Illusion and Fantasy in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
An illusion is fake belief whereas fantasy is imagining fanciful
visions. Both these themes are important in the play because they show
how they can be mistaken for reality by each character in the play.
The themes illusion and fantasy are involved from the start of the
play. We learn from when Stanley throws the package of meat down to
Stella that he is a dominant character and that his relationship with
Stella isn’t as happy as it may seem to be. Even in scene 2, Stanley’s
aggressiveness is shown towards Stella, ‘since when do you give me
orders?’. However, the most significant example of his brutality is
during the Poker Game in scene 3. This is where the themes illusion
and fantasy are brought in, because Stella lives in a fantasy world
with Stanley. We learn how Stanley keeps Stella under the thumb.
However violent Stanley might be, she won’t reveal that her
relationship has problems to Blanche or anyone, ‘it wasn’t anything as
serious as you seem to take it. In the first place, when men are
drinking and playing poker anything can happen.’ Stella has
psychologically made herself get used to this behaviour from Stanley,
‘why, on our wedding – soon as we came in here – he snatched off one
of my slippers and rushed about the place, smashing the light bulbs
with it.’ She has made it seem normal because she is illusioned by the
thought that what they have is too strong to let go. Stanley is like
an addictive drug to her, for example, in scene 4, Stella is in
‘narcotised tranquillity’. However rough he may be, Stella needs
Stanley as a fix. It is as though she is brainwashed by him. When
Blanche comments on the previous nights even...
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becomes desperate and unhinged. She sees marriage as her only means of
escaping her demons, so Mitch’s rejection amounts to a sentence of
living in her internal world. Once Mitch crushes the make-believe
identity Blanche has constructed for herself, Blanche begins to
descend into madness. With no audience for her lies, which Blanche
admits are necessary when she tells Mitch that she hates reality and
prefers “magic,” Blanche begins performing for herself. Yet Blanche’s
escapist tendencies no longer show her need to live in a world full of
pleasant bourgeois ease. Instead of fancy and desire, her new
alternate reality reflects regret and death. She is alone, afraid of
both the dark and the light; her own mind provides her with a last
support of escape. Her fantasies control her, not the other way
around, but still she shrinks from the horror of reality.
Identity in Contemporary American Drama – Between Reality and Illusion Tennessee Williams was one of the most important playwrights in the American literature. He is famous for works such as “The Glass Menagerie” (1944), “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947) or “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)”. As John S. Bak claims: “Streetcar remains the most intriguing and the most frequently analyzed of Williams’ plays.” In the lines that follow I am going to analyze how the identity of Blanche DuBois, the female character of his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, is shaped. Firstly, we learn from an interview he gave, that the character of Blanche has been inspired from a member of his family.
Stanley oftenly abuses Stella whenever he is drunk. One night, Stanley brings his friends over for a poker night. Mitch leaves the table in order to talk to Blanche. Stanley begins to get furious since Mitch is no longer playing. As more and more interruptions keep occurring, Stanley is furious and breaks the radio Blanche and Mitch were using. Stella then calls Stanley an animal. “He advances and disappears. There is a sound of a blow. Stella cries out.”(57) Stanley is usually abusive when he's either drunk or frustrated. After Stanley strikes her, Stella leaves the house and goes to her neighbors house. Blanche follows her sister upstairs to support Stella so she does not feel alone. Stanley then calms down and calls for Stella to come back. She returns and falls into Stanley's arms. Stella is very loyal to Stanley, she stays with him because he is her husband and does not want to change that. This is why she ignores her sister's pleas. Stanleys actions prove to the reader that he is an abusive husband to Stella and that Stella tolerates
Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in 1911. As a successful playwright, his career was greatly influenced by events in his life. He was noted for bringing the reader "a slice of his own life and the feel of southern culture", as his primary sources of inspiration were "the writers he grew up with, his family, and the South." The connection between his life and his work can be seen in several of his plays.
Everyone has experienced a situation in life where it's like a rug has been pulled out from under them. Well, T. Williams’ novel A Streetcar Named Desire portrays a similar situation of three unconventional characters whose reality is not the American Dream that they are striving for. Blanche, Stella, and Stanley approach life hoping for different outcomes in their lives. But what is the American Dream they were striving for? Simply put, by looking at the principles of America, the primary dream for everyone is to have a well-lived life. For some people this includes a family, success, happiness, independence, money, and love. If these are T. Williams’ constructs of the American Dream, then Stella and Stanley Kowalski may never find their
In Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire the characters represent two opposing themes. These themes are of illusion and reality. The two characters that demonstrate these themes are Blanche, and Stanley. Blanche represents the theme of Illusion, with her lies, and excuses. Stanley demonstrates the theme of reality with his straightforward vulgar ness. Tennessee Williams uses these characters effectively to demonstrate these themes, while also using music and background characters to reinforce one another.
In Stella’s case, she chose her relationship with Stanley over her sister.
