What Is The Juxtaposition In A Streetcar Named Desire

In Tennessee William’s play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, he uses two of his main characters to show the juxtaposition of the upper and lower class societies in the late 1940s. Blanche is an upper class woman with an air of sophistication and pretentiousness in everything she does and says. Stanley is a lower class man who is full of crude remarks and vulgar habits. They are, in every sense of the word, opposites. Through his descriptions of the characters, and the obvious power struggle displayed between them, Williams is able to capture the shifting of power in the southern societies in the aftermath of the depression and World War Two. Blanche and her sister Stella grew up in a seemingly wealthy environment a small town in Mississippi. It

The underlying theme of the play is desire, and the way that Stanley and Blanche deal with their desires is one of the biggest differences between them. Stanley embraces all of his desires in a somewhat animalistic way. When he eats, he gets food all over himself. He has many vices, including drinking, smoking, and gambling. He has a very bad temper, and when he wants something he will take it. He is not shy about his sex life, and does not even try and act modest around Blanche or his friends. All of these qualities come together and are best exemplified in scene 3 of the play, when Stanley is with his friends, drinking, smoking, and playing poker. The stage directions say “STANLEY gives a loud whack of his hand on her thigh” (Williams 110). From that, it is clear to see that Stanley believes that he controls Stella and has little regard for her feelings, because after he smacks her, stella says “Thats not fun, Stanley…It makes me so mad when he does that in front of people” (Williams 110). Blanche, on the other hand, tries her very best to mask her desire. She cares a great deal about her outer appearance, and makes sure that she is always presentable. She is constantly lying about how much she drinks, trying to hide the fact that she might have a problem. She often pretends she has no idea where the liquor is hidden, even though the reader (or the audience watching the play) knows that she found it soon after arriving in New