Such a Beautiful Play: A Streetcar Named Desire Journal Entry

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

During scene one, the audience is introduced to Blanche as Stella's sister, who is going to stay with her for a while. Blanch tries her best to act normal and hide her emotion from her sister, but breaks down at the end of scene

     Another key element in the story is the blue piano. Whenever this piano is heard playing during the play it signifies that Stanley has had a victory over Blanche in some way. The blue piano also signifies that Blanches illusion is begging to unravel. The reality of Blanches situation becomes apparent to Stanley who then tries to expose Blanche for what she really

Saw! Saw!” and in the end cries “I let the place go!, I let the place go?” Thirdly, it seems as if Blanche is accusing Stella of blaming her for losing Belle Reve when in the book Stella simply asks about what happened. This becomes clear when Blanche reproaches Stella by telling her: “And you sit there telling me with your eyes that I let the place go” and “Yes accuse me! Sit and stare at me thinking I let the place go!” This sort of presumptuous attitude and thinking influences the reader to assume that Blanche is unable to let go. In addition when Blanche says “I took the blows in my face and body…Farther, Margret, Mother…had to be burnt like rubbish” she is also directly conveying her agony.

Blanche is committed to a tradition and a way of life that have become anachronistic in the world of Stanley Kowalski. She is committed to a code of civilization that died with her ancestral home, Belle Reve. Stella recognizes this tradition and her sister's commitment to it, but she has chosen to relinquish it and to come to terms with a world that has no place for it. In a sense, Blanche is frantic in her refusal to relinquish her concept

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.”

A short amount of time has passed after Blanche’s encounter with the stranger following the departure of her to the mental institute, Blanche is wearing her piece of silky white robe. In her bag is a small bottle half full of liquor that she has slipped past the doctor. Whilst Blanche drinks to escape the feeling of regret she sings “Paper Moon” just so the doctor in the front seat of the car cannot hear her. Constantly taking sips of the strong liquor, she hums the song to herself until there is no more liquid in the glass bottle. Blanche looks up into the ceiling and tips the bottle upside down in hopes of the small puddle at the bottom to come out. With no liquor left in the bottle, Blanche frustratingly throws the bottle out of the window

The illusions that make up Blanche’s life while she is staying with her sister are something I have experienced first hand. Her time spent in New Orleans is blurred between what is real and what her mind conjures up for her to believe. At the beginning of the play Blanche lies and knows that she is lying, telling her sister that she is just “taking a leave of absence” (Williams Page???), and lying about her age. However as the play continues Blanche begins to fall victim to her own lies, convincing herself, possibly more than Stella, that Steph Huntleigh will come and save the two sisters. Losing touch with reality more and more as the play continues, Blanche Blanche lives in a dream world, and in scene 7 her reference to a "Barnum and Bailey world, just as phony as it can be-" exposes that she has created an illusion in her mind(Williams, Page 120). Like Blanche, much of my childhood and adolescence was spent denying what was

Blanches’ emotional state of mind is also conspicuous at the start of the play as she circumvents direct light, fearful of showing her fading looks and the light would make her vulnerable to the truth. Blanche is unable to withstand harsh light, calling the light a ‘merciless glare’(S1:pg.120*) because with Allan’s death, the light had gone out of her life and the effect this had is that she wanted dim lights hiding the reality of her painful memories. This links to the theme of dream and reality as Blanche, a delicate character, refused ‘to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion’ (*2), living on the borders of life similar to a moth which creates the image of Blanches’ fragility.

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

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.

However, as we get to know Blanches character and situation, we begin to feel much sorrier for her and even begin to pity the situation she is stuck in. Having lost the family’s luxurious plantation house in Belle Reve, although we do not know whether this reclamation of the house is solely down to Blanche or just generally a family-wide debt issue that has forced Blanche from her home so cannot blame anyone specifically for this, Blanche has essentially ended up wandering around the area, looking for somewhere to stay before she ends up, literally on her sister’s doorstep at a last minute request. Her manic and slightly frenetic behaviour when she does arrive suggest that she is desperately nervous or getting increasingly desperate for support and some friendship, someone to rely on. She is however, a woman who is quite dramatic and emotional, as she is not someone who understands empathy. This is apparent when she has just arrived at Stella’s and is talking to her sister about where she lives. Now most people, when arriving in someone’s house at the last minute to stay there for an unspecified amount of time, would never dream of doing or saying something to insult the host. Yet Blanche, when asking Stella how many rooms there are in the apartment says ‘What? Two rooms did you say?’ in a quite demeaning and slightly insulting tone and to follow this comment up she laughs sharply, in an almost

Without realizing, Blanche compares herself to being like the light bulb and how it uses a paper lantern to cover up. She is however, fully aware of her alternating personality and that she uses it to impress others because in order for people to like her she feels she has to act like something that she is not making her very vulnerable. In order to protect herself, Blanche covers up by making fake stories and lying to everyone to seem more attractive. When her sister asks why she cares so much about her age, Blanche responds, “Because of hard knocks my vanity’s been given. What I mean is—he thinks I’m sort of prim and proper, you know. I want to deceive him enough to make him—want me . . .” (Williams 58). As opposed to letting herself shine, Blanche uses the

As Blanche arrives at the house of Stella and Stanly, right away you see his mood go into a very dark place as if he does not want her to be there. Stanly’s character in the film comes off to be very rough and aggressive. The night after Blanche arrived, she meets Stanly’s friend Mitch, who is different from Stanly just by the way he carries himself. Mitch and Blanche catch a glimpse of each other which brings some light back into her being there. Stella was in support of her sister blanche meeting Mitch as it may have been an effective way for her to comfortably. Light and dark effects in a dramatic film play a big part because it sets the tone of the storyline and helps give the suspension of where the story will go and end up. It can be good for a film to bounce back and forth from light and dark moments to keep scenes impactful to the viewer. [For example, in the scene where Blanche buys a cover for the light in the bedroom area, it made her happy, and the others seemed as if they supported it to make her feel comfortable, and then towards the end of the film when Stanly snatches the cover off the light as he is angry, it changes the

            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