A Streetcar Named Desire Light Analysis

It is clear from the beginning that Blanche is not a very honest character. She lives in a fantasy world of her own design. One of the very first things she does when she enters Stella’s

The audience always had the feeling that Blanche was a little nuts, but we see her condition worsening as the play goes on. During the final scene we see Blanche go with a doctor and nurse to, presumably, a mental hospitable. Eunice

Blanche repeatedly lied to make herself look pure to others. It only served as a masquerade to hide her dirty, sinful reality. She lied about her age, alcoholism, promiscuity, and why she had to leave Laurel. When Stanley asked her if she wanted a shot, she replied, “No, I—rarely touch it” (Scene 1, page 1548). She could not confront her reality, so she retreated to her world of illusion. This was Blanche’s most prominent flaw. If she could have accepted things for what they are, she could have salvaged her sanity. If, from the beginning, she had been truthful to Stanley’s friend Mitch, he could have forgiven her. Dismally, Mitch would not trust her after finding out everything she said was fabricated. “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it” (Scene 9, page 1590). Blanche feared lights which symbolized her fear of reality. She claimed that with Alan’s death, all light had gone out of her life. “And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this—kitchen candle.”

Blanche is unable to cope with her loss of her fortunes and estate at Bell Reve, and the abrupt social shift erupted after World War Two, and this inability to adapt shapes her ultimate anagorisis. In addition, Blanche’s botched relationship with Allen Gray and his subsequent suicide were in all likelihood even larger catalysts for her plunge into delusion. In addition to having a more externally-catalyzed delusion, Blanche more selectively and maliciously employs her delusion. Williams continually points this out throughout the play with profuse use of a metaphorical light to represent truth. The employment of this metaphor reveals to Blanche’s fear of the truth, shown in “…turn that over-light off. I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” The clear link to Willy Loman here is that both characters refuse to hear the truth in fear of what it might destroy, whereas in actual fact only through letting go of the past will they reach a true stage of final

Blanche’s fear of becoming undesirable has caused her to create an illusion in an attempt to revive her youth. Throughout the entirety of the play, Blanche is constantly worried about her appearance and looks for compliments from others. When she is first introduced, “her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district”

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.

Blanches’ emotional state of mind is also conspicuous at the start of the play as she circumvents direct light, fearful of showing her fading looks and the light would make her vulnerable to the truth. Blanche is unable to withstand harsh light, calling the light a ‘merciless glare’(S1:pg.120*) because with Allan’s death, the light had gone out of her life and the effect this had is that she wanted dim lights hiding the reality of her painful memories. This links to the theme of dream and reality as Blanche, a delicate character, refused ‘to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion’ (*2), living on the borders of life similar to a moth which creates the image of Blanches’ fragility.

due to her past blanche’s actions are unusual and to many they are considered inappropriate. Blanche lives through some very dark and intense incidents before the play takes place, she witnesses the death of her entire family, she loses her family home, and to add to the misery she believes she is the reason her husband killed himself. In an act to move on she retreats into illusion acting as if these incidents never happened. Blanche decides to lie to everyone, from her sister to the man she potentially wanted to marry, she does not give them the truth. She wants to marry mitch but does not tell him about her past, mitch had all right to know, yet she led him on, actions like these in an environment of connection is inappropriate beyond a doubt. Because of her lies and illusions Blanche ends up losing everything, she loses her only chance at a future with Mitch and her freedom when she is sent to the mental institution. Blanches motivation by the past caused her life around her dissolve.

These characters’ hide because they are scared of revealing the truth to others and to themselves. When Blanche describes her view on the truth, she doesn’t know that she almost predicts the tragic end to her life, which can be blamed on her lies. Hiding from the light illustrates instability and an apprehensive life. In an attempt to appear a certain way, characters create these lies about their past. Their lies eventually become the most important thing in their lives, and leads to their demise.

Without realizing, Blanche compares herself to being like the light bulb and how it uses a paper lantern to cover up. She is however, fully aware of her alternating personality and that she uses it to impress others because in order for people to like her she feels she has to act like something that she is not making her very vulnerable. In order to protect herself, Blanche covers up by making fake stories and lying to everyone to seem more attractive. When her sister asks why she cares so much about her age, Blanche responds, “Because of hard knocks my vanity’s been given. What I mean is—he thinks I’m sort of prim and proper, you know. I want to deceive him enough to make him—want me . . .” (Williams 58). As opposed to letting herself shine, Blanche uses the

It’s no wonder why she tried to hide her life in the darkness, because of the things that happened to her that cause her to lose her sense of reality. Many people today can relate to her situation because they too have lost people they cared about much like did Blanche. While some of them have moved on, others find ways to which they can ease their depression: some ways that are good and others, like with Blanche, that aren’t such as: lies, drinking or prostituting for their own satisfaction. Like I have mention before, Blanche becomes dependent for alcohol to help calm her nerves, mainly the kind of nerves that were caused after the death of her husband and if she had had the support that she needed from Stella, she would not have had to

Darkness and light have been used as symbols in various literary works throughout history from meaningful lines in the first book of the bible to powerful statements in modern literature. These two naturally opposing forces are displayed in literary texts to exemplify the ever continuing battles of good vs. evil, illusion vs. reality, happiness vs. misery, or love vs. hate. Most of these external struggles are shown especially in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. There are instances in life where some matters can be hidden, but others need to be exposed. Throughout the play, Williams is constantly describing characters, symbols, and themes with the motif light vs. dark.

Blanche’s relation to light throughout the play is evident because she tries to avoid bright light of any kind. Her reaction to light is viewed as an attempt to hide reality as well as her fading beauty and youth. By hiding from the light, she tries to escape reality. She covers the naked light bulb with a Chinese paper lantern, saying, “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action” (p. 60). This quote shows that Blanche would rather hide behind the illusion of her looks than accept truth and reality.

            Blanche is not really lost in illusions; rather she uses them as camouflage. She wears them as she wears her clothes and her glass necklaces, as protection from a reality that she finds horrifying. One must not think of Blanche as just a fragile, delicate blossom. There is a fierce desire in her for life at any cost. Her masquerade may

One of the play’s main characters, Blanche, has by no means had an easy adulthood. She has had to deal with her sister setting off to New Orleans with her new husband, the death of her father, losing her own husband, and the loss of their family’s beloved plantation, Belle Reve. With all of this going on, Blanche disguises her pain and delusion, and pretends that is does not exist. In a way,