Symbolism Of A Street Car Named Desire And The Yellow Wallpaper

It is difficult to discuss the meaning in this story without first examining the author’s own personal experience. “The Yellow Wallpaper” gives an account of a woman driven to madness as a result of the

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is a play about a woman named Blanche Dubois who is in misplaced circumstances. Her life is lived through fantasies, the remembrance of her lost husband and the resentment that she feels for her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Various moral and ethical lessons arise in this play such as: Lying ultimately gets you nowhere, Abuse is never good, Treat people how you want to be treated, Stay true to yourself and Don’t judge a book by its cover.

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.

“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

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire" Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 12 Nov. 2011.

From my point of view the protagonist of A Streetcar Named Desire is Blanche Dubois. Blanche is a woman who was born and raised in the plantations in Mississippi. She’s about 30 years old. She is an English teacher who got fired for having an affair with a 17 year old student. She goes to New Orleans in 1947 to stay with her sister, Stella, and her sister’s husband Stanley Kowalski.

What others see about our life is not always truth. Looking from the outside things can seem so put together, as you dive in a little deeper you find things are not aways as they appear. Especially when it comes to the power of the mind. We are all hiding something within the walls of our own lives and minds. 1“The depression malady of the protagonist-narrator deepens as the story progresses and she appears to be totally crazy in the end; but the interior monologue and the sense of relief and freedom experienced by her suggest the triumph of the questing individual. The obstructing man he’s vanquished on the floor and she walks over him, as it were!” The woman in the story of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is seen as a wife to a successful man, a

The yellow wallpaper is a symbol of oppression in a woman who felt her duties were limited as a wife and mother. The wallpaper shows a sign of female imprisonment. Since the wallpaper is always near her, the narrator begins to analyze the reasoning behind it. Over time, she begins to realize someone is behind the

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.

Streetcar Named Desire Assignment. Blanche DuBois is a fallen southern heiress to the DuBois empire that is Belle Reve. Born into wealth, Blanche has never had to work or face the harsh realities that life brings along. The play, A Streetcar Named Desire shows both parts to the eccentric persona that is Blanche DuBois; the unfortunate victim of society and the victimizer who uses lies to deceive people to get what she wants. Blanche lives in a world that is actually a figment of her vast imagination.

In the Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche Dubois is first introduced having dressed in white and symbolizing chastity and innocence. As sensitive, aristocratic, and refined as it is, the beauty depicts an appearance resembling a moth. Blanche comes from a background that is aristocratic. Her job, as an English teacher, as well as her home are all lost and in turn, she comes to stay in her sister’s house for a while, Stella, who stays with her husband Stanley, a coarse polish. Her lover passed away and since then she has changed her life completely. Blanche is seen to be a misfit in the

Tennessee Williams was an American writer known for short stories and poems in the mid 1950’s. His more famous writing was A Streetcar Named Desire. His writings influenced many other writers such as August Strindberg and Hart Crane. His writings A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie was adopted to films and A Streetcar Named Desire earned him his first Pulitzer prize. In A Streetcar Named Desire there is many elements that build the plot and story line. The story is about a girl who is drove crazy by his sister’s husband and eventually sent to the mental hospital. The main plot is towards the end of the story when Blanche Dubois is blackmailed by her sister’s husband and raped by him. Everything takes its toll on her until she begins drinking heavily and is thought to have gone crazy and placed in a mental hospital. In this story, many things play affect in the contrast of the writing such as Blanche arriving at her sister’s house, seeing her sister’s husbands attitude, the poker game, Blanche getting raped. These events make Blanche an easy victim. In Tennessee Williams, a street car named desire, the start of kindness turns to tragedy and pain.

A Streetcar Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams that expresses the life of a couple trying to rebuild their life in postwar America and how an unexpected visit from a relative creates tension in their home. Stella and Stanley Kowalski are an average couple expecting their first child but when Stella’s sister, Blanche, comes to town her bubbly personality crashes with Stanley’s animalistic one; forcing a series of unfortunate

“Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama…the purest language of plays.” Once, quoted as having said this, Tennessee Williams has certainly used symbolism and colour extremely effectively in his play, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. A moving story about fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois and her lapse into insanity, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ contains much symbolism and clever use of colour. This helps the audience to link certain scenes and events to the themes and issues that Williams presents within the play, such as desire and death, and the conflict between the old America and the new.

Summary: An analysis of some of the many symbols found in "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams, with the help of psychoanalytical theory. Williams' expert use of these symbols helped him to convey the meaning of many characteristics of the protagonists in the play. It is very debatable nowadays how much psychology can influence an author or how much the author's psychological features can influence his work.