Streetcar Named Desire Dramatic Techniques Essay

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.

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.

Tennessee Williams is regarded as a pioneering playwright of American theatre. Through his plays, Williams addresses important issues that no other writers of his time were willing to discuss, including addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness. Recurring themes in William’s works include the dysfunctional family, obsessive and absent mothers and fathers, and emotionally damaged women. These characters were inspired by his experiences with his own family. These characters appear repeatedly in his works with their own recurring themes. Through The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents the similar thematic elements of illusion, escape, and fragility between the two plays, proving that although similar, the themes within these plays are not simply recycled, as the differences in their respective texts highlight the differences of the human condition.

“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

In his plays, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams uses different ways to show in the play of social realism. It show each of individual character and focusing on how particular way of viewpoint contrast with men, and the perspective of looking at women. The play explores struggle of two character Stanley and Blanche, between appearances and reality which made the play’s plot more affected reality. Throughout this play, it show the symbolize of the gender roles and the power of men over women in the 1940’s in New Orleans.

How does Williams present the themes of illusion and fantasy in A Streetcar Named Desire?

In the opening two scenes of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams, the audience has its first and generally most important impressions formulated on characters, the plot and the mood and tone of the play overall.

The Raw Power of A Streetcar Named Desire         Tennessee Williams's play A Streetcar Named Desire contains more within it's characters, situations, and story than appears on its surface. As in many of Williams's plays, there is much use of symbolism and interesting characters in order to draw in and involve the audience.   The plot of A Streetcar Named Desire alone does not captivate the audience.  

Literary devices that are applied and used in literature often make a story interesting. F. Scott Fitzgerald, in “Babylon Revisited,” and Tennessee Williams in, A Streetcar Named Desire, use the literary devices setting, characters, and symbolism, to portray the similar theme, a person’s past transgressions will haunt his future. Fitzgerald, in “Babylon Revisited,” uses the literary device, setting, to bring out the theme; a person’s past transgressions will haunt his future. The setting of “Babylon Revisited” is taken place in Paris, where the story is set in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929. During this time Charlie struggles with alcoholism which results in the separation with his daughter Honoria Wales.

All authors use literary elements to get their point across and help them explain the purpose of their work. In Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, he often uses symbols and motifs to help develop the characters and themes. Williams’ use of music, light, and baths are used to explain Blanche’s guilt from her past and the insecurities with her appearance to highlight the gender expectation that women should remain modest and beautiful to fulfill the illusion of a Southern Belle.

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

Essay In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche declares, “I don’t want realism, I want magic!” Discuss the role of magic and illusion in the play. Consider the how magic comes into conflict with realism, and what values and ideas this conflict expresses. Please also consider the style of Williams’ writing – are there significant moments of magic or illusion in the storytelling?

This 1950's theatrical presentation was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Tennessee Williams. It is about a southern bell by the name of Blanche Dubois who loses her father's plantation to a mortgage and travels to live in her sister's home in New Orleans by means of a streetcar called Desire. There she finds her sister living in a mess with a drunken bully husband, and the events that follow cause Blanche to step over the line of insanity and fall victim to life's harsh lessons.

In the novel, A streetcar name desire has two schools of criticism and they demonstrate how the play can be interpreted in different ways when analyzed from different perspectives. The two schools of literary criticism is Marxist and feminist. These criticisms reflect the novel very well and Tennessee William has put many similarities of these theories. According to Marxist.org , Marxist historical criticism is a loose term for explaining literary criticism based on socialist and dialectic theories. Marxist criticism sees literary writing as reflections of social institutions from which they come from.

Tennessee Williams' Use of Dramatic Devices To Create Contrast And Conflict In "A Streetcar Named Desire"