A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire is a play that tells the tale of a family in 1940’s New Orleans. It examines the issues of delusion, escapism, the pitfalls of desire, and the idea that people are reluctant to see the truth when it deviates from what their ‘perception’ or what they want from the world. This is all done from a variety of critical lenses. The aforementioned ‘critical lens’ is mostly simply defined as a specific way of looking at a text, by keeping certain questions and ideas in mind. This is important, as it allows the reader to understand a work beyond a mere two dimensional point of view- by analysis on another layer, with certain key factors in mind, a reader is able to further understand the work and the ‘subconscious meaning’ behind the choices of the author. While A Streetcar Named Desire is a novel about the chains of our own making, the reader’s experience and

The play A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, is a play about a woman named Blanche Dubois who goes to live with her sister after she loses her home in Mississippi. Between the hardships of her previous life and the way she is treated now, she is not in a good way by the time the play ends. She basically has a mental breakdown. There are three stages of Blanche’s mental state. She lives in a fantasy, Mitch rejecting her, and Stanley raping her, Blanche is mentally unstable by the end of this ply.

Tennessee Williams uses the constant battle between illusion and reality as a theme throughout his play A Streetcar Named Desire. Many use illusion to escape the reality they are living in. This theme is present in all of his characters in different ways.

There are nine types of heroes in this world, each of them with their own unique stories, plots, cliches etc. Among those is the classic tragic hero, one who is destined to fail no matter what. In a Streetcar Named Desire, the tragic hero is Blanche Dubois, an aging Southern Belle living in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty. In this essay it will be discussed what makes Blanche a tragic hero and how she compares to a typical tragic hero.

Established as one of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams used his writing as a form of therapy. The author came from a troubled background consisting of alcoholism, mental breakdowns, and general unhappiness; Williams exploited these unfortunate events and allowed them to motivate his literature. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois’ struggles represent the reality of people’s lives, “an enduring concern of [Williams’] throughout his writing career (Henthorne 1). Blanche captures our focus with her seemingly sincere and fragile nature, but it is later revealed that this is just an illusion within her own mind. She resides in a world of fantasy to shield herself against the harsh threats of reality and her own fears. Blanche’s main objective in the play is to keep herself from falling apart in a world of cruelty through alcoholism and illusion. Through the characterization of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams depicts the coping mechanism of fantasy and its detrimental repercussions by exploring the specific experiences that eventually impede her happiness.

To live in a world of illusion is to live a life of lies.Sometimes people try to escape reality, whether to avoid truths or to avoid their past. A Streetcar named Desire by Tennessee Williams introduces Blanche Dubois as the main protagonist and potential victim of the story. In the story, Blanche leaves her home in “Belle Reve” because it has been destroyed and takes a streetcar to to get to her sister’s (Stella’s) residence. She believes that she will find a new life as well as comfort and acceptance at her sister’s side. Unfortunately she is very wrong about it, in fact, it is the complete opposite. Blanche’s past life was very shameful for her and so in order to forget the tormenting truth, she resorts to living a fantasy life of her own, which causes problems for her later on (self-destruction).

Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a web of themes, complicated scenarios, and clashes between the characters. Therefore, it might’ve been somehow difficult to find out who the protagonist of this play is if it wasn’t for Aristotle’s ideas of a good tragedy because neither of the main characters, Stanley Kowalski and Blanche Dubois, is completely good nor bad. According to Aristotle’s Poetics, a good tragedy requires the protagonist to undergo a change of status which only happens with Blanche Dubois.

A Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee 0portray a play center and revolving around characters and New Orleans. The two settings are completely different we are introduced to Elysian Field where the Kowalski live and then Blanche from Belle Reve a high class society. Stella has written to Blanche “She wasn’t expecting to find us in such a small place. You see I’d tried to gloss things over a little in my letters” (31). Blanche meanwhile travelled to stay with the Kowalski on two streetcars which will ultimately determine her faith she longs for desire but could not bear the sign of death.

Throughout Tennessee Williams’s play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” one can learn a large portion about his personal life. In the play the character, Blanche has a mental illness the same as his sister Rose had in her lifetime. Blanche’s ex-husband was also homosexual and he made the point to say that he left her for a man and Williams himself was also a homosexual. Tennessee chose for the story to be based in New Orleans, which was a crumbling town at the time and Williams was living a crumbling life, due to he was battling depression. In his plays a reader can see that he has different views than most men of his time, he developed many of these views due to his travels throughout his life. ““Streetcar” tackled themes of desperation, sexual

Everyone has fantasies but most know that is not the true reality. Defining dreams and reality are two different things. Some want to escape the real world and make their own dreams become true, due to seeking happiness. The author portrays Blanche, Stella, and Stanley as characters that are fixated on what they want to believe is the truth; however, the reason being is because they do not want face their fears. Stella and Blanche both desire to make their past non-existent and live in a perfect world, rather than accept the truth and move forward. Stanley does not let his fantasies take over his life as much as the two women. In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar name Desire the three protagonists Blanche, Stella, and Stanley exist in a fool’s paradise by using denial and fantasy to display a public facade in desire to obscure the truth; however, the characters want to escape their undesirable reality through their more desirable fantasy.

In the opening two scenes of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams, the audience has its first and generally most important impressions formulated on characters, the plot and the mood and tone of the play overall.

Throughout the course of an individual’s life, each will come face to face with the monstrous beast of truth at one point or another. Whether he chooses to elude this monster, grapple with it head on, or simply accept and subsist it, each person will embark upon his own distinctive journey. In Tennessee Williams’ well known theatrical work, A Streetcar Named Desire, each character struggles coping with painful truths that emerge within their lives overtime. In an attempt to raise societal awareness of its beastial nature, Williams intends for his characters to demonstrate these unconventional repercussions and unfavorable outcomes that one shall face while navigating through his journey to truth.

A tragic hero in literature is a type of character who has fallen from grace, where the downfall suggests feelings of misfortune and distress among the audience. The tragic flaw of the hero leads to their demise or downfall that in turn brings a tragic end. Aristotle defines a tragic hero as “a person who must evoke a sense of pity and fear in the audience. He is considered a man of misfortune that comes to him through error of judgment.” The characteristics of a tragic hero described by Aristotle are hamartia, hubris, peripeteia, anagnorisis, nemesis and catharsis which allows the audience to have a catharsis of arousing feelings.

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.

Marriage is of paramount importance in The Importance of Being Earnest, both as a primary force motivating the plot and as a subject for philosophical speculation and debate. The question of the nature of marriage appears for the first time in the opening dialogue between Algernon and his butler, Lane, and from this point on the subject never disappears for very long. Algernon and Jack discuss the nature of marriage when they dispute briefly about whether a marriage proposal is a matter of “business” or “pleasure,” and Lady Bracknell touches on the issue when she states, “An engagement should