Babylon Revisited And A Streetcar Named Desire

Blanche’s financial decline, illuminating her vulnerability, links to Aristotle’s theory that the tragic heroine must fall, allowing the audience to relate to her. Her insecurities – “I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” stereotypically reflects the insecurities women feel about their appearance and age. The uses of imperatives and exclamatory sentences suggests Blanche’s obsession over her appearance, a flaw leading her to dismiss her true identity. Her inability to avoid drink and her compulsive lies, demonstrated in her frequent references to Shep Huntleigh’s letters, makes her a more authentic woman than Stella, who is described by Williams as the “gentle, mild and contented one”. Blanche’s loss of identity, dominated by her homosexual husband’s suicide, exacerbates her solitude – “The boy-the boy died. (She sinks back down) I’m afraid I’m – going to be sick!” The fragmented, repetitive speech Blanche uses illustrates her guilt and pain, whilst the physical act of “sinking” highlights the extent of her regret, giving a sense of foreboding for her downfall. Her guilt is also exacerbated by the implied physical act at the end which shocks the contemporary audience, who would not sympathise with homosexuals, evoking pity and reinforcing that “Streetcar” is a tragedy for Blanche.

In Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois unveils the theme of the story through her representation of the struggle to maintain innocence in a tragically guilty world. The main theme of the story is that the façade of performed perfection will always be unsuccessful; fantasy cannot overcome reality. As hard as Blanche tries to hide in her fantasy, eventually truth persists and, in the end, overtakes the delusions she holds. Blanche uses her appearance to suggest innocence and youth, yet with a closer look, readers see that, though she attempts very hard to be, she is neither. She also has a symbolic relationship with Mitch; the further they draw apart, the further into madness she descends. While it is clear that Blanche is not entirely innocent, the author creates her as a symbol of such. This way, as she slowly loses her mind—and Mitch—she symbolizes the loss of said innocence. Blanche can also be considered an embodiment of Williams’s older sister Rose, who is known to have been institutionalized for her erratic behavior. Rose Williams’s inability to overcome her mental instability is directly represented through Blanche, a character who also cannot maintain fantasy and ultimately succumbs to reality. Had Blanche been able to sustain her pretense of innocence, it is possible she could have avoided the harsh realities of life.

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.

Throughout Tennessee William’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Blanche Dubois exemplified several tragic flaws. She suffered from her haunting past; her inability to overcome; her desire to be someone else; and from the cruel, animalistic treatment she received from Stanley. Sadly, her sister Stella also played a role in her downfall. All of these factors ultimately led to Blanche’s tragic breakdown in the end.

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”

While Blanche represents hope of women being able to be free and outspoken, however she also represents the idea that women are very dependent on men for everything. The idea of representing Blanche to be both proper and improper with the society’s rules and regulations is because Williams may have wanted to prove the idea that despite being independent, women will still somehow be dependent on men. Stella represents the submissive nature of women during that time period and is conveyed to be a submissive character, as Williams wanted her to represent what society thinks of women that time. Williams ultimately represents these women in this way in order to infer to the message of shattered dreams, which A Streetcar Named Desire also

‘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.

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?

Everyone has fantasies but most know that is not the true reality. Defining dreams and reality are two different things. Some want to escape the real world and make their own dreams become true, due to seeking happiness. The author portrays Blanche, Stella, and Stanley as characters that are fixated on what they want to believe is the truth; however, the reason being is because they do not want face their fears. Stella and Blanche both desire to make their past non-existent and live in a perfect world, rather than accept the truth and move forward. Stanley does not let his fantasies take over his life as much as the two women. In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar name Desire the three protagonists Blanche, Stella, and Stanley exist in a fool’s paradise by using denial and fantasy to display a public facade in desire to obscure the truth; however, the characters want to escape their undesirable reality through their more desirable fantasy.

Blanche was “Deceptive, dishonest, fraudulent, permanently flawed, unable to face reality, Blanche is for all that thoroughly capable of commanding audience compassion, for her struggle and the crushing defeat she endures have the magnitude of tragedy. The inevitability of her doom, her refusal to back down in the face of it, and the essential humanity of the forces that drive her to it are the very heart of tragedy, No matter what evil she may have done, nor what villainies practiced, she is a human being trapped by the fates, making a human fight to escape and to survive with some shred of human dignity, in full recognition of her own fatal human weaknesses and increasing absence of hope” (Crandell 93). The obscure relevance to her deceptions are only a portion of why Blanche represents the grotesque. Her necessity to cling to the “old” southern ways (with a “death grip”) allows her to cling to her own sanity. She exudes narcissism to the fullest extent, but is unable to see the damage that it is causing to herself and the people around her.

While drinking heavily after Mitch’s refusal to marry her, her delusional madness worsens. With very little self esteem left Blanche begins to pretend that there are people

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

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire the tragic hero Blanche Dubois is a “Southern Belle” from Mississippi who was born to a wealthy family. Blanche is a former schoolteacher who says that she lost Belle Reve (family estate) due to cost of the funerals and deaths of family members, but she avoids the fact that she does not have a job or money when she goes to stay with her sister Stella and bother in law in New Orleans. She seems to be on the run from her past because of her husband’s suicide after she expressed her distaste on his sexuality. She later had many affairs trying to numb her grief on the death of her husband.

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,

Charlie and his wife lived in Paris during the twenties, and just as any other night they were out drinking and having fun. They get into a fight witch results in his wife, Helen, kissing another man. Charlie storms home, and an hour later when Helen has stumbled herself home, Charlie locks her out of their apartment and she dies soon after. Charlie has a breakdown and is institutionalized right before he looses all his money in the stock market crash of 1929. As the story opens three years later Charlie is back in Paris, sober, determined to get custody over his daughter, Honoria, who lives with Helens sister, Marion.