Examples Of Illusion In 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.

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

Each character is shown to live their life in either the way of illusion or reality. Harold Mitchell, also known as Mitch buys into Blanches illusions. He is overtaken by her charm, but in the end finally faces reality. Stella who is Blanches sister is always wishing for everything to be perfect with her and Stanley even though he abuses her. She overlooks Stanley’s downfalls to escape her reality. Blanche is the center of all illusion.

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.

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.”

In Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire, there are many instances where Blanche, one of the main protagonists, uses illusions in an attempt to escape reality; her relationship with Allan, her relationship within herself and her relationship with Mitch. The idea of illusion and reality seems to bring on the idea that Blanche wants to escape her own world and be someone else, we see her do this by lying any chance she get’s if it makes her look good.

She tries to hold on to him but is unable to keep him attracted. Blanche is lost, confused, conflicted, lashing out in sexual ways, and living in her out own fantasies. She has no concern for anyone’s well being, including her own. Thus, this is her utter most harmful demise. She has no realistic outlook for the future.

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.

As she sings this song, telling the story of her tendency to believe a more pleasant, warped view of reality over the actual reality, Stanley is telling Stella the horrifying truth about Blanche's scandalous past. These lyrics sum up Blanche’s approach to life. She believes that her lying is only her means of enjoying a better way of life and is therefore essentially harmless.

     Furthermore, Blanche claims to have an old friendship with a man who is now a millionaire, a certain Mr. Shep Huntleigh. She believes that if she needs help at any m point in time, especially monetary aid, “darling Shep” will be there to cable in some money. Shep Huntleigh represents Blanche’s idea of the perfect man, a rich, debonair, suave gentleman. She sees Stanley as everything but that perfect man, cruel to her sister and even crueler to herself. Blanche constantly claims she is going to go off and see Shep, and after Mitch reveals his knowledge of the truth about her, she claims she is going to spend a month or so abroad. “I received a telegram from an old admirer of mine,” she claims, “A cruise of the Caribbean on a yacht!” However, Stanley crushes her spirit almost immediately, tearing her fanciful dreams apart into ragged threads. “There isn’t a goddam thing but imagination!” he screams. It is Stanley who refuses to let Blanche live in a dream world.

She begins to ramble on more, have more delusions and lie about crazy things such as Shep Huntleigh inviting her on a cruise to the Caribbean. She begins to shower more often or “hydrotherapy” as she calls it, because it “is necessary for her probably to wash away the feeling of guilt as also the stains of her promiscuous life” (Kataria 96). As the play comes to an end, Blanche becomes more psychotic and no one is on her side. Blanche appears to swirl into oblivion towards the end of the play when a fiight with Stanley gets physical. “She finally realizes to her dismay that she has lost her reputation, a place to go to, and what is worse, her charm. This realization, painful as it is, coupled with the rape, sends her reeling into a world of shadows from which she was never really far away” (Kataria 182.)

When she was young, "sixteen, I made the discovery - love. All at once and

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

            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