Kowalski and Dubois' Differing Values in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

   A Streetcar Named Desire is an intricate web of complex themes and conflicted characters. Set in the pivotal years immediately following World War II, Tennessee Williams infuses Blanche and Stanley with the symbols of opposing class and differing attitudes towards sex and love, then steps back as the power struggle between them ensues. Yet there are no clear cut lines of good vs. evil, no character is neither completely good nor bad, because the main characters, (especially Blanche), are so torn by conflicting and contradictory desires and needs. As such, the play has no clear victor, everyone loses something, and this fact is what gives the play its tragic cast. In a

One could say that the novel is simply just how one group of people all succumb to desire, and how this leads to their downfalls. However, when viewed through the lens of Feminist Criticism, one can see that it is not that simple: Stella and Blanche are women of their time. They wish to have a happy home, with someone to love them and a comfortable life ahead of them. This is the wish that society has conditioned them to want- Stella would never strike out on her own and though Blanche does so, all it does is bring her shame and heartache. A Streetcar Named Desire displays the view of women in this society, and how, if they decide to stray from the path dictated, it will only lead them to self

Comparing the play versus, the movie versions of A Streetcar Named Desire has been entertaining and enlightening. Originally written as a play, Tennessee Williams later adapted it into a screenplay for the film version. Consequently, both versions were extremely popular in their own right. Drama and social taboos create an emotionally charged viewing adventure. Williams characters are complex, exciting and just crazy enough to keep the audience spellbound. The DuBois sisters are complete opposites sharing only their love for each other as common ground. Blanche, the older sister, shows up for an impromptu visit with her sister Stella Kowalski. Stella and her husband Stanley live in New Orleans, in the French Quarter. Blanche has become destitute and has lost the family plantation. Stanley, incensed by the idea that Blanche has taken the plantation from him, sets out to destroy her by any and all means. The characters and performers provide a riveting and consequently soulful performance that is hauntingly unforgettable. Williams writing moves the audience to tears with dynamic characters, conflict and catastrophe of unimaginable depth.

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

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.

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.

Tennessee Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is set in the ‘Roaring Twenties’ when America was going through a great deal of change in the order of society. The three main characters; Blanche DuBois, Stella Kowalski and Stanley Kowalski jostle claustrophobically in a small apartment, set in Elysian Fields in New Orleans, Elysian Fields is an ironic name as it evokes the sense that the apartment is heaven, when in reality it is very much the opposite. Stella and Blanche are sisters, but during the course of the play, we notice very clearly that Blanche is stuck in the in the Old World of plantations and inequality, with very large social divides. In contrast, Stella has almost seamlessly evolved to live in the New

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.

In the beginning of the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Blanche first arrives from Laurel Missouri and immediately becomes the antagonist. As the play goes on Stanley starts to go against Blanche. At the end of the play Blanche becomes the victim. In the end, Stanley sent Blanche off to a mental asylum. This plays demonstrates domestic violence. In the beginning of the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams shows how society accepted it and ignored it.Stanley, one of the characters in the play, found domestic violence to be a positive and very sexual part of him and his wife, Stella's, relationship. Throughout the play, Williams shows that he believes that it is wrong.

Adversity can present itself in a wide range of severities, and it can have drastic effects on an individual. A man is insensible to appreciate prosperity until he has gone through some kind of adversity. Hardships and adversity develop and shape a person’s identity and also plays a big role in shaping one’s personal values. John Locke, a famous philosopher, once said that “Let us suppose the mind to be, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it be furnished? To this I answer, in one word, from experience”. The quote says that humans are born like clean slates and adversity plays a major role in shaping people. In the modern play A Streetcar Named Desire, the author, Tennessee Williams, suggests that individuals are blank slates and adversity plays a major factor in shaping their values and their perspective on things. This is shown through the characters of Blanche Dubois, Stella Kowalski and Stanley Kowalski.

Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a play wrought with intertwining conflicts between characters. A drama written in eleven scenes, the play takes place in New Orleans over a nine-month period. The atmosphere is noisy, with pianos playing in the distance from bars in town. It is a crowded area of the city, causing close relations with neighbors, and the whole town knowing your business. Their section of the split house consists of two rooms, a bathroom, and a porch. This small house is not fit for three people. The main characters of the story are Stella and Stanley Kowalski, the home owners, Blanche DuBois, Stella’s sister, Harold Mitchell (Mitch),

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.

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

Tennesse Williams is an expert of dissecting and analyzing complex personalities and he does it expertly in his classic "A Streetcar Named Desire." The play’s dialogue was simple, anyone would be able to understand it. The plot starts with Blanche Dubois coming to New Orleans to visit her sister Stella and her husband Stanley Kowalski. Both sisters grew up in a place called Belle Reve and had not seen each other in years. Throughout the play, The audience will start to see Blanche go a little insane as she tries to forget the loss of her former husband who killed himself years before, something she feels guilty about. Stanley starts to harass Blanche and beings to accuse her of lying about her past. Towards the end of the play, Blanche gets

From the time that the streetcar first rattles through town, it is clear that the theme of desire is a prominent feature in A Streetcar Named Desire. The themes of lust and sexuality are present mainly in three major characters: Stanley, Stella, and Blanche. Blanche’s interactions with men and her views of herself revolve around her value as a sexual object; while Stella allows Stanley’s violence and animalistic nature because of their sex life.