A Streetcar Named Desire Analysis

A Streetcar Named Desire is focused almost completely on its three protagonists: Blanche, Stella, and Stanley. It could be suggested that this play was influenced by Williams’ own upbringing: his sister Rose was mentally ill, and Williams’ was a doting older brother. Potentially, Blanche was inspired by Rose and that this play uses his unique perspective to comment on the treatment of the mentally ill. Williams may be using Stella’s conflict to highlight this.

One way that Tennessee Williams critiques society's views on gender and heterosexual relationships is showing strong hypermasculinity. Dictionary.com define hypermasculinity as “Hypermasculinity is a psychological term for the exaggeration of male stereotypical behavior, such as an emphasis on physical strength, aggression, and sexuality.”. According to this Stanley is the perfect example of a hypermasculine man. In scene one Tennessee writes “Stanley carries his bowling jacket and a red-stained package from a butcher’s.”. Even in the first few pages of the book Stanley is portrayed as a stereotypical primitive like man and continues when Blanche describes Stanley as an “ape”.

In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams explores the internal conflict of illusion versus reality through the characters. Humans often use illusion to save us pain and it allows us to enjoy pleasure instead. However, as illusion clashes with reality, one can forget the difference between the two. When people are caught up in their illusions, eventually they must face reality even if it is harsh. In the play, Blanche suffers from the struggle of what is real and what is fake because of the difficult events of her past. Blanche comes to her sister Stella seeking aid because she has lost her home, her job, and her family. To deal with this terrible part of her life, she uses fantasy to escape her dreadful reality. Blanche’s embracement of a fantasy world can be categorized by her attempts to revive her youth, her relationship struggles, and attempts to escape her past.

Men used to take major initiative in most households during the early 20th century therefore, making wives, female siblings, or basically women in general highly dependent for a man’s authority. The theme of dependency for men continuously occurs throughout A Streetcar Named Desire and most noticeably when Blanche DuBois claims how Stella and her needs a man like Stanley Kowalski who can take command in terms of bravery and fearlessness. Literary features such as foreshadow, indirect characterization and metaphor creates the theme of dependency for men that Blanche significantly shows. She suggests through the use of metaphor that although Stanley is “just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume” by claiming Stanley’s unsophisticated traits such as the ignorance to appreciate poetry or scents like a “jasmine perfume” doesn’t cope with the DuBois’ traditional act of being refined and courtly which is currently what the DuBois family desperately need in their family in order to “survive”

In the classic fairytale of Cinderella, the main character is trapped in an abusive household. However, Cinderella’s self-perception of optimism and hope, enables her to believe that ultimately, her life will naturally improve with these attributes. True to her convictions, Cinderella gets her happily ever after by going to the ball where the prince falls in love with her. Cinderella is saved from her evil. On the other hand, Cinderella can be viewed as a victim who does nothing to enable herself to escape her abusive reality, insteads helplessly waits for fate to intervene. She does not confront the situation nor independently strive to improve her circumstances. Correspondingly, how individuals act when faced with conflict is strongly influenced by their self-perception. It is possible to become confused between reality and illusion, which is determined by their level of self-awareness. In Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the character of Stella struggles between the control of her husband and sister. Throughout the play, this conflict is demonstrated as she struggles with becoming aware of her abusive household and the contrast to the fairytale illusion she desperately clings to. Ultimately, Stella’s choice to maintain her illusion, rather than confronting her reality, is due to the self-perception of her need to depend on others and desire for idealism, which overall controls her fate.

The role of women in the 1950 was seen to be repressive and constrictive in many ways. Society placed high importance and many expectations for these women on behavior at home as well as in public. Women were supposed to fulfil certain roles, such as a caring mother, a diligent homemaker, and an obedient wife. The perfect mother was supposed to stay home and nurture so society would accept them. In fact, even if a woman wanted to voice an opinion, her lack of education would not allow it . The play A Streetcar Named Desire is set during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s period where it describes the decline of a fading Southern belle named Blanche DuBois. The women in this play are represented to be dependent and submissive in nature and in addition they are also seen to be manipulative. However, Williams has also portrayed these women to be independent and taking control of the situation. This can be seen through the use of the main characters

In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois is thrust into a series of unfortunate events and undergoes drastic changes in an effort to come to terms with her completely changed life. Through these events, Blanche happens to be the only remaining individual left to take care of the once valuable and prestigious family belongings, and her psychological mind spirals out of control in her attempts to restore the family’s honor. In addition to experiencing loneliness and feeling isolation from humans, Blanche faced many new challenges in stressful situations, which contributed to her poor decision making skills and inevitable negative outcomes in most of those situations. Through the characterization of Blanche DuBois, Williams’ intends to display the power of significant experiences in one’s life, which serves as a warning of how the effects of significant experiences on individuals should not be underestimated. Unfortunately, in Blanche’s case, abandonment by her sister was the perfect example of an individual underestimating the result of their actions, as this action was the initiation point of the events that would eventually lead to her unfortunate fate. Specifically, Williams’ focuses on portraying the disastrous effects of human isolation, which is often the result of an individual’s mindless actions. Human isolation plays an important role in the outcome of the play, as Blanche is known to have been abandoned at a young age, and her

