The Interrelationship of Characters and Themes In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire 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 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. The character Stanley represents the theme of reality. Stanley Kowalski is the simple blue-collar husband of Stella. His actions, reactions, and words show reality in its harshest most purist form. His actions are similar to a primitive human. For example he doesn’t close the door when he uses the restroom. This rudeness represents the harsh reality that Blanche refuses to accept. Moreover, when he was drunk he hit Stella. This attack on Blanches sister could be a symbolic “wake up” slap to the face of Blanche.
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...
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.
...ices, such an attempt to elicit sympathy for this monster falls short” (Bell 2). Stanley is looked at as the monster of the play which is how he should be viewed. Luck was not on Blanches side through her life which made her make the mistakes she made. Even though her past was not clean, Stanley did not purge her of this. He tried to show her the reality of the world, but through his brutal treatment, only made her sensibility worse. Stanley is a primitive ape-like man, driven only by instinct, who views women as objects and has no respect for others. He is a wife batter and a rapist who is responsible for the crumbling sanity of Blanche who is “the last victim of the Old South, one who inherits the trappings of that grand society but pays the final price for the inability to adapt to a modern world that seeks to wipe grace and gentility out of existence” (Bell 2).
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".
...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.
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is a play about a woman named Blanche Dubois who is in misplaced circumstances. Her life is lived through fantasies, the remembrance of her lost husband and the resentment that she feels for her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Various moral and ethical lessons arise in this play such as: Lying ultimately gets you nowhere, Abuse is never good, Treat people how you want to be treated, Stay true to yourself and Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Stella represents an important part in this drama by providing a contrast to how life can change people when they go down different paths. In Contrast to her sister, Stella is bound to love. Although she fell in love with a primitive, common man, she most definitely loves him. Stella desires only to make Stanley happy and live a beautiful life together. She wants to find peace between her sister and her husband yet instead she finds conflict afflicting her on both sides. 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.
The drama is basically about a married couple -Stella and Stanley Kowalski- who are visited by Stella's older sister, Blanche. The drama shows the caustic feelings of these people putting Blance DuBois in the center. The drama tells the story of the pathetic mental and emotional demise of a determined, yet fragile, repressed and delicate Southern lady born to a once-wealthy family of Mississippi planters.3 No doubt that the character of Blanche is the most complex one in the drama. She is truly a tragic heroine.
insight as to what type of sector of New Orleans the play is set in.
Blanche Du Bois is the central character in in this Southern Gothic play. She draws attention using her sincere and fragile personality. However, later on in the play this turns out to be an illusionistic image of her own mind. She must live in the world of illusions in order to protect herself against outside threats and against her own fears. Throughout the play Tennessee Williams contrasted Blanche’s delusions with Stanley’s realism. Unfortunately by the end, Stanley and his view of the world is victorious. Blanche hopes to salvage her life in such a world of brutality where the inner anxiety clashes with the outside threats. In order to do this, she uses different coping mechanisms: delusions, alcoholism and illusions. It’s easy to see that Blanche must use such types of mechanism to protect herself from going crazy in the process of changing her environment and living conditions. She must live in a state of imagination in order to keep herself sane. Evidence of this can be seen in scene one. Blanche exclaims how she “was on the verge of--lunacy, almost” [Williams 1951 p21] before meeting Stella. She continues with ‘drinking quickly’ [Williams 1951 p21] her glass of alcohol, which ‘feels so good’ [Williams 1951 p21] for her. This shows that Blanche is clearly lost in her sense of imagination. In order to address this, her only solution is to drown out any worries with alcohol. As Argued by Philip C. Kolin, a professor of English, Blanche indeed strongly possesses such personality. According to Kolin, Blanche is ‘aided by a vivid imagination and a gift for putting into words her colourful and often sordid fancies and facts.’[5] Kolin says Blanche is lost in a world of imagination; a ‘tragedy’ [5] leading to a ‘downward path’ [5]. The characters in A Streetcar Named Desire often have a very erratic and loud personality. This is likely due to Williams and his personal
Stanley (Stella's husband) represents a theme of realism in the play; he is shown as a primitive, masculine character that is irresistible to Stella and on some levels even to his "opponent" Stella's sister Blanche.
Through this motif he seems to suggest that in order to cope with trauma, some people feel driven to take certain measures in order to survive in the reality. For an example, on page 36, after Stanley and Stella finish having an discussion about Blanche, the narrator says, “He lights a cigarette.” The author purposely crafts Blanche to be staged in the dark in order to show that she much more desires for others to see the flawless side of her in order to feel ideal from her fantasies. The author uses Blanche to show that people take long showers in order to feel clean, but in reality, traumatized people take long showers in order to cleanse themselves from their terrible past experiences. On page 57, after Mitch arrives, he acted by “He strikes a match and moves closer.” On page 59, when Blanche was describing the origin of her name she said, “It’s a French name. It means woods and Blanche means white, so the two together means whitewoods.” On page 60, Blanche says, “I bought this adorable little colored paper lantern at a Chinese shop on Bourbon. Put it over the light bulb!” The author reveals that Blanche is flirting with Mitch which creates an illusion of fantasy while telling fibs in order to not reveal her flaws and imperfection to him. The author uses Blanche to show that some people who has flaws tends to be self-conscious
One of the first major themes of this book is the constant battle between fantasy and reality. Blanche explains to Mitch that she fibs because she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her. Lying to herself and to others allows her to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is. Stanley, a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world, disdains Blanche’s fabrications and does everything he can to unravel them. The relationship between Blanche and Stanley is a struggle between appearances and reality. It propels the play’s plot and creates an overarching tension. Ultimately, Blanche’s attempts to rejuvenate her life and to save Stella from a life with Stanley fail. One of the main ways the author dramatizes fantasy’s inability to overcome reality is through an explorati...
By embracing the darkness, she conceals her true age, her true self, and her true intentions, coming across as a completely different individual in order to receive what she wants, love and compassion. Wishing to live in a world of magic where she can be the person she wants to be, Blanche misrepresents herself in the shadows of lies, only telling “what ought to be the truth” (Williams 145). Blanche became accustomed to fearing the light, going so far as to conceal the exposed bulbs in her sister's apartment with paper lanterns to dim the brightness in order to create a new external reality for herself. The author strategically ties this symbol of light into his story, expressing the theme constructively through Blanche constantly suppressing her true self and refusing to come forth into the light and show her true colors. Even the guy she is beginning to fall in love with, Mitch, is lied to and shown the fake Blanche, and he consequently confronts her: “I don’t think I ever [saw] you in the light...I’ve never had a real good look at you” (Williams 143-144). In arguing for a while with her, Mitch ultimately turns the lamp to her, flicking the switch on and getting a feel for the true Blanche. He is instantly filled with disappointment, slapped in the face by the lies Blanche filled his ears with, unable to
...think that the play is about desire between people and the different ways they can express it, which the title, A Streetcar Named Desire, informs us. Blanche came to town on a streetcar because she was ostracized in her old home as a result of her desires. Blanche had a desire for sex in general to cope with her divorce and the loss of her family; she just needed to feel loved. Stanley expressed his hidden desire for Blanche by being cruel to her through the whole story, and then having sex with her. Mitch showed his desire for Blanche by asking her to marry him. Stella had a desire for Stanley’s love and for Blanche’s well being. The play is a display of the drama involved in families, and it shows that sometimes people have to make decisions and choose one relationship over another. In Stella’s case, she chose her relationship with Stanley over her sister.