desire' we focus on three main characters. One of these characters is a lady called Blanche. As the play progresses, we gradually get to know more about Blanche and the type of person she really is in contrast to the type of person that she would like everybody else to think she is. Using four main mediums, symbolism and imagery, Blanche's action when by herself, Blanche's past and her dialogue with others such as Mitch, Stanley and the paperboy, we can draw a number of conclusions about Blanche until the end of Scene Five. Using the fore mentioned mediums we can deter that Blanche is deceptive, egotistical and seductive.
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.