A Streetcar Named Desire Critical Summary

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.

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.

In a Streetcar Named Desire Williams exposes Stanley’s animalistic features through the confrontation of Blanche & Stella. The transition from the old south to the new south represents the developing evolution that Williams outlines within Scene 4. Stanley is the protagonist of evolution, as he is identified as a prevalent and powerful American man. Although earlier in the play there are signs of Stanley’s beastlike persona whilst he “Heaves the red-stained package”, it is in scene 4 the climax is reached, leading to Blanche ranting about Stanley’s animalistic attributes. However, Blanche ultimately loses and Stanley wins. Therefore, I support Nancy Tischler’s view that A Streetcar a Named Desire is a reversal of Darwin’s vision because

“Stella has embraced him with both arms, fiercely, and full in the view of Blanche. He laughs and clasps her head to him. Over her head he grins through the curtains at Blanche.” (Williams 73) A Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee Williams exemplifies the theme of a struggle to attain happiness. The play not only portrays this theme in its characters and setting, but through the literary devices of Foil, Imagery, and Intertextuality. Williams took great care in applying each of these literary device techniques to the theme as he presents an intriguing contrast between Blanche and Stanley, vivid images both animalistic and broken, and imploring the use of the Odyssey to further

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.

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.

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?

From the very title of the novel and beginning poem Levi implores us to consider the essence of what it is to be human, presenting to us the thought-provoking question, if this is a man? Levi this way allows us to engage on an emotional level with the events of the holocaust and examine our own consciences, and as he details in his preface ‘furnish documentation for a quite study of certain aspects of the human mind’, and accuses society of subconscious reasoning that ‘every stranger is an enemy’. In explicit stripping the prisoners depicted in the text of their humanity, making this uncomfortably apparent to us as we are consistently encourage to draw comparisons, or rather contrast, with our own lives and hence are perhaps

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the short story, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams published in 1947. It is about a schoolteacher named Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister, Stella in New Orleans. Blanche has been through a lot of traumatic situations where it affects her in her life through her relationship, especially with men. She has hidden her past from the old and new people she comes across. Tennessee has similar connections when it comes to family and personal issues just different scenarios. He used his life experiences he went through continuously to create a drama-filled and controversy through the characters in the story.

In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams there are two roles of womanhood represented. Williams touches on the topic regarding that women are forced to conform in society, and uses the play to create an outcome for those who don't conform. Femininity and the dependence of men can be clearly seen in both the sisters Blanche and Stella, through their behavior and traditional southern values. Both of their femininity is depicted in very different ways, Blanche is fragile and over-imaginative whereas Stella shows her femininity through her passive and easily influenced nature as well as her dedication to her husband. But their inability to be independent is very clear in the plot.