A Streetcar Named Desire Music Analysis

Blanche's relationship with alcohol, constantly mentioned throughout the duration of the play, relates to Williams' theme of escapism; alcohol distorts an individual's perception of what is real, and in Blanche's case it acts as a form

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.

The "Blue Piano" playing from the nearby saloon functions much like a score would in a movie. It is a form of mood setter. The music is deliberate and does not occur in every scene but rather in intense situations for instance in scene..... where Blanche and Stella discusses the loss of Belle Reeve. It signals danger and conflict such as the rape scene. The "Blue Piano" is introduced in the first stage direction setting the tone for the genre of the play, a tragedy, since it brings up connotations to the idiom "feeling blue", an unhappy state of mind. The choice of music is also true to the setting. "In this part of New Orleans you are practically always around the corner, or a few doors down the street, from a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers. This "Blue Piano" expresses the spirit of the life which goes on here" (p.1778). New Orleans is described as a "cosmopolitan" (p.1778) city because of the majorly liberal attitude its inhabitants have to interracial associations.

taking her back to her past. Then later on in the evening the tune can

The low moans of the clarinet and the blue piano all portray the image of what an animal would do. (Williams 129) Another form of imagery in the play is broken images. There is the broken mirror and Mitch tearing the lamp. There is also Blanche’s husband Hickey killing himself. There is also the loss of the baby which is a broken part of the story.

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.

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.

‘A Streetcar named Desire,’ is an interesting play, by Tennessee Williams. The character 'Blanche DuBois' is created to evoke sympathy, as the story follows her tragic deterioration in the months she lived with her sister Stella, and brother-in-law Stanley. After reading the play, I saw Blanche as the victim of Stanley's aggressive ways, and I also saw her as a hero in my eyes.

In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche’s character believes that the opposite of death is desire. Throughout the play Blanche fills her desires in order to escape from the death of people and things that surround her. Williams uses Blanche to further develop the theme because she copes with death by filling her desires, which slowly results in the self-destruction of her character. Although the theme is mostly developed from Blanche’s character, Stella, Stanley, and Blanche’s husband all suffer from desire.

Tennessee Williams was a thriving playwriter with many of his ideas coming from actual events in his life. Growing up with a father that was an alcoholic and known for gambling led him down the same path (Parry 304). In the play “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Blanche, who is trying to get away from her erroneous past goes to New Orleans to visit her sister Stella. Seeing that she is in a place where no one knows her, she hopes to make a new life for herself. During her visit, Blanche clashes with Stella’s husband Stanley and the biggest difference between them would be the way they were brought up. When Stanley starts to figure out that Blanche has a shady past, he is on a mission to uncover her past and expose her for who she really is. This makes things very hard for Stella because Stanley and Blanche see each other as enemies and they both are trying to get her away from the other. Throughout the play many disturbing issues will arise. Alcohol is brought up in the play approximately thirty-two times and violence around twenty-four (Williams). Tennessee Williams brings awareness of the characters through alcohol and violence to create a dynamic downfall into the mental state of Blanche.

Blanche deals with many issues the loss of loved ones, the loss of the family estate, the inability to deal with reality, rejection from others, and the rape by Stanley. Blanche has also become independent and assertive which is not the typical norm of a southern woman. She has been forced into a world she is not prepared for. Because of this Blanche begins to live in her own world, her own little fantasy. She also uses alcohol and sexual promiscuity to escape from the loneliness she has endured since her husband’s death. Williams shows us through the way Blanche speaks to the paper boy;

  In scene seven, Blanche soaks in a tub, singing:           "Say, it's only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea         -But it wouldn't be make-believe If you believed in me!         It's a Barnum and Bailey world, Just as phony as it can be         -But it wouldn't be make-believe

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

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,