Essay On Stanley's Tension In Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire portrays a dog-eat-dog world, in which the winner takes it all: a person not just watches out closely for his/her own interest but also preys on the weak. This portrayal is mostly embodied in the confrontation between Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski, the two major characters in the play. The confrontation partly arises from difference in class, Blanche from high society while Stanley from low one. But most noteworthy is that the element that contributes the most to this confrontation is their desires for sex, money, revenge, and even survival of life. Over time, the tension between Blanche and Stanley grows to a climax and eventually goes down with Blanche, the weak, losing the battle while Stanley, the strong, standing out as the victor and taking away Blanche’s soul and body. Given this, in this dog-eat-dog showdown there exists ambiguous moments: Is the physical contact between Blanche and Stanley a rape, a date, or a rape-date? A look into this issue is in order.

A Streetcar Named Desire is a play of multifaceted themes and diverse characters with the main antagonists of the play, Blanche and Stanley infused by their polarized attitudes towards reality and society ‘structured on the basis of the oppositions past/present and paradise lost/present chaos’(*1). The effect of these conflicting views is the mental deterioration of Blanche’s cerebral health that, it has been said; Stanley an insensitive brute destroyed Blanche with cruel relish and is the architect of her tragic end. However, due to various events in the play this statement is open to question, for instance, the word ‘insensitive’ is debatable, ‘insensitive’ can be defined as not thinking of other people’s feelings but Stanley is aware of

The themes of A streetcar Named Desire are mainly built on conflict, the conflicts between men and women, the conflicts of race, class and attitude to life, and these are especially embodied in Stanley and Blanche. Even in Blanche’s own mind there are conflicts of truth and lies, reality and illusion, and by the end of the play, most of these conflicts have been resolved.

“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

Blanche’s unexpected arrival at the entrance of the play is what stirs an even bigger monster in Stanley. Upon her entrance, she immediately causes trouble due to her and Stanley’s differences. Blanche is a southern belle from a very wealthy background. She is very proud of being brought up in the upper class while Stanley is proud that he lead his own life through the working class. This makes him a very rude and animalistic man with a lower level of education. Even their first conversation

Tennessee Williams’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire” is based on a journey of the protagonist Blanche, however her sister, Stella Kowalski, takes a major role as well in further conveying the theme of the play, that is of course, complicated and baffling and dramatic based on the very vague presentation of it, there is a turning point at the end of the play where my interpretation of Stella changes as well. Her top priority in the play was to keep everything under control, she had “messed” up a few times, but she mainly desires to focus on the important matters to her, marriage and life. She tries to keep a balance and therefore conveys the theme the playwright is conveying.

Belle Reve has been lost. He does not care for Belle Reve as a bit of

is. In scene 3, he “tosses” the radio out of the window. He wants to

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

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.

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams uses setting to illustrate various themes and messages as they pertain to the events of the play. The setting plays a crucial role in the story line and the outcome of the play.

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.

Tennessee Williams was an American writer known for short stories and poems in the mid 1950’s. His more famous writing was A Streetcar Named Desire. His writings influenced many other writers such as August Strindberg and Hart Crane. His writings A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie was adopted to films and A Streetcar Named Desire earned him his first Pulitzer prize. In A Streetcar Named Desire there is many elements that build the plot and story line. The story is about a girl who is drove crazy by his sister’s husband and eventually sent to the mental hospital. The main plot is towards the end of the story when Blanche Dubois is blackmailed by her sister’s husband and raped by him. Everything takes its toll on her until she begins drinking heavily and is thought to have gone crazy and placed in a mental hospital. In this story, many things play affect in the contrast of the writing such as Blanche arriving at her sister’s house, seeing her sister’s husbands attitude, the poker game, Blanche getting raped. These events make Blanche an easy victim. In Tennessee Williams, a street car named desire, the start of kindness turns to tragedy and pain.

“Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama…the purest language of plays.” Once, quoted as having said this, Tennessee Williams has certainly used symbolism and colour extremely effectively in his play, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. A moving story about fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois and her lapse into insanity, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ contains much symbolism and clever use of colour. This helps the audience to link certain scenes and events to the themes and issues that Williams presents within the play, such as desire and death, and the conflict between the old America and the new.

Some novels and plays seem to advocate changes in social or political attitudes or in traditions. Choose such a novel or play and note briefly the particular attitudes or traditions that the author apparently wishes to modify. Then analyze the techniques the author uses to influence the reader or audience’s views. Avoid plot summary.