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Mental health in a streetcar named desire
Critical analysis of a blanches character from a streetcar essay
Essay on streetcar named desire
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The arts stir emotion in audiences. Whether it is hate or humor, compassion or confusion, passion or pity, an artist's goal is to construct a particular feeling in an individual. Tennessee Williams is no different. In A Streetcar Named Desire, the audience is confronted with a blend of many unique emotions, perhaps the strongest being sympathy. Blanch Dubois is presented as the sympathetic character in Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire as she battles mental anguish, depression, failure and disaster. 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... ... middle of paper ... ...ehavior is after her and Stanley have an inappropriate encounter (possibly raped her). After that point the audience knew that after that point, Blanche could no longer stay at Stella and Stanley's apartment. Considering all of these circumstances, how can any rational being claim that anyone but Blanche is the sympathetic character? In conclusion, the story of Blanch Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire is a very sad and pitiful one. Williams stirs the audience's emotions and basically begs them to show Blanch sympathy. I also believe that many people feel as Blanche did, alone, worthless, yet trying desperately to cover their emotion, which reaches out to the viewers in a more personal way. There could not be a more rattling ending than to see old pitiful Blanch dragged off to a nut house, leaving the audience in the same mood Blanche herself would have been.
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.
which, as Williams suggests, "was too great for her to contain". As to whether her escape was "madness" can be debatable - although Blanche is clearly unstable at many points, some believe that Blanche is not. actually insane, suggested by Stella's comment in Scene 11 - "I. couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley. " From her first appearance on stage, Blanche is presented as being.
Sambrook, Hana., and Tennessee Williams. A Streetcar Named Desire. 3rd ed. London: York P, 2000. Print.
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...
Blanche grew up living on a plantation in Laurel, Mississippi which is why she considers herself a Southern Belle, despite the changing environment around her. Her life at Belle Reve does not fulfill the dreams that once encircled the wealthy plantation. Instead, Blanche finds herself assuming the responsibilities for the “epic fornications” of her families past lives, along with the financial debt that comes with owning the house. This isn’t the only thing Blanche has been left to take care of though. She is also left to simultaneously pay for the funerals of her relatives, and after being unable to reimburse her debts, Blanche eventually succumbed to the loss of her cherished land. In addition to the loss of Belle Reve, she is also impacted by the lifelong guilt coming from the fact that she made a cruel r...
Blanche Dubois is a dynamic character that at first, is very difficult to figure out. She hides behind confusing stories and lies to protect herself from her traumatic past. In the begin of the play William’s leaves multiple clues to Blanche’s lying nature. She tells a strange tale of Bella Rev and challenges Stanley every chance she gets. She has many odd actions however I believe that these action, particularly her interactions with the newspaper boy and her fear of the light have a deeper meaning. At the end of the play she is unable to deal with the mess she has made and as a result her subconscious takes over. She can no longer deal with the crumbling remains of her life and no one else can either. As a result, she is institutionalized at the end of the play. But her institutionalization and lies don’t make her a bad person. One needs to look at the motive behind her lies and actions to disover the truth.
The first reason is lying that cause Blanche to go insane. Blanche is like the boy who cried wolf, she kept lying and lying. Blanche’s little sister Stella is always by her side an always gets protected by Blanche. But this time a quote I found was Stella saying “I couldn’t believe
Empathy is a fundamental human connection, it allows us to strengthen relationships and build a stronger character. In Tennessee Williams play Streetcar Named Desire Blanche is weakened by the lack of a basic human trait. The lack of empathy that Blanche gives and receives greatly affects her poor resilience to Hardships in her life. Thus, causing her to be an emotional train wreck and a highly flawed character. Blanche often receives no empathy through her character because of her inability to empathize with others; this is demonstrated by her relationship with her husband, her sister, brother in law Stanley, and the death of her family. Through these Devastating events she searches for empathy in all the wrong places. Her struggle without
Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire revolves around a character named Blanche and her inability to control her delusions and attitude. According to Griffies, “Williams once told an interviewer: ‘My work is emotionally autobiographical. It has no relationship to the actual events of my life, but it reflects the emotional currents of my life’” (). Williams’s emotional state can be compared to Blanche’s, who is somewhat a victim of her condition, but the true villain overlooked in plain sight are the male abusers in her life. These abusers only served to form and encourage her emotional instability and led to her woeful stride to isolation. During his childhood, his parents had a victimizing relationship much like that
A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams, fallows the story of Blanche, a troubled woman who must move on with her sister, Stella, and Stella’s husband, Stanley after losing the family home. Be that as it may, Blanche isn’t as innocent as she appears. In fact, throughout the whole of the play, one can never be sure if they are seeing the genuine Blanche, or just a face of that pleases the characters she is interacting with. In the 1951 movie adaptation of the play, under the direction of Elia Kazan, the costume design, as well as Vivien Leigh’s acting, highlight the many conflicting sides of Blanche DuBois.
In order to feel worthy, Blanche must feel wanted, so she welcomes adoration of any kind. Thus, Blanche desperately grasps onto the fact that she “excited some admiration” in her youth (Williams 38). Consequently, Blanche seeks the companionship of younger men, possibly to hold onto her golden years of “admiration.” She seduces one of her students and initiates an affair with him. After being caught and sent away from Laurel, Blanche finds herself on a streetcar named Desire to her sister Stella’s home in Elysian Fields. Once in Elysian Fields, it is obvious Blanche has not learned her lesson. Even though she admits that she has “got to be good - and keep my hands off children,” she flirts with a young man by touching his shoulders, telling him “You make my mouth water… Come here. I want to kiss you, just once softly and sweetly on your mouth!” (Williams 96). She then kisses him without waiting for his approval, proving that Blanche succumbs to her
Now let’s talk about, tone of this screenplay i.e. what’s the zest of the feelings in this screenplay. According to me, what I felt throughout this play is “Sympathy”. I felt sympathetic towards Blanche. All she wants in her life is love and care and she mentions it in one of her dialogues she says, “I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can’t be alone! Because—as you must have noticed—I’m – not very well… [Her voice drops and her look is frightened.]” (Williams, pg.92). Blanche’s rape in the last scene is the most driving point of the play, that particular scene convinces the sympathetic approach of the play. When in the last scene, Blanche is talking to Stella, she seems totally trapped in her delusional self
Blanche who had been caring for a generation of dying relatives at Belle Reve has been forced to sell the family plantation. Blanche is a great deal less realistic than Stanley and lives in illusions which bring upon her downfall.
The play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is an intriguing play about a clash between two class groups. Blanche Dubois portrays herself as a high economic citizen where her sister and her husband are contrasted as lower class. Class is significant throughout the play because it provokes negative relationships and negative feelings amongst the main characters.
When Blanche DuBois visits her sister, Stella in Elysian Fields for the first time, it becomes clear that the two sisters’ images each woman has been displaying is glossed over. The secrecy each sister maintains suggests tension developing overtime due to contrasting opinions about the proper way to live. The first instance of potential disconnect between characters is Blanche’s tendency towards alcoholism, evident as soon as she arrives in Stella’s home. Blanche notices a bottle of whiskey peeking out of a closet and helps herself to a glass before “tossing it down.” She then “carefully replaces the bottle and washes out the tumbler at the sink.” Soon, as Stella arrives to greet Blanche, Blanche puts on this act of innocence and pretends to find the alcohol for the first time in Stella’s presence: “I know you must have some liquor on the place! Where could it be, I wonder?