The author, Tennessee Williams, does a phenomenal job of portraying Blanche Dubois as a deceiving, manipulative, arrogant person in his book “A Streetcar named Desire”. Williams first showcases these characteristics during the arrival of Blanche. This introduction not only sets a mood and tone but it gives us our first impression of Blanche. Overall this impression leaves the audience with a sour taste in their mouths and ill feelings towards the new girl. However, don’t be so quick to jump the gun. What if I said Blanche isn’t the villain she’s depicted as in this story?

Each character in the play and movie has a special characteristic about them. For example, Stanley is portrayed as the head of the household, who is easily ticked when the females do not listen to him. He is an alcoholic, who is abusive to his wife and he rapes

Harold Mitchell (Mitch) is supposedly defined as a man of power and ruler. “Get him in here, men!” (63).He however began to form a god-like presence when confronting Blanche. Sadly still he is an ironic form of Stanley yet shares similar charactertics with Blanche’s deceased husband Allan Grey. He is very awkward being around her and the bond with his mother seemed tight. At the end of the play Mitch felt a sense of regret and guilt and stood up to Stanley only to be knocked down like Blanche did with Allan Grey.

Within the space of a single chapter Levi details the loss of identity and all elements of personhood from the prisoners that entered at the beginning of the chapter, as their clothing and animalistic presentation effectively reduces them to little more than objects in the grasp of the Nazis. This is extremely disturbing, as a reader, to comprehend, and lies in stark converse with Blanche’s presentation in the closing chapter of streetcar, within which, clothes are instead bestowed by Williams upon blanche in order to emphasise her epitomisation of a perfected form of humanity, or at least to raise her above those who view her sexuality and promiscuity as worthy of accusation, or would afford her poor, perhaps even dehumanising treatment as a result. In this way, both authors utilise costume or clothing to portray their characters in different lights, however, although the direct effects on the reader 's interpretation of the character are different, they achieve the similar overarching effect of sending a crucial message as to the brutality and often wrongly discriminative nature of society over those men and women who have committed little fault, questioning both , ‘if this a man’ and ‘if this is a woman’.

The role of masculinity in A Streetcar Named Desire is necessary for survival for the characters involved. Stella simply loves Stanley. She likes the fact

Stanley is the epitome of the common man. Once a soldier in World War 2, the auto-parts salesman is loyal to his acquaintances, passionate but unequivocally abusive with his wife Stella, and ruthlessly impatient with Blanche, Stella’s sister. Steve is one of Stanley’s poker buddies and he is much like Stanley. Steve is brash, impulsive, and abusive with Eunice. Stanley and Stella have an abusive relationship where Stanley often hits or yells at her and acts based on impulse. Stella accepts this relationship the way it is because she is blinded by her sheer lust for his animalistic nature. Stella does not see an issue with her marriage and declines Blanche’s many attempts to pull her away from it all. Steve is quite similar to Stanley, with his arrogant and impetuous nature, and he too has a physically abusive relationship with his wife Eunice. They often get into fights and make up soon after similar to the scene where Stanley hits Stella but then apologizes resulting in her running back into his embrace once

Like many people in the world, the characters in Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, are troubled by anxiety and insecurities. Life in New Orleans during the 1940s was characterized by the incredible variety of music, lively and bright atmosphere, and diverse population, while in the midst of the ongoing World War II. Culture was rich and fruitful because the city developed into a “melting pot” of people from all over the world. Due to the wide-range in population, the people of New Orleans adopted an identity like no other. Instead of their identity being entirely pieced together, almost like a puzzle, the people took on one that was shared by the entire community. However, with this being said, people had the ability to use this to their advantage and mask their true selves. This idea translates well into the play A Streetcar Named Desire, and is exhibited through the character Blanche. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams uses the theme of vanity to reveal the importance of appearance, and the insecurities of Blanche and how they influence her actions.

This 1950's theatrical presentation was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Tennessee Williams. It is about a southern bell by the name of Blanche Dubois who loses her father's plantation to a mortgage and travels to live in her sister's home in New Orleans by means of a streetcar called Desire. There she finds her sister living in a mess with a drunken bully husband, and the events that follow cause Blanche to step over the line of insanity and fall victim to life's harsh lessons.