The Unnecessary Decline of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire
Upon reviewing the drama, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, it would appear that the character of Blanche DuBois is worthy of closer inspection. With her previous occupation as a teacher of American literature and her former social status being that of a well-bred woman of the very traditional Old South, Blanche could be any human being transferring from one culture to another with customs far different from the ones being left behind. Even today it could happen that someone is suddenly confronted with a totally new and different value system with which he must learn to cope in order to be accepted into his new environment. That is the situation in which Blanche finds herself. After close inspection of the plot of A Streetcar Named Desire, it appears that the course of the play could quite easily have been turned from decline and tragedy to rescue and triumph for Blanche DuBois with only a few minor adjustments.
A streetcar named Desire brought Blanche to the last station of her decline. “Blanche's spine or leitmotif is `find Protection'; the tradition of the Old South says that it must be through another person... her problem has to do with her tradition... the thing about the tradition in the 19th century was that it worked then “(Donahue 30). But today Blanche can't feel safe within the bounds of the Old South traditions anymore. On the contrary “...it [tradition] makes Blanche feel alone, outside of her society. Left out, insecure, shaky” (Donahue 32).
In the exposition of the play, Blanche arrives in her new environment and does not feel the least bit comfortable when she sees how her sister lives. Blanche p...
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...n mind and body because a community is only as strong as its weakest link. Williams knew this and had a great desire to help those less fortunate than he. He tried to do this through his works, by calling attention to the problems that many people faced on a daily basis, thereby forcing his audiences to choose to either ignore the problems or to do something to bring about change.
Works Cited
Bloom, Herald (ed.). Tennessee Williams. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Donahue, Francis. The Dramatic World of Tennessee Williams. New York: Frederic Ungar Publishing Co., 1964.
Hirsch, Foster. A Portrait of the Artist-The Plays of Tennessee Williams. London: Kennikat Press, 1979.
Londre, F.H. Tennessee Williams. New York: Frederic Ungar Publishing Co., 1979.
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. Stuttgart: Phillip Reclam, 1988.
...ms." Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1977. 45-60.
Suzan Harjo is a Native American rights activist, writer, lecturer, and poet from the Hodulgee Muskogee and Cheyenne tribes. She helped recover more than 1 million acres of stolen tribal lands and served as a liaison between the United States Congress and Native American tribes. Suzan acted as the main plaintiff in Harjo v. Pro Football, Inc., the successful lawsuit imploring the Washington Redskins to change their name. Harjo’s victory against the Redskins influenced several more football teams to change their offensive names.
Darwin took copious notes, captured insects and animals and selected plants. These he preserved in jars and took them back to England where he thought about the implications of what he had seen. for almost three decades. What occurred to him was a simple notion: animals, plants, insects, fishes, etc., which were obviously related differed slightly and these differences seemed to be tied in with their ability to survive. Differences, which he called "adaptations," were often related to geographical factors. He also saw something similar in fossils: certainly some fish, sea shells, etc., that died and were covered up by sand, gradually turned to stone, and were caught forever in fossil form. There seemed to b...
In Charles Darwin’s life he had helped make a significant advancement in the way mankind viewed the world. With his observations, he played a part in shifting the model of evolution into his peers’ minds. Darwin’s theory on natural selection impacted the areas of science and religion because it questioned and challenged the Bible; and anything that challenged the Bible in Darwin’s era was sure to create contention with the church. Members of the Church took offense to Darwin’s Origins of Species because it unswervingly contradicted the teachings of the book of Genesis in the Bible. (Zhao, 2009) Natural selection changed the way people thought. Where the Bible teaches that “all organisms have been in an unchanging state since the great flood, and that everything twas molded in God’s will.” (Zhao, 2009) Darwin’s geological journey to the Galapagos Islands is where he was first able to get the observations he needed to prove how various species change over t...
Only in the past one hundred years have men finally put aside their Biblical and mythical tales about creation, and looked to the facts in order to piece together a logical explanation for the origin of mankind. In turn, men were now able to explain the enigma of their origin without the presence of a supernatural being responsible for their creation. At the head of a slew of men trying to uncover logical reasons for mans derivation was Charles Darwin. Darwin was the most accomplished of these men because he was able to put forth a logical conjecture that was based upon facts and observations. This theory, for a short time, was able to end the feud among educated men because many now put their trust in this new “theory of evolution”. Unfortunately, this revolutionary new theory threatened the religious beliefs about creation and soon a new rivalry emerged between the creationists and evolutionists.
