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Theme of violence and cruelty in a streetcar named desire
Themes in streetcar named desire
Themes in streetcar named desire
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Blanche and Marie are portrayed as emotionally fragile characters who are trying to escape traumatic pasts. Both Blanche and Marie have had a traumatizing past, which leads them to become fragile people. Blanche has come from her hometown, Laurel, to visit her sister in New Orleans after being fired from her job for having relations with a student and multiple other men at a hotel called Tarantula Arms. On the other hand, Marie set out to the city to escape the sexual abuse from her uncle that she endured back home. In A Streetcar Named Desire, it is evident that because of Blanche's rough past it is hard for her to open up and have relations with a man. When she first meets Mitch she asks him to place a paper lantern over a light bulb because …show more content…
I want magic!” (145). Therefore, Blanche is too fragile and does not have the courage to face the truth about her age, instead she would rather live a lie. Unlike Blanche, Marie did not cause her traumatizing past, instead it was forced upon her. Although it is not directly mentioned in the short story “The Yellow Sweater”, it is clear that Marie, is some way, was sexual abused by a direct family member; most likely her uncle. As she as walking down a highway a business man picked her up, offering to drive her to the city. At first she hesitated wondering if he would do the same thing her uncle did, but she viewed him more like a father figure so she climbed in. After driving for a while, Marie's fragile nature became evident when the business man placed his hand along the collar of her coat. She attempted to move away but he pulled her closer and he said he could “....feel the fragility of her beneath his hand...” (6). Therefore, unlike Blanche, Marie does not show her fragile nature through words rather than through actions. As a result, it is evident that both Blanche and Marie are fragile because of past traumatizing
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,
Blanche’s immoral and illogical decisions all stem from her husband's suicide. When a tragedy happens in someone’s life, it shows the person’s true colors. Blanche’s true self was an alcoholic and sex addict, which is displayed when “She rushes about frantically, hiding the bottle in a closet, crouching at the mirror and dabbing her face with cologne and powder” (Williams 122). Although Blanche is an alcoholic, she tries to hide it from others. She is aware of her true self and tries to hide it within illusions. Blanche pretends to be proper and young with her fancy clothes and makeup but is only masking her true, broken self.
Shakespeare specifically leaves out key details on her character. Was she in an affair with Claudius before the murder? Does she know Claudius was the one to kill King Hamlet? Did she plot with him?
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.
“Her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed… looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district. (Page 15) Blanche makes it a point to hide her alcoholism and true life from her sister, by telling her about her fictional life Blanche purposely points out to Stella that she is not an alcoholic and says, “Now don’t get worried, your sister hasn’t turned into a drunkard, she’s just all shaken up and hot and tired and dirty!” (Page 19) Blanche speaks to Stella in third person disassociating herself from the reality of her problem. She also feels the need to tell Stella that one drink is her limit, then pours herself a third. She continues her version of reality when she tells Stella that she is on a leave of absence from teaching. Stella listens to her sister and never questions her actions or motives. After a few drinks Blanche’s instability is easier to decipher. She says, “I want to be near you, got to be near somebody, I can’t be alone! Because—as you must have noticed—I’m – not very well…” (Page 23) Blanche tells Mitch, “There’s so much—so much confusion in the world.” (Page 61) Her world is confusing she also says, “I need kindness.” These are important comments the first shows her mental state the second tells what she is in search of. Mitch and Stella are both kind to her, but when Blanche no longer has their kindness she
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...
The play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams first opened in Boston in November 1947. It also opened later that year in New York and ran for 855 performances. It shows a confrontation between the Old South and traditional values and the materialistic and industrial ‘new’ America. This turbulent confrontation is shown through the characters of Blanche and Stanley, with Blanche’s sister Stella caught in the middle. It was written after The Great Depression and the American Civil War. The novel Atonement by Ian McEwan was first published in 2001. It is set in 1935 and is about Briony a 13 year old girl who make a mistake that dramatically changes the lives of her sister Cecilia and her childhood friend Robbie. She spends the rest of her life trying to atone for what she did.
After Mitch forcefully removes the paper lantern from the light bulb, Blanche “utters a frightened gasp” (1.9.14). Within the scene, the paper lantern serves yet another symbolic function. The night when Blanche meets Mitch, she asks him to place the lantern onto the light bulb. Just as the lantern protects Blanche from the light which reveals her age, it creates a façade which conceals her past. With Mitch’s love Blanche believes that the proper persona which she invented for herself could become her identity, thus magic becomes reality. However, as Mitch undresses the light bulb, he exposes Blanche vulnerabilities. Even though Mitch possesses masculinity, he does so to a lesser extent than Stanley. This passage is mildly reminiscent of Stanley and Stella’s wedding night when Stanley smashes the light bulbs in the apartment. Even though Stanley’s actions are more extreme than Mitch’s both carry a sexual connotation and reveal animalistic tendencies. Furthermore, as Mitch stares intently at Blanche in the light, “she cries out and covers her face” (1.9.25). By turning on the light, Mitch for the first time has gotten a good look at Blanche, but to do so he is violating her sense of self-worth. Although Mitch continues to berate Blanche for lying to him, he is still physically attracted to Blanche. Mitch’s cruelty is accepted by Blanche and later in the scene still asks if Mitch
Firstly, the reader may initially feel Blanche is completely responsible or at least somewhat to blame, for what becomes of her. She is very deceitful and behaves in this way throughout the play, particularly to Mitch, saying, ‘Stella is my precious little sister’ and continuously attempting to deceive Stanley, saying she ‘received a telegram from an old admirer of mine’. These are just two examples of Blanches’ trickery and lying ways. In some ways though, the reader will sense that Blanche rather than knowingly being deceitful, actually begins to believe what she says is true, and that she lives in her own dream reality, telling people ‘what ought to be the truth’ probably due to the unforgiving nature of her true life. This will make the reader begin to pity Blanche and consider whether these lies and deceits are just what she uses to comfort and protect herself. Blanche has many romantic delusions which have been plaguing her mind since the death of her husband. Though his death was not entirely her fault, her flirtatious manner is a major contributor to her downfall. She came to New Orleans as she was fired from...
