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A Streetcar Named Desire Analysis

Decent Essays

Many critics have attributed the inspiration of the plot to A Streetcar Named Desire from Tennessee Williams’s own life. For example, Alice Griffin explained that ‘his parents gave consent for his sister Rose to have a prefontal lobotomy to cure her schizophrenia […] she remained institutionalized’ (Griffin, 1995:3). In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche is also institutionalized, which could have been inspired by Williams’s sister and her experiences. Furthermore, Williams is seen to be such a high regarded playwright due to his relation with all sorts of people, described by Adler as ‘His empathetic connection extended to all outsiders who were somehow marginalized or other because of either their racial, sexual, or ethnic identity or their artistic gifts – misfits who all became a favoured subject throughout his career’ (Adler, 2013:1). This is showing that his writing and stagecraft related with all classes and sorts of people, bringing his audience wider and more diverse. This essay will be exploring and critically evaluating the use of action, dialogue, themes, imagery, and stagecraft in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Part One (AC 2.1, 2.2): Characters, Action and Dialogue
Two of the main characters in A Streetcar Named Desire are Blanche and Stanley. Both characters hold the most speech in the play – this part of the essay will be exploring how their language use shows what kind of people they are. In Scene One, when Stanley is first introduced with Stella, the audience

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