During the late nineteen-forties, it was common for playwrights such as Tennessee Williams to use symbolism as an approach to convey personal thoughts, through the attitudes of the characters and the setting. Williams' actors have used symbolism to disguise the actuality of their thoughts and to accommodate the needs of their conservative audience. A Streetcar Named 'Desire' has a few complicated character traits and themes. Therefore, they have to be symbolised using figures or images to express abstract and mystical ideas, so that the viewers can remain clueless. Williams not only depicts a clear personality of the actors
Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest American dramatists of the 20th century. Most of his plays take us to the southern states and show a confused society. In his works he exposes the degeneration of human feelings and relationships. His heroes suffer from broken families and they do not find their place in the society. They tend to be lonely and afraid of much that surrounds them. Among the major themes of his plays are racism, sexism, homophobia and realistic settings filled with loneliness and pain.1 Tennessee Williams characters showed us extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior.2 One of his most popular dramas was written in 1947, and it is called A Streetcar Named Desire.
The conflict between Stanley and Stella climaxes in scene ten. In this scene Stanley openly takes Blanche apart piece by piece he begins with unenthusiastic comments such as "Swine huh?
He makes no motion to stop, runs up the stairs and explains to his wife what’s going on, similar to what would occur in an equal relationship. Instead, he continues down the street like a boy with no responsibilities. Stella yells, “Where are you going,” and then asks if she could come to watch, he agrees but doesn’t stop waiting for her. This scene demonstrates how Stella follows Stanley along, and serves him according to what he wishes to do and when he wants to do it. In scene three, Stanley is having his poker party (pg. 57).
Our lives are consumed by the past. The past of what we once did, what we once accomplished, and what we once could call our own. As we look back on these past memories we seldom realize the impact these events have on our present lives. The loss of a past love mars are future relationships, the loss of our family influences the choices we make today, and the loss of our dignity can confuse the life we live in the present. These losses or deaths require healing from which you need to recover. The effects of not healing can cause devastation as apparent in the play A Streetcar Named Desire. The theme of A Streetcar Named Desire is death. We encounter this idea first with the death of Blanche and Stella's relationship as sisters. Blanche and Stella had a life together once in Bel Reve and when Stella decided to move on in her life and leave, Blanche never could forgive her. This apparent in the scene when Blanche first arrives in New Orleans and meets Stella at the bowling alley. Stella and Blanche sit down for a drink and we immediately see Blanche's animosity towards Stella. Blanche blames Stella for abandoning her at Bel Reve, leaving Blanche to handle the division of the estate after their parents die. As result of Stella's lack of support, we see Blanche become dependent on alcohol and lose her mental state. Blanche comes to be a a terrible reck through out the play as we learn of the details of her life at Bel Reve. Her loss of the entire estate and her struggle to get through an affair with a seventeen year old student. This baggage that Blanche carries on her shoulders nips at Stella through out eventually causing the demise of her relationship. As Blanche's visit goes on with Stella, the nips become too great and with the help of Stanley, Stella has Blanche committed to a mental hospital, thus symbolizing the death of the realtionship they once had. The next death we encounter in the film is the death of Stella and Stanley's marriage. Our first view of Stanley is of an eccentric man, but decent husband who cares deeply for his wife. However, as as Blanche's visit wears on, we come to see the true Stanley, violent and abusive.
In the story Alice in Wonderland, the world of Wonderland represents the main antagonist Alice’s fantasy that is fueled by her desire of staying in the past and remaining a child. Ultimately, she fears the changes that come with becoming an adult; thus, she resists reality and embraces the lies of her fantasy of staying a child by staying in Wonderland. Furthermore, this is similar to how the main antagonist in A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois, resists reality by lying to herself and everyone she knows because she also fears reality. Unlike Blanche, Alice soon realizes that by embracing her fantasies and desires she would be led down a path of destruction because fantasy and reality are incompatible. Likewise, Tennessee Williams covers the topic of the incompatibility of fantasy and reality in A Streetcar Named Desire by making the character Blanche DuBois, which represents fantasy, resist and have a conflict with the character Stanley Kowalski, which represents reality, because he wants to convey that it is natural to fear and resist reality and take solace in desire and fantasy.
“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces” (Sigmund Freud). Illusion can be a part of our lives; however, if taken to the extreme, it can lead one to forget reality. Every individual has problems in life that must be faced with reality and not with illusion, even though it might throw one into flames of fires. Tennessee Williams' play of a family reveals the strength of resistance between reality and desire, judgment and imagination, and between male and female. The idea of reality versus illusion is demonstrated throughout the play. Blanche's world of delusion and fantastical philosophy is categorized by her playful relationships, attempts to revive her youth, and her unawareness in the direction of reality of life. In Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, through the study of character and tropology, fantasy and illusion allow one to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is.
Blanche uses her dilutions and tries to sway Stella away from Stanley, yet Stella takes all these slanders and belittles them. Stella does this because she loves Stanley and since she is pregnant with his baby.
Thomas Lanier Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi in 1911, he was the second of the Williams’ three children. By his own candid accounts, he described his family situation as being troubled, to put it lightly. His parent’s marriage was ordinarily tense, most likely as a result of his father’s alcoholism, physical intimidation and neglect. Thomas’s kindred troubles did not end with his parent’s unpleasantness, his beloved older sister, Rose, was institutionalized as a young woman and remained in care for the reminder of her life. He, himself suffered a mental breakdown, following his recuperation he moved to New Orleans and changed his name to Tennessee, this move invigorated his lifestyle and provided him with a new source of inspiration.