A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams Essay

The reader may view Blanche as someone who tried to escape her sordid past in Laurel and wanted to start a new life with her sister, yet due to the continuous investigations from Stanley, was unable to do so. Stanley reveals Blanches’ lies and deceits, commenting on them as her ‘same old act, same old hooey!’ This tells the reader that his research of Blanches’ past is way of stopping her from finding a new life. Blanche attempts to redeem her life by finding love with Mitch, yet Stanley again reveals to Mitch that she was not ‘straight’, resulting in Mitch not wanting to be with her and also contributing to her fate. Stanley, after mercilessly divulging all her truths and bringing her to the edge of her mental capacity, rapes Blanche which brought about her final collapse. The reader may view Stella as someone at blame for her sisters’ fate, as though she shows some moral support of Blanches’ situation and listens to what she has to say, Stella continuously throughout the play neglects to notice Blanches slow mental deterioration and ignores Blanches’ outcries and incessant need for attention. Stella chooses Stanley over Blanche, despite her warnings about him being ‘volatile, violent and sub-human which represents not

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

     This play takes place in New Orleans Louisiana. New Orleans is a very lively town that is known as a party town and for it being a rough town. New Orleans is a town in which inhibition is suppressed and people try to have fun all the time, while not worrying about the little things in life. This is especially true for the French quarter of New Orleans, which is the setting for this play. New Orleans is know for Mardi Gras and illusion, but it is also a city of reality. Blanche does not

Blanche’s death speech plays a vital role in the development of the play “A Streetcar named Desire”. In the monologue the tension between Blanche and Stella comes to a zenith as Blanch explodes with rage as she expresses her jealousy-driven feelings to Stella. In doing so Blanche reveals much more, including her unstable mental state, her emotional reaction to the lost of Belle Reve, and most importantly her preoccupation with the theme of death.

Stella's marriage to Stanley, on the other hand, seems to have given her the happiness and fulfillment, which Blanche has attempted to find in a guilt-ridden life of loneliness with promiscuity. As a result Blanche has become neurotic and alcoholic, slipping increasingly into insanity. Stella, meanwhile, appears to have been thriving in a profane, coarse, but wholly satisfying sexual relationship with Stanley. Thus, superficially, the main contrast between Stella and Blanche seems to be one between sickness and health, perversity and normality, particularly in the sexual relationship. Stella is thriving; Blanche is disintegrating. But a closer examination of these sisters begins to show more complex differences in their characters and situations. Blanche is disintegrating for reasons other than sexual perversity, and Stella is paying a rather steep price for her so-called "normal" life with Stanley.

1. Blanche who is homeless, comes to her sister’s house at the beginning. Blanche had been a schoolteacher, married Allan, a man she later discovered to be gay. Her reactions to his sexual orientation caused him to commit suicide. Lonely, she becomes a prostitute, who loses her teaching career when her sexual relationship with a teenager is found out. After the family plantation Belle Reve is lost, she turns to her little sister Stella, who lives in with her husband Stanley in a poor area of New Orleans. She is a very deluded character; She hides her past and fragility behind her Southern aristocrat clothes and manners and is very harsh and mean to Stanley, calling him

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).

In this play Blanche has a praxis: She must get a companion to share her life with who can provide her with shelter, food, and financial support and that’s what makes the whole story happen. This praxis is created when two things happen: First, Blanche finding out that the man she married was having an affair with another man and he decided to shoot himself after she confronted him, and second, the loss of her house in Mississippi. These two things create her need of a shelter, financial support and food therefore she decides to stay with her sister Stella.

Stella abandons Blanche in her time of need, partly responsible for Blanche’s struggles prior to the plays events. Struggles that played a role in Blanche's overall instabilities and insecurities. But why is Stanley the one that's ultimately responsible? Aside from verbally and physically abusing Blanche, He isolates Blanche from the people she loves, the only people she has left. He was the one who convinced Mitch to abandon Blanche by telling him about her past. “You're goddamn right I told him! I'd have that on my conscience the rest of my life if I knew all that stuff and let my best friend get caught!”(Williams,126) He is the one that silences Stella. He is aware of his power over Stella. He is the reason why Stella abandons Blanche. He manipulates Stella into forgiving him even when he abuses her. He makes sure she is dependent of him so she never leaves while also subtly attempting to persuade her into taking his side instead of Blanches. “Stella, it's gonna be all right after she goes and after you've had the baby. It's gonna be all right again between you and me the way that it was. You remember that way that it was?”.

Stella, too, is a major character who lives in a world of hopes and fantasies. Stella’s tears over her sister as Blanche was taken away at the end of play reveals that Stella’s fantasies have been crushed by Stanley’s brutality. Stella calls her sister, “Blanche! Blanche! Blanche!”(142) , as if she does not want to let go of her sister. In spite of the fact that Stanley tried to justify and to relief her, Stella knows that something acquitted and abandoned had banished. She knows that her happy and humble world and her sister’s hopes had gone. Through her fantasy world, she thinks she could keep her sister for ever, but fantasy does not always work and makes life appear as it should be rather than what reality is. Also, Blanche imagines the doctor as a gentleman who is going to rescue her from a life that she imagines it as a life that does not want to accept her. Blanche finishes the play by saying, “Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (142). Blanche’s irony is demonstrated for two reasons. First of all, the doctor is not a gentleman; he came to take her to a mental health care. Second of all, strangers are not kind to her; they are kind only for trade of sex. Instead, they feel sympathy for her for creating a world where she is the victim. Blanche never perceives stranger’s kindness as something that people take advantage of. Instead, she thinks that Stanley is the one who does not treat her well, although he wanted

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.

     Blanche appears at the apartment house where her sister, Stella, lives. She brings with her a trunk of fancy clothing,

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;

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,

Before one can understand Blanche's character, one must understand the reason why she moved to New Orleans and joined her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law, Stanley. By analyzing the symbolism in the first scene, one