Stella Dubois is unconcerned about her survival and is more concerned about her life with Stanley. The plot is introduced when Stella’s sister Blanche moves in with Stella and her husband. Blanche is a dynamic character and that causes conflict with other characters, revealing the other character’s true nature, including Stella’s. Blanche consistently comments to Stella about Stanley’s character stating that “he’s common… He’s like an animal…Yes, something- ape-like about him”(Williams, 82-83). Despite Blanche and Stella’s wealthy and privileged upbringing, she’s head over heels in love with Stanley, who even described himself as unrefined. In Scene three, Blanche stirs trouble with Stanley by turning on the radio when he told her to turn it off.
...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.
Blanche Dubois, a refined and delicate woman plagued by bad nerves, makes her first appearance in scene one of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. She unexpectedly arrives in New Orleans to visit her sister Stella Kowalski who ran away after their father’s death. Upon their reunion, Blanche is sharp-tongued and quick to state her shock over the unsavory status of the apartment in comparison to the luxurious plantation where the two sisters were raised. Though dissatisfied by the living conditions, Blanche quickly explains that she had been given leave of absence from her teaching position due to bad nerves and could not stand being left alone—her excuse to invite herself to stay with Stella for an undetermined period of time. It
Blanche DuBois is a character full of life tragedies and struggles with her internal conflicts throughout the play. The first introduction of Blanche portrays her as a more cultured and highly sophisticated individual, than the average local in Elysian Fields. Dubois was quick to claim to be from an upper class of society, by daintily dressing in white suite with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earnings of pearl, white gloves and hat (Williams 95). The color white usually signified something that was pure and blameless, which was the total opposite with Blanche, all this was part of an image she was trying to portray. She tried covering up the truths of her life like; her sexual deviants, the loss of her job, and her alcoholism. All these events foreshadows the downfall of Blanche’s character which eventually led her to the insane asylum. She is an extremely complicated character who seems to be out of her element both physically and mentally, and seems to be stuck in her youthful years. Blanche’s mind is all disarrayed leaving her so lost and confused about life allowing her to lash out in ways that are sexual in nature. Her sexual tendencies are exceedingly inappropriate do to the nature of her actions. Balance tries to avoid the true reality of what was going on in her life, it was as if it was problematic for her to differentiate between reality and the desires of her heart. She just wanted a better future for herself, by trying to submerge herself in a life that was constructed off lies and deception. She captivated herself in romantic fantasies that begun as something that was harmless, then escalates into something that is morally unacceptable.
Blanche wants to be in a stable relationship, what she needs is a better coping mechanism apart from being her promiscuous self, and what she desires is to be youthful and appear attractive in the eyes of every man. What Stella wants is for Blanche and Stella to get along, but she can only choose one so she needs to think about her family not just herself, but what she desires more than anything is Stanley, Blanche states, “ What you are talking about is brutal desire-just desire-Desire!- the name of that rattle –trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street down another…” more deeply she digs herself into it. What Stanley wants is Blanche out of his life he states, "And wasn 't we happy together wasn 't it all okay till she showed here?" (1827), what he needs is to remain the dominant one in the family not just let someone come in and step all over his pride, but what he desires is his sexual relationship with Stella and for everything to go back the way it was. What Mitch wants is to not be so lonely especially know that his mom is dying and she wants to see him settled, what he wants is a steady relationship something long term and along the lines of marriage, but his desires are to be with
The main protagonist of the story, Elizabeth Bennet (nicknamed both Lizzy and Eliza), is the second daughter in the Bennet family. Second only to her elder sister in beauty, Elizabeth’s figure is said to be “light and pleasing,” with “dark eyes,” and “intelligent…expression” (24). At 20 years old, she is still creating her place in society. Known for her wit and playful nature, “Elizabeth is the soul of Pride and Prejudice, [she] reveals in her own person the very title qualities that she spots so easily” (“Pride and Prejudice”) in others. Her insightfulness often leads her to jump to conclusions and think herself above social demand. These tendencies lead her to be prejudice towards others; this is an essential characteristic of her role