The Interpretation Of Dreams : A Streetcar Named Desire, And The Grandmother

Tennessee William’s play A Street Car Named Desire offers a glimpse into the harsh reality faced by single southern woman in the 1940s. The 1940s was a time when females were viewed as delicate and fragile; therefore, it was understood that a male companion was a necessity to keep them safe and secure (Cook 84). The character of Blanche Dubois embodies the 1940s distressed female as she struggles with her environment. She is battling guilt, loneliness and financial insecurity when she arrives in Elysian Fields. Critics and audiences alike have mixed reactions to Blanche and her role as the tragic protagonist. In “The Space of Madness and Desire” Anne Fleche suggests Blanche is mad from the outset of the play. Others such as Leonard

It is clear that Blanche DuBois is willing to do what she believes is necessary to get what she wants. This often includes deceit. She feels that she needs to lie about herself in order to seem more appealing. Because Blanche is so afraid of aging, she keeps her age to herself. While she is dating Mitch, she often deceives him by never letting him see her in bright light in order to conceal her faded looks. When she comes to New Orleans, Blanche does not tell her sister that she was fired from her job; she says that she is merely taking a vacation from the job. She says this in order to keep up the fake persona she holds. Blanche is very open about her lies with her sister. “I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth.” (69) This shows that Blanche’s lifelong choice of avoiding harsh realities leads to her breakdown. With all of the lies and deceit Blanche tells, she is living an unreal existence.

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.

In A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche spends all of her time at the Kowalski’s in a liminal space between *reality and illusion. She refuses to face the facts that her family has no more money, she is getting older and that she was fired from her job and so as a way of protecting herself, Blanche turns to fantasy. Similar to Blanche, Jay Gatsby lives his life in a veil of illusions, though his are based on his desire to relive the past with Daisy. Gatsby spends all of his time obsessing over what could had been if he and Daisy stayed together, and his obsessions takes over every aspect of his life. He builds Daisy up on a pedestal and creates an elaborate illusion of the life he could have had with her. Like Jay Gatsby, I longed for a different life, however my desires were to escape my past and the pain that came with it. Most of my childhood was built around an unstable household. Growing up with parents constantly fighting meant that I stood in as a parent for both of them on numerous occasions for both myself and my little brother, Beck, when I was only eight years old. Because I was so young I could not fully comprehend what was happening between my parents and as a result my mind built a world of fantasy and reality mixing together to create what I remember as my childhood.

He abuses his wife Stella physically and emotionally as he strikes and hits his pregnant wife while Stella represents the self-deprecating, submissive wife who tolerates and excuses her husband behavior. Another central theme in Williams’ play is the theme of illusion; Blanche lives in a fantasy world of sentimental illusion. She exerts efforts to maintain the appearance of being an upper-class young innocent woman, even though she is a fallen woman. Another theme is the theme of loneliness as Blanche is lost and alone in the world and she desperately seeks protection and companionship in the arms of strangers. Mitch is another character who is a victim of loneliness and he needs to find a woman to love him the way his mother does. The theme of sexual desire is related to destruction. Blanche wants to be a lady but she continually tripped up by her sexual desire. Stanley leads a violent brutal desire and views Stella as a sexual object and his final act as he rapes Blanche emphasizes his lustful desire. The theme of hatred is prevailed throughout the play as Blanche’s insult and insolence aroused the hatred of Stanley. The play focused on the feeling of repulsion between

Lastly the dependence of men plays an extremely large role in this book. Williams uses Blanche’s and Stella’s dependence on men to expose and critique the treatment of women during the transition from the old to the new South. Both Blanche and Stella see male companions as their only means to achieve happiness, and they depend on men for both their sustenance and their self-image. Blanche recognizes that Stella could be happier without her physically abusive husband, Stanley. Yet, the alternative Blanche

“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces” (Sigmund Freud). Illusion can be a part of our lives; however, if taken to the extreme, it can lead one to forget reality. Every individual has problems in life that must be faced with reality and not with illusion, even though it might throw one into flames of fires. Tennessee Williams' play of a family reveals the strength of resistance between reality and desire, judgment and imagination, and between male and female. The idea of reality versus illusion is demonstrated throughout the play. Blanche's

