Theme Of Music In A Streetcar Named Desire

"Desire, unrefined, leads to death”. To what extent Tennessee Williams's plays lend support to such a proposition? Speaking to a reporter in 1963 Tennessee Williams said," Death is my best theme, don't you think? The pain of dying is what worries me, not the act. After all, nobody gets out of life alive.” The themes of death and desire are central in the play “A Streetcar Named Desire”. When the play was released in 1948 it caused a storm, its sexual content was controversial to say the least, but also it was, virtually unique as a stage piece that is both personal and social and wholly a product of our life today. The play tells of the visit of the main character, Blanche DuBois, a supposedly typical Southern Belle, to her estranged sister Stella Kowalski, and her husband Stanley Kowalski who she finds living in modesty in New Orleans. Tensions between the educated, condescending Blanche and the cruel, overly masculine Stanley escalate, and though Stella sympathizes with her sister at the beginning, she's intoxicated by Stanley's sexuality and takes his side. Blanche briefly finds comfort in Stanley's friend Mitch, who's attracted to her and presents her with the possibility of a better life. He quickly loses interest in her, however, and she's left to face Stanley alone. During the climax, Stanley rapes Blanche in the heat of an argument. Blanche has a breakdown due to this and is taken to a mental institution in the final scene. The play and film include crucial

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.

taking her back to her past. Then later on in the evening the tune can

The arts stir emotion in audiences. Whether it is hate or humor, compassion or confusion, passion or pity, an artist's goal is to construct a particular feeling in an individual. Tennessee Williams is no different. In A Streetcar Named Desire, the audience is confronted with a blend of many unique emotions, perhaps the strongest being sympathy. Blanch Dubois is presented as the sympathetic character in Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire as she battles mental anguish, depression, failure and disaster.

Based on Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Elia Kazan creates an award winning movie that helps readers visualize Stanley’s primal masculinity, the inner torments of the Kowalski women and the clash of the other characters’ problems which create a chaotic mess. Using stage directions in the play, William hints that Blanche is not who she appears to be while the movie subtly sheds light on Blanche’s strange little habits that suggests a bigger issue. The movie also censors many of the main themes in Williams’ play but makes up for it by having its actors flawlessly portray the characters’ emotions, allowing the readers to see the

The music is symbolic of typical life for the inhabitants of that part of the city and "plays for a brief interval" (P43) following Stanley's violent attack on Stella, reinforcing to the audience that Stanley's violence is part of the way of life in Elysian Fields. It also returns at the end of scene ten when Stanley rapes Blanche. The symbolism Williams uses in the opening scene of A Streetcar Named Desire gives the reader more insight into the main characters of the play, makes them more vivid and also hints at the outcome for these characters. Stanley as he enters scene one, "carries … a red stained package from a butcher's" (P20).

Tennessee Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is set in the ‘Roaring Twenties’ when America was going through a great deal of change in the order of society. The three main characters; Blanche DuBois, Stella Kowalski and Stanley Kowalski jostle claustrophobically in a small apartment, set in Elysian Fields in New Orleans, Elysian Fields is an ironic name as it evokes the sense that the apartment is heaven, when in reality it is very much the opposite. Stella and Blanche are sisters, but during the course of the play, we notice very clearly that Blanche is stuck in the in the Old World of plantations and inequality, with very large social divides. In contrast, Stella has almost seamlessly evolved to live in the New

“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

Established as one of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams used his writing as a form of therapy. The author came from a troubled background consisting of alcoholism, mental breakdowns, and general unhappiness; Williams exploited these unfortunate events and allowed them to motivate his literature. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois’ struggles represent the reality of people’s lives, “an enduring concern of [Williams’] throughout his writing career (Henthorne 1). Blanche captures our focus with her seemingly sincere and fragile nature, but it is later revealed that this is just an illusion within her own mind. She resides in a world of fantasy to shield herself against the harsh threats of reality and her own fears. Blanche’s main objective in the play is to keep herself from falling apart in a world of cruelty through alcoholism and illusion. Through the characterization of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams depicts the coping mechanism of fantasy and its detrimental repercussions by exploring the specific experiences that eventually impede her happiness.

‘A Streetcar named Desire,’ is an interesting play, by Tennessee Williams. The character 'Blanche DuBois' is created to evoke sympathy, as the story follows her tragic deterioration in the months she lived with her sister Stella, and brother-in-law Stanley. After reading the play, I saw Blanche as the victim of Stanley's aggressive ways, and I also saw her as a hero in my eyes.

In the opening of the play Blanche says, “They told [her] to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at—at Elysian Fields!”(1.1). This sentence sets the theme for the entire play. The streetcar “Desire” brought her to Stella’s home, but symbolically it shows that Blanche’s

In the beginning of the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Blanche first arrives from Laurel Missouri and immediately becomes the antagonist. As the play goes on Stanley starts to go against Blanche. At the end of the play Blanche becomes the victim. In the end, Stanley sent Blanche off to a mental asylum. This plays demonstrates domestic violence. In the beginning of the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams shows how society accepted it and ignored it.Stanley, one of the characters in the play, found domestic violence to be a positive and very sexual part of him and his wife, Stella's, relationship. Throughout the play, Williams shows that he believes that it is wrong.

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 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

“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.