I personally identify with Blanche. She knows she is going crazy and she tries to hide her mental state with more lies piled on. After Blanche goes through the traumatic experiences of living and losing Belle Reve, she refuses to admit anything is wrong. She continues living her life the way she always did, and I fear because I know I would take a similar route. I know I will never admit when anything is wrong, and I will try to fix a problem before it starts. Blanche’s problem is she has finally lost everything; her solution is moving away and acting as if the problem never happened. Reading through “A Streetcar Named Desire” made me understand how similar I am to Blanche DeBois. If it was not for how the play was written, I am sure I would not have these feelings towards Blanche. Tennessee Williams, the writer of the play, uses music, objects, and sound or dialogue to further explain drama in “Streetcar Named Desire”. Using music helps the audience distinguish relationships between characters. Blanche hears the Varsouviana Polka whenever she thinks of Alan, and the only thing that can stop her music is the gunshot that ended Alan’s life. Since the music she hears is in her head, no one else can hear the gunshot. The last time Blanche can hear the music the gunshot can be heard, yet the music does not stop. This has started her mental break because in her mind everything is going fine, yet in the world the characters start understanding who Blanche is and how she does not
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.
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 (1911-1983) was born in Mississippi but moved to New Orleans at the age of 28, there he found the inspiration for his play A Streetcar Named Desire. The play is set in New Orleans and cooperates the vibe of the setting particularly through music. Williams uses vivid music in this play which heightens its themes such as madness and social differences.
taking her back to her past. Then later on in the evening the tune can
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.
In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams explores the internal conflict of illusion versus reality through the characters. Humans often use illusion to save us pain and it allows us to enjoy pleasure instead. However, as illusion clashes with reality, one can forget the difference between the two. When people are caught up in their illusions, eventually they must face reality even if it is harsh. In the play, Blanche suffers from the struggle of what is real and what is fake because of the difficult events of her past. Blanche comes to her sister Stella seeking aid because she has lost her home, her job, and her family. To deal with this terrible part of her life, she uses fantasy to escape her dreadful reality. Blanche’s embracement of a fantasy world can be categorized by her attempts to revive her youth, her relationship struggles, and attempts to escape her past.
The movie “A Streetcar Named Desire” contains many elements of insanity. The character that displays the most tragic insanity is Blanche Dubois. Blanche is from Laurel, Mississippi were she loses her home Belle Reve, after the death of her relatives. She then travels to her sister’s home where her actions lead her to insanity. She goes to her sister home as a fallen woman of society. She has a difficult time distinguishing between what is real and what is fantasy. Blanche Dubois is a complex individual who provokes strong reactions from other characters. The main factors are her lying, drinking and infatuations with men. Unfortunately, these actions drive her to the final breaking point and lead her to an
‘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.
In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche’s character believes that the opposite of death is desire. Throughout the play Blanche fills her desires in order to escape from the death of people and things that surround her. Williams uses Blanche to further develop the theme because she copes with death by filling her desires, which slowly results in the self-destruction of her character. Although the theme is mostly developed from Blanche’s character, Stella, Stanley, and Blanche’s husband all suffer from desire.
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?
I would like to analyze a tragic heroine Blanche DuBois appearing in a play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) written by Tennessee Williams. My intention is to concentrate on the most significant features of her nature and behaviour and also on various external aspects influencing her life and resulting in her nervous breakdown. I would like to discuss many themes related to this character, such as loss, desire and longing for happiness, beauty and youth, pretension, lies and imagination, dependence on men and alcoholism.
Desire was the "rattle-trap streetcar" that brought her to her pitiful state in life. Blanche is the most fascinating character in A Streetcar Named Desire. One reason for this is that she has an absolutely brilliant way of making reality seem like fantasy, and making fantasy seem like reality. This element of Blanche's personality is what makes her character interest the audience and contribute to the excellence of the work.
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