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Ramsey Parra IB English 12 Period 5 Ms. Reynolds A Streetcar Named Desire 3/27/15 Pages 13-27 • The play takes place in a house in New Orleans called Elysian Fields. The house is between a river and some train tracks. • Stanley arrives and yells for Stella, his wife, to catch a package of meat. He then goes bowling and Stella follows. Here, we can see gender roles early on in the play. • Eunice lets Blanche into the apartment and goes after Stella. Soon after, Blanche finds a bottle of whiskey and takes a drink. • Blanche talks about the quality of the apartment, asking how Stella could live here. Stella tries to explain that New Orleans is different and that the apartment isn’t so bad. Blanche promises to say no more about …show more content…
Mitch assures Blanche that everything will be fine. • Blanche cannot believe Stella returned to him that night. She assures Blanche that Stanley was calm. Stella continues to convince her that she is quite content and happy in their current situation. Blanche ignores Stella and attempts to think of some way out of the situation, even though Stella repeatedly says she doesn't want out. Quotes 1) "after all, a woman's charm is fifty percent illusion," Throughout the play, Blanche attempts to put up a façade concealing her true identity. She lies to keep up the appearance of a wealthy southern belle. She also uses the darkness to hide her true age from Mitch 2) “I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.” Blanche takes the naked truth - the stark bare lightbulb, the rude remark - and dresses it up prettily to make everyone happier and everything easier. That she speaks of talk and action as analogous to a lightbulb shows that she considers the remedy for uncouth behavior and appearance to be a paper lantern, an external cover, rather than a change from
However Blanche is unable to get attention or protection throughout the story be cause of all the lies she's told. She also ends up hurting the people who are closest to her when she tries to hide who she really is. For example when she says " I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes magic!
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.
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
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.
The writer, Tennesse Williams uses symbolism and imagery to help convey the idea that Blanche is deceptive, egotistical and seductive. We can clearly discover how deceptive Blanche is by the symbolism that Williams uses throughout the play. One can note how Blanche continually wears white dresses or a red kimono when she is being especially flirtatious, so that she makes people think that she is innocent and pure. In Scene Five Blanche's white dress, a symbol of purity is stained which is symbolic of the fact that Blanche if far from being pure. Blanche's world hinges on illusion and deception as can be seen when Blanche pours her heart out to Stella in scene five, "soft people... have got to be seductive... make a little - temporary magic". Blanche feels that she must trick and deceive in order to survive in a world where she is "fading now!" and her looks are leaving her. We are introduced to Blanche as a "delicate beauty" that "must avoid strong light". Williams, portrays Blanche as an uncertain character who hides behind the veneer of outer beauty and who when is placed under the spotlight, fails to live up to the person she would like people to think that she is. Williams also provides strong imagery of her as a moth, as she is dressed in white clothes and is fluttering. This imagery of Blanche as a moth is further emphasised when Blanche herself later states, "put on soft colours, the colours of butterfly wings and glow".
“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.”-
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.
This gradual fall and loss of her sense of reality is truly tragic. Blanche is a person largely driven by the part of her that wants to be liked and be accepted. She cares greatly about how she is viewed and how she looks which is seen throughout the play. Even at the end when she’s living almost completely in the imaginations of her mind she asks Stella and Eunice how she looks before being taken away to an insane asylum. Tennessee Williams, the author of the play, uses all the conflict between Blanche and others, specifically Stanley, to show that fantasy is unable to overcome reality. Stanley and Blanche are both the epitomes of fantasy and reality. Stanley is a man focused on sexual drive, work, and fighting. He is exhibited as animalistic and strongly driven by his desires which is shown when he says, “Be comfortable. That's my motto up where I come from.” Stanley loves and searches after reality which is why he is so set on breaking down the facade he sees in Blanche. Blanche on the other hand is running from her reality and her past. Her fantasy of being high class and chaste is the exact opposite of her reality which is why she wants a life like that so badly. She wants marriage and stability, two things she was jealous of Stella having after arriving in New Orleans. Her fantasy she was building in her new life is shattered when Stanley is able to learn of her past and bring reality crashing down on her. Williams
She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and shields her past. The essential conflict of the story is between Blanche, and her brother-in-law Stanley. Stanley investigates Blanche’s life to find the truth of her promiscuity, ruining her relationships with Stella, and her possible future husband Mitch, which successfully obtain his goal of getting Blanche out of his house. Blanche attempts to convince Stella that she should leave Stanley because she witnessed a fight between the two. Despite these instances, there is an essence of sexual tension between the two, leading to a suspected rape scene in which one of their arguments ends with Stanley leading Blanche to the bed.
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.
By believing her own lie, Blanche disconnects herself from the reality in which she lives. She becomes so immersed in her lies that she herself is unable to tell where her fantasies end and reality begins. It is no longer a lie to maintain her appearance but a delusion that she believes in. In her mind she is not an aging women with few social contacts but a proper young lady with friends of high standings.
She looks for empathy in all the wrong places. She looks for it when with strangers, with Stanley, Mitch, and Stella. The tragedy of Alan’s death is a leading cause for Blanche’s desire for attention and empathy. After his death he becomes involved with the hotel “flamingo”. It is here where she mistakenly thinks that sex, is a form of empathy. This empathy causes her character to have a blackened image of how to gain empathy from others. Once she gets run out of the flamingo she attempts to gain attention from Stanley. “It 's mine, too. It 's hard to stay looking fresh. I haven 't washed or even powdered my face and here you are!” Blanche understands that Stanley is a man who can at least support his wife. She flirts with Stanley, in a desperate need to feel, safe and cared for. Stanley understands that Blanche is manipulative, and he does not give empathy towards her. The tragic Irony with Blanche is that she does not recognize true empathy when it is given to her, Mitch has a deep care for Blanche, to the extent that he is willing to marry her. “You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be—you and me, Blanche?” Mitch shows a great amount of compassion towards Blanche, but blanche cannot recognize this empathy and sees it more as an opportunity to manipulate him, which doesn’t turn out well in the end. Stella is the
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...
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.