The first principle character in this play is Blanche DuBois. She is a neurotic nymphomaniac that is on her way to meet her younger sister Stella in the Elysian Fields. Blanche takes two 2 streetcars, one named Desire, the other Cemeteries to get to her little sisters dwelling. Blanche, Stella and Stanley all desire something in this drama. Blanche desired a world without pain, without suffering, in order to stop the mental distress that she had already obtained. She desires a fairy tale story about a rich man coming and sweeping her off her feet and they ride away on a beautiful oceanic voyage. The most interesting part of Blanche is that through her unstable thinking she has come to believe the things she imagines. Her flashy sense of style and imagination hide the truly tragic story about her past. Blanche lost Belle Reve but, moreover, she lost the ones she loved in the battle. The horror lied not only in the many funerals but also in the silence and the constant mourning after. 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 faced pain.
Natural selection is the vitiating factors affecting survival and reproduction based on physical characteristics. The term of natural selection, created by Charles Darwin, was derived from a comparison of natural selection to forced “selective breeding” (Than). Natural selection challenges traditional views because it caused friction between Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species and religious creationism. While in fact, Darwin’s theory of evolution has support from the evidence made by numerous types of scientific studies including genetics, paleontology, and developmental biology. And creationism, has no physical evidence or proof other than being in the bible. This places creation, supported by the bible, and evolution, supported by numerous scientific studies, against one another. Creationists against the theory of evolution state that everything was created by a single god, and explained that divine will govern the evolutionary process. This goes against Darwin’s theory that natural selection, not divine will, governs evolution (Feiro 3). Darwin does not deny creation, that the world may have been created by a religious figure, but it is operated by the natural laws displayed in his theories (Feiro 3-4). The scientific community accepted the gravitational theory without having to change religion, only their views and perspectives on physical properties. Similarly, people worldwide have accepted the theory of evolution with exception to these specific special interest groups. Even with the friction caused by the theory of evolution, such theory is essential to expanding scientific
Charles Darwin was a man of science. He had a true passion for all things involving both plants and animals. Darwin made many contributions to the field of science, but his main contribution that he is most well-known for involves his theories of evolution, or more specifically, how species tend to change over long periods of time through a process called natural selection. Natural selection is defined by Darwin as the “preservation of favorable variations and the rejections of injurious variations“ (Jacobus 900). Even though many of his theories have now been embraced by the scientific community as natural laws in motion, much controversy remains over whether or not his ideas should be perceived as true scientific law. Despite the discoveries of overwhelming amounts of evidence, many people still believe that evolution is exactly what Darwin called it—a theory, and nothing more.
...n a subject which the public had relatively no knowledge of. He described the way in which an individual of a species reproduced and genetically passed on variations. The species that adapted through variation was the one who survived. This is where the phrase “survival of the fittest” came from. As pointed out, Charles Darwin was a man ahead of his time, and his work laid the structural basis for how we now look at evolution. On the last page of Origin of the Species, Darwin summarizes his findings, “as Natural Selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection”.
...ptation and the emergence of new species were linked. If two groups of individuals from the same species were separated, finches for example, and placed in different environments, then after many generations, the two groups will have accumulated differences making it possible to differentiate two distinct species. The Galapagos finches can be differentiated by the size of their beak, which is adapted to the food available on the islands. Darwin had an intuition of the importance of these mechanisms to explain evolution.
In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, main character Blanche Dubois to begin with seems to be a nearly perfect model of a classy woman whose social interaction, life and behavior are based upon her sophistication. The play revolves around her, therefore the main theme of drama concerns her directly. In Blanche is seen the misfortune of a person caught between two worlds-the world of the past and the world of the present-unwilling to let go of the past and unable, because of her character, to come to any sort of terms with the present.
With the studies that Charles Darwin obtained he published his first work, “The Origin of Species.” In this book he explained how for millions of years animals, and plants have evolved to better help their existence. Darwin reasoned that these living things had gradually changed over time to help themselves. The changes that he found seemed to have been during the process of reproduction. The traits which would help them survive became a dominant trait, while the weaker traits became recessive. A good example of what Darwin was trying to explain is shown in giraffes. Long-necked giraffes could reach the food on the trees, while the short-necked giraffes couldn’t. Since long necks helped the giraffes eat, short-necked giraffes died off from hunger. Because of this long-necks became a dominant trait in giraffes. This is what Charles Darwin would later call natural selection.
Darwin writes on how a species will adapt to its environment given enough time. When an animal gains a genetic edge over its competitors, be they of the same species or of another genus altogether, the animal has increased its chance of either procreation or adaptation. When this animal has this beneficial variance, the advantage becomes his and because of this, the trait is then passed on to the animals offspring.
Portrayal of Women in The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer, and Period of Adjustment
On Darwin’s trip around the world he found something very interesting on the Galapagos Islands. On the isolated islands he found fourteen species of finches with very similar characteristics but they had some differences in their beaks, diet, body size and habitat. Darwin thought the birds had a common ancestor. He thought that some time back some finches arrived on the islands and the finches with the beaks that suited the islands conditions survived this happened on all the islands. When they had offspring the next generation would inherit the same beak. This is a great example of natural selection which was a contributor to how humans evolved. From this Darwin established his theory of natural selection and how slowly over time creatures...