Tennessee Williams 's A Streetcar Named Desire

Blanche’s inability to face reality serves as another contributing factor to her insanity, encouraging her to invent additional fantasies which

She is very impulsive and has a lack of control over her emotions. She also has a fear of abandonment, which was triggered by the death of her husband. Her fear of abandonment is also the reason she has a history of unstable relationships. Blanche also shows symptoms of schizophrenia, which appears in scene 11. She has hallucinations and starts to hear voices. Blanche is delusional because she talks about how she will be living by the sea and a millionaire ex-boyfriend is going to pick her up and take her away on his yacht. The last disorder Blanche could be suffering from is post-traumatic stress disorder. She is always feeling tense or on edge and has angry outbursts. She suffers from strong guilt and depression. Blanche also has flashbacks of the night her husband committed

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’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a web of themes, complicated scenarios, and clashes between the characters. Therefore, it might’ve been somehow difficult to find out who the protagonist of this play is if it wasn’t for Aristotle’s ideas of a good tragedy because neither of the main characters, Stanley Kowalski and Blanche Dubois, is completely good nor bad. According to Aristotle’s Poetics, a good tragedy requires the protagonist to undergo a change of status which only happens with Blanche Dubois.

In what way can A Streetcar Named Desire be seen as an exploration of”old” America versus the “new” America?

The dawn of the twentieth century beheld changes in almost every aspect of the day-to-day lives of women, from the domestic domain to the public. By the midpoint of the twentieth century, women 's activities and concerns had been recognized by the society in previously male-dominating world. The end of the nineteenth century saw tremendous growth in the suffrage movement in England and the United States, with women struggling to attain political equality. However, this was not to last however, and by the fifties men had reassumed their more dominant role in society. Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire around the time this reversal was occurring in American society. In this play male dominance is clear. Women are represented as delicate, reserved, and silent, confined to a domestic world that isolated them from the harsh realities of the world. By analyzing the character of Stanley; a masculine and Stella; a symbol of femininity; and other characters of this play, readers can clearly see how male-dominated world it was.

     In Tennessee William’s masterful play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the reader meets a middle – aged woman by the name of Blanche DuBois. Blanche lives in her own faerie tale world, one of a young, beautiful debutante, surrounded by admirers, and loved by all whom she encounters. In reality, Blanche is an aging woman who cannot cope with the actualities of life. She makes up wild stories, and when Stanley Kowalski, her brother – in – law, rapes her, the realities of life cause her to drift into absolute lunacy.

Blanche “took the bows in [her] face and [her] body! All those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard,” (26) and Blanche did it all by herself. Blanche has been through a lot. She has seen almost everyone she cares about die, with no one around to support or comfort her. Readers can have compassion for Blanche here because in this time of need the deaths just kept coming and Blanche had no one. It forced her to have to rely on herself to survive this situation. She had to work through it and she had to put herself first. Now, Blanche knows no different. Through the progression of the play, it is revealed that Blanche found “the boy [she] married and an older man who had been his friend for years” (95) together, which led to Allan’s suicide later that night. Blanche could only blame herself, she was not there for her husband when this man could be. She was cheated and lost. The audience can only feel sympathy for Blanche here. Williams makes the readers have this sense of compassion by creating tragedy in all aspects of Blanche’s

Dramas of the twentieth century defied the norm of dull plays and exchanged them for conflicted characters, racy scenes, and curse words. Eugene O’Neill is seen as the innovator of the exciting and fresh new themes, who began the way deep plays were written in 1924. But, perhaps one of the most controversial plays—and maybe the greatest known of the era—is Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, a tale of one woman’s destruction due to Southern society’s changing moral values. The destruction of the Old Southern society around the main character, Blanche DuBois, causes her to go insane and she cannot stand the low morals that the New South is carrying in its baggage.

“Nearly everyone you see- like him, and her, and you, and me- pretends to be a pillar of society” (Facade, Jekyll and Hyde). A perfect little lie. Not exactly hidden, but buried. Ignored with the universal knowledge that it is tabooed to talk about- not because people are stupid, but because all are living in one. People chose to ignore the screen put on by neighbors and peers because they put on the same screen themselves. These standardized ideas ingrained into the minds of innocent children construct overproduced, close-minded adults. The “perfect” way to act, and the “perfect” way to dress. The “cross your legs, and dot your i’s”. The odious ways of life, and the ever so cynical society impresses that of a heavy weight, an anvil, dragging

William: Thanks Louis, and thank you for having me here. I 'd like to start by agreeing in part with Matt. The late 1940s were hallmarked by great social upheaval, and Matt 's point about the gender inequality of the time is what really struck with me, and is something that I think is integral to Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams was a huge success as both a play, and a film. It defied the norms at the time and broached subjects which, even now are rarely talked about. The cast in the play all had much more depth to them than you might initially notice, and Blanche is a great example of this. Blanche DuBois is a very easy character to write off as simply being elitist and snobby, but there is really much more to her character than meets the eye. Throughout both the film and the novel, the audience gets an uncanny sense from Blanche, and there 's a reason for that. Blanche is a character that shows symptoms of countless mental illnesses and Tennessee leaves little doubt that she has something but never quite tells us what, even if he leaves plenty of clues for us to piece it together ourselves. From the evidence he has left us, I believe that Blanche could be suffering from two conditions: Schizophrenia, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Often times in life, individuals are faced with troublesome conflict: trying to decide between what is morally right and wrong, good or bad. Unfortunately, however, sometimes there is no clear, advantageous choice for an individual to make. This often results in one becoming stuck in the middle, unsure of what to do or where to turn, afraid of the consequences associated with choosing one side over the other. In fact, sometimes two differing tensions can even be representations of two differing entities that have a major influence in one’s personal life, making one’s situation all the more difficult to handle. For instance, in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Stella is stuck in the middle of underlying tensions between her sister, Blanche, and husband, Stanley. With both seemingly vying for compliance, Stella finds herself in an almost literal “tug of war,” between her two loved ones, with Stanley attacking Blanche for her lies and deceit, and Blanche degrading Stanley for his abusive tendencies. While both sides have their points, Stella continues to be pulled in two conflicting directions as a result of the distinct obligations she feels she has as both a sister and a wife, and this conflict, specifically the decision made between the two by Stella, illuminates the play’s overall theme of dependency on males.

“A Streetcar Named Desire” is a play written by Tennessee Williams. Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi but with a different name. He changed his name from Thomas Lanier Williams to what the readers know today as Tennessee Williams. (Forman). Williams is widely known for his plays, short stories, and poems across the world. He has won many awards for his work such as The New York Critics’ Circle Award and 2 Pulitzer awards. The play “A Streetcar Named Desire he won his first Pulitzer Prize. Williams uses his writing as therapy to escape the world around him (Henthorne). Williams, however, used his personal struggles with homosexuality, alcoholism, abuse, and madness to tell the story, “A Streetcar Named Desire” (Mays).

Tennessee Williams the publisher of the play “Streetcar Named Desire” wrote this play in the early 50’s.Having to be dependent on men can cause havoc on everyone. The author uses irony to help develop the central idea. Being reliant on others can lead people to do things that they would normally not do. A majority of people are in an abusive relationship, but do not say anything because they are