A Streetcar Named Desire By Tennessee Williams Essay

   A Streetcar Named Desire is an intricate web of complex themes and conflicted characters. Set in the pivotal years immediately following World War II, Tennessee Williams infuses Blanche and Stanley with the symbols of opposing class and differing attitudes towards sex and love, then steps back as the power struggle between them ensues. Yet there are no clear cut lines of good vs. evil, no character is neither completely good nor bad, because the main characters, (especially Blanche), are so torn by conflicting and contradictory desires and needs. As such, the play has no clear victor, everyone loses something, and this fact is what gives the play its tragic cast. In a

Blanche DuBois is a schoolteacher in Laurel, Mississippi, but is given a leave of absence due to her nerves. She visits her sister, Stella Kowalski, in New Orleans, Louisiana. When she arrives to New Orleans, she is told to take a streetcar named Desire, transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields; Elysian Fields is where her sister lives. Blanche has a dainty and frail disposition, but is portrayed as an unstable, peculiar woman. “Blanche: ‘I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can’t be alone! Because-as you must have noticed-I’m-not very well…’” (Williams 23). Blanche insinuates to Stella that she is not doing so well and is currently facing many obstacles in her problematic life. Her troubled past and the tribulations she faces

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams uses setting to illustrate various themes and messages as they pertain to the events of the play. The setting plays a crucial role in the story line and the outcome of the play.

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.

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 by Tennessee Williams, a tragic play, is based on the theme that desire leads to ruin. After losing her home and life due to her sinful actions, the main character Blanche DuBois travels to New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law, Stanley. Blanche’s lies about her past and excessive drinking lead to the main conflict between her and Stanley. Blanche’s poor decisions from her past haunt her, and she continues to engage in self-destructive behavior during her time in New Orleans. Tension between Blanche and Stanley climaxes when Stanley rapes her in the tenth act of the play. Blanche loses her dignity, home, and hold on reality in this tragedy, and, as she is the main character, her downfall makes

     In Tennessee William’s masterful play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the reader meets a middle – aged woman by the name of Blanche DuBois. Blanche lives in her own faerie tale world, one of a young, beautiful debutante, surrounded by admirers, and loved by all whom she encounters. In reality, Blanche is an aging woman who cannot cope with the actualities of life. She makes up wild stories, and when Stanley Kowalski, her brother – in – law, rapes her, the realities of life cause her to drift into absolute lunacy.

Tennessee Williams’ A streetcar named Desire portrays New Orleans in 1947. This play focuses on Stanley and Stella, a couple living in Elysian Fields that are visited by Blanche, Stella’s sister. Blanche is a surprise guest, that is helpless and seeks help from her sister because she has no other options. The introduction of her character creates a great deal of tension and some disruption. Despite Blanche’s seemingly helpless and gently character, she has a great deal of power which is expressed throughout the play.

Tennessee William’s 1947 play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ has, as its main protagonist, Blanche DuBois; a fading southern belle who moves to New Orleans to live her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law, Stanley, after losing everything. Williams skilfully uses many dramatic techniques, such as characterisation, stage directions and motifs, to highlight the crucial conflict between Stanley and Blanche and emphasise the impact this has on both characters and how this relates to several key thematic issues. Stanley and Blanche’s conflict results due to the great difference in social class, and as a result he wants to debase her by revealing her past. Blanche’s class and ignorance is evident right from Sc.1 as she questions Stella about Stanley’s ethnicity: ‘Polacks?... Heterogeneous – types?’

The play A Streetcar Named Desire revolves around Blanche DuBois; therefore, the main theme of the drama concerns her directly. In Blanche is seen the tragedy of an individual 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. The final result is her destruction. This process began long before her clash with Stanley Kowalski. It started with the death of her young husband, a weak and perverted boy who committed suicide when she taunted him with her disgust at the discovery of his perversion. In retrospect, she knows that he was the only man she had ever loved, and from this early catastrophe

Blanche arrives in Elysian Fields in New Orleans in Stella and Stanley’s home daintily dressed in a white suit and white gloves and hat. It’s a poor and run down area where she looks totally out of place. She doesn’t like where Stella is living. She tells her, “I thought you would never come back to this horrible place…Why, that you had to live in these conditions “(Williams, 19, 20). She tries to portray herself as superior and after already having a drink and ready for second drink, she says, “Now don't get worried, your sister hasn't turned into a drunkard, she's just all shaken up and hot and tired and dirty….. No, one's my limit.”(Williams, 19, 21). She tries to hide that she’s been fired from her job, instead she tells she left on her

Tennessee Williams was an American writer known for short stories and poems in the mid 1950’s. His more famous writing was A Streetcar Named Desire. His writings influenced many other writers such as August Strindberg and Hart Crane. His writings A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie was adopted to films and A Streetcar Named Desire earned him his first Pulitzer prize. In A Streetcar Named Desire there is many elements that build the plot and story line. The story is about a girl who is drove crazy by his sister’s husband and eventually sent to the mental hospital. The main plot is towards the end of the story when Blanche Dubois is blackmailed by her sister’s husband and raped by him. Everything takes its toll on her until she begins drinking heavily and is thought to have gone crazy and placed in a mental hospital. In this story, many things play affect in the contrast of the writing such as Blanche arriving at her sister’s house, seeing her sister’s husbands attitude, the poker game, Blanche getting raped. These events make Blanche an easy victim. In Tennessee Williams, a street car named desire, the start of kindness turns to tragedy and pain.

“Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama…the purest language of plays.” Once, quoted as having said this, Tennessee Williams has certainly used symbolism and colour extremely effectively in his play, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. A moving story about fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois and her lapse into insanity, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ contains much symbolism and clever use of colour. This helps the audience to link certain scenes and events to the themes and issues that Williams presents within the play, such as desire and death, and the conflict between the old America and the new.

Some novels and plays seem to advocate changes in social or political attitudes or in traditions. Choose such a novel or play and note briefly the particular attitudes or traditions that the author apparently wishes to modify. Then analyze the techniques the author uses to influence the reader or audience’s views. Avoid plot summary.

Men: The ones worthy of praise whereas women are just accessories to be flaunted then left in the closet when not worn. Tennessee Williams reinforces this idea throughout the course of the play by the use of the characters Stella, Blanche, Stanley, Steve and Eunice; and their relationships with each other.