In the play A Street Car Named Desire, Tennessee Williams portrays Blanche Dubois as a flawed, fragile, and concealed moth. Charles Darwin, a well-known scientist, introduced the theory of “survival of the fittest” where certain genes within a living organism can help it survive longer and outlast other species. This theory is prominent throughout the play due to Blanche being described by the author as a moth. Moths have special attributes that help them survive. These attributes include a moth’s attraction to light, the dust found on its body, and its wings. These three traits of a moth create Blanche Dubois’s identity, and they force predators such as Stanley to adapt to her traits in order to destroy her. Light is an important aspect throughout this play; Blanche mentions early on in the play that she lost her husband. She also considers how she caused her husband’s death by calling him out on his masculinity, and treating him very insensitively for his “condition”. Before these incidents, she was married and had a good life, but after the death of her husband she went into gloomy despair. She worries throughout the play that if she went back to the …show more content…
Without the dust, a moth can’t veil itself from the eyes of predators. This represents Blanche because she says that a woman’s secret is to be cloaked by “fifty percent illusion” but without that cloak she is left defenceless against predators, just like a moth. This strongly connects to the game “7-card-stud.” The point of this card game is to conceal your hand, except as the other players get to know your cards it creates a sense of inferiority. It is this inferiority which predators like Stanley thrive on throughout the play. One of the best tactics to survival is that you have to be smarter than your opponents. Blanche does not show she has her dusted cloak throughout the play and this eventually leads to her
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 filled the void her husband left by having sex with random, younger men. She was drawn to them because they reminded her of her husband, Allen. Blanche states that “intimacies with strangers was all I seemed to fill my empty heart with” (Williams 128). Even with the countless encounters with strange men, Blanche never found anyone to fill the void. She tried to use the intimacies to distract her from her husband's death. The death of her husband enforced a new level of madness upon Blanche. She became more promiscuous as a result, which further demonstrates why the suicide of her husband was an illuminating moment in the play and how her internal struggle caused by her husband’s death changed her into a sex
Many authors like Aldous Huxley have come to state that “ignorance is bliss” in their own manners. In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, this message is passed on down to the audience through the characterization of Blanche DuBois. Blanche is a character who had her fall from grace. Coming from a rich family, she lost all of her wealth; and, thus, came to live with her sister, Stella. However, mentally, she still lives in the past. In other words, she’s ignorant of the present. This ignorance comes to be the foundation of her character.
“I can 't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.” - Blanche (p. 60). The fear that bright light has the power to reveal the truth is a reoccurring theme throughout the play, embodying the threat that follows Blanche everywhere she goes. In scene nine, Mitch comments on this, saying that he has never seen Blanche in daytime. She makes a series of excuses after which Mitch points a light at her. When this happens, Blanche confesses she only says what ‘ought’ to be true. This doesn’t make Mitch any more sympathetic towards her and she carries on, saying “I don’t want realism, I want magic!” whilst still standing in the light. This makes it clear that it is her own choice to stay in the darkness, and reality would only cause her to suffer. Confirming this, when Mitch turns the light off again, she bursts out crying, as if allowed to pretend again, not being forced by the light to keep on showing her true self, especially her age. She might feel that the light on her face brings out the whole truth, which is too painful for her to bear. The other characters in the play feel it is not correct for her to hide the past and nobody questions whether it is acceptable to live in deceit. “And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that 's stronger than this--kitchen--candle.”-
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...
In this play the character blanche exhibits the theme of illusion. Blanche came from a rocky past. Her young husband killed himself and left her with a big space in her heart to fill. Blanche tried to fill this space with the comfort of strangers and at one time a young boy. She was forced to leave her hometown. When she arrives in New Orleans, she immediately begins to lie and give false stories. She takes many hot bathes, in an effort to cleanse herself of her past. Blanche tries also to stay out of bright lights. She covers the light bulb (light=reality) in the apartment with a paper lantern. This shows her unwillingness to face reality but instead live in an illusion. She also describes how she tells what should be the truth. This is a sad excuse for covering/lying about the sinful things she has done. Furthermore, throughout the story she repeatedly drinks when she begins to be faced with facts. All these examples, covering light, lying, and alcoholism show how she is not in touch with reality but instead living in a fantasy world of illusion.
Whenever she became exposed to light, whether its candles or bulbs, it forces Blanche to confess towards the idea of hiding herself and creating this illusory image of herself with her own deception leading to lies towards Stella, Mitch and Stanley. For example, during the time Blanche has a Chinese lantern covering a light bulb and a conversation with Mitch near the end of the play where she says, “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 shadow, that's how it struck the world for me” (132). To Blanche, light once represent to her as a symbol of love simply as turning a blinding light on, Love is what illuminates the world for her but then turns to darkness after her husband dies. From that moment on, Blanche intentionally lives out her false reality where she makes her desirable but it only lead to guys like Mitch, a man she has love for, distancing himself from her after he figures her out and even when Stanley tears the lantern off the bulb, exposing her to reality. Dressing the bulb signifies how she dresses up reality and though she is a liar but we all can understand and pity her for wanting to change reality though she does it from both deception and pitiable
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...
According to Charles Darwin, the father of the modern theory of evolution, “it is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” Based on the example set forth in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, the principle that adaptability is the key to survival holds true in modern society. Streetcar chronicles the bitter struggle for survival between Blanche Dubois, a sophisticated but fading southern beauty, and Stanley Kowalski, her brutish brother-in-law. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams uses Stanley to represent an organism perfect adapted to life in the French Quarter. By showing that a person with primitive and animalistic traits can triumph over a more refined, intelligent individual, Williams demonstrates the idea of environment-specific adaptations being more important to survival than one’s place in the evolutionary line.
She passionately raves at length about the horrible deaths and her experience of loved ones dying around her; “all of those deaths… Father, Mother, Margaret, that dreadful way!” The horrific visions of bloated bodies and “the struggle for breath and breathing” have clearly cast a permanent effect on Blanche’s mind. She talks of the quiet funerals and the “gorgeous boxes” that were the coffins, with bitter, black humour. The deaths of Blanche and Stella’s family are important to the play as they highlight the desperation of Blanche’s situation through the fact that she has no other relative to turn to. This makes Stella’s decision at the end of the play seem even harsher than if Blanche had just simply shown up on her doorstep instead of going elsewhere.
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.
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...
was lobotomised in his absence and later institutionalised leading. many critics to believe that the character of Blanche may have arisen. from events in his own life. Blanche's tragic past involving both the death of her "young" husband and her consequent promiscuity with. The "young men" created an overwhelming amount of emotion for Blanche.
...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.
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.