When Blanche meets Mitch, she realises that her is someone who can give her a sense of belonging and who is also captivated by her “girlish” charms. She deceives him into thinking her, as she would like to be –prim and proper – however, as she later tells Mitch: “Inside, I never lied”. Her essential nature and being have been changed by her promiscuity – She gave her body to any man, but it would appear, that to Mitch, she is ready to give her whole being. Mitch falls in love with Blanches world of

due to her past blanche’s actions are unusual and to many they are considered inappropriate. Blanche lives through some very dark and intense incidents before the play takes place, she witnesses the death of her entire family, she loses her family home, and to add to the misery she believes she is the reason her husband killed himself. In an act to move on she retreats into illusion acting as if these incidents never happened. Blanche decides to lie to everyone, from her sister to the man she potentially wanted to marry, she does not give them the truth. She wants to marry mitch but does not tell him about her past, mitch had all right to know, yet she led him on, actions like these in an environment of connection is inappropriate beyond a doubt. Because of her lies and illusions Blanche ends up losing everything, she loses her only chance at a future with Mitch and her freedom when she is sent to the mental institution. Blanches motivation by the past caused her life around her dissolve.

Blanche constantly flirts with many men and young adults throughout the play. This makes the reader feel a lack of sympathy for her as the men she desires end up becoming a major contribution to her eventful breakdown, in particular Stanley. The reader may view Blanche as someone who tries to escape her dirty past in Laurel and wanted to start a new life with her sister. However, due to the continuous investigations from Stanley, she was unable to do so. He constantly does not allow Blanche to move on. Stanley reveals Blanche's’ lies and deceits, commenting on them as her, ‘same old act, same old hooey!’(121) This tells the readers that his research of Blanche's past is his way of stopping her from finding a new life. She attempts to redeem her life by finding love with Mitch. Stanley gets involved and reveals to Mitch that she was not ‘straight’, resulting in Mitch not wanting to be with her anymore. Stanley also reveals her secrets about encounters with various other men. Stanley says, “You’re goddam right I told him! I’d have that on my conscience the rest of my life if I knew all that stuff and let my best friend get caught!” (126). He is constantly trying to stop Blanche from starting a new life. Another thing that Stanley does leading to her demise is that he constantly thinks he needs to take control of Blanche. He uses his aggressiveness against Blanche that

Whoosh! A flash of blue, a glare of red, the glimpse of a golden crest, zipped across the labyrinthian city above the heads of busy commuters. Suddenly, screams of " What was that?!," rose from the astonished crowd below as they craned their necks up to the cerulean blue sky to catch a glimpse. " It's a bird!" proclaimed one man, " No, it's a plane!" shouted another. However, it was neither a bird nor a plane; it was a valiant symbol for all to see. To them, the symbol was a living beacon of hope, safety, and justice. With just that sight, the city was saved, fears were vanquished, and minds were put at ease. Symbolism is a powerful tool in any author's arsenal and used correctly it can foreshadow events and expose character identities. Sometimes, the smallest symbol can give an indication of a deeper meaning. In the Drama, A Streetcar Named Desire, symbolisms such as stark bare lightbulbs and ominous stage directions

While drinking heavily after Mitch’s refusal to marry her, her delusional madness worsens. With very little self esteem left Blanche begins to pretend that there are people

            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

Blanche's tragic flaw that cause her downfall or hamartia is her reliant on men, so much so that she makes choices and does things that are morally questionable. She manipulates and lies to potential suitors to make herself seem more attractive and younger-which in her mind is the only way a man will love her. She does this with Harold "Mitch" Mitchell and it seems to be working until Mitch is informed of all the lies he's been fed, at which point Mitch breaks up with Blanche and leaves her vulnerable for Stanley to

According to Sigmund Freud, there are three different systems in the human brain, all developing at different times. The id, ego and superego are the three different systems that determine your personality. Stanley Kowalski is one of the main characters in A Streetcar Named Desire and Stella’s husband. The id is the impulsive part of the personality and develops when children are infants. The id has no control over decisions and does not understand the effects afterwards.