Theme Of Sympathy In A Streetcar Named Desire

Blanche’s financial decline, illuminating her vulnerability, links to Aristotle’s theory that the tragic heroine must fall, allowing the audience to relate to her. Her insecurities – “I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” stereotypically reflects the insecurities women feel about their appearance and age. The uses of imperatives and exclamatory sentences suggests Blanche’s obsession over her appearance, a flaw leading her to dismiss her true identity. Her inability to avoid drink and her compulsive lies, demonstrated in her frequent references to Shep Huntleigh’s letters, makes her a more authentic woman than Stella, who is described by Williams as the “gentle, mild and contented one”. Blanche’s loss of identity, dominated by her homosexual husband’s suicide, exacerbates her solitude – “The boy-the boy died. (She sinks back down) I’m afraid I’m – going to be sick!” The fragmented, repetitive speech Blanche uses illustrates her guilt and pain, whilst the physical act of “sinking” highlights the extent of her regret, giving a sense of foreboding for her downfall. Her guilt is also exacerbated by the implied physical act at the end which shocks the contemporary audience, who would not sympathise with homosexuals, evoking pity and reinforcing that “Streetcar” is a tragedy for Blanche.

She said “I, I, I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way!” She fell apart even more as she saw all of her family around her pass away. She was face to face with death. They used flowers and ornamental caskets, but the funerals were the least of the problem. “Funerals are quiet, but deaths-not always. Sometimes their breathing is hoarse, and sometimes it rattles, and sometimes they even cry out to you, ‘Don’t let me go!’” This did not start her mental disorder, because it already existed, but it did not make it any better. Of course, all people must deal with the inevitable ending of life, but watching it all happen around you is different. She has to see people meet their fate and she sees that life is not a dream. The first death she had to deal with was her first loves and that is what starts her downward spiral. She came out of the dance to see where he had gone and heard people say “Allan! Allan! The Grey boy! He’d stuck the revolver into his mouth, and fired-so that the back of his head had been-blown away!” Ever since this traumatizing event she had a weakness for young men and hides under a façade of makeup, costume, and jewelry. If she is attracted to younger men she cannot attract them without looking younger herself. Blanche believes that

"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

The Greek tragedian Aeschylus once wrote that “a god implants in mortal guilt whenever he wants utterly to confound a house,” and as the creator of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams is no exception. The guilt of Blanche DuBois makes the emotional, tragic, and often extreme circumstances of the play possible. Williams creates Blanche’s vulnerabilities, including her dependence on others and her inability to face reality, so that her guilt over Allan’s death becomes the primary cause of her promiscuity, neurasthenic behavior and ultimate downfall.

In Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois unveils the theme of the story through her representation of the struggle to maintain innocence in a tragically guilty world. The main theme of the story is that the façade of performed perfection will always be unsuccessful; fantasy cannot overcome reality. As hard as Blanche tries to hide in her fantasy, eventually truth persists and, in the end, overtakes the delusions she holds. Blanche uses her appearance to suggest innocence and youth, yet with a closer look, readers see that, though she attempts very hard to be, she is neither. She also has a symbolic relationship with Mitch; the further they draw apart, the further into madness she descends. While it is clear that Blanche is not entirely innocent, the author creates her as a symbol of such. This way, as she slowly loses her mind—and Mitch—she symbolizes the loss of said innocence. Blanche can also be considered an embodiment of Williams’s older sister Rose, who is known to have been institutionalized for her erratic behavior. Rose Williams’s inability to overcome her mental instability is directly represented through Blanche, a character who also cannot maintain fantasy and ultimately succumbs to reality. Had Blanche been able to sustain her pretense of innocence, it is possible she could have avoided the harsh realities of life.

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.

Blanche’s death speech plays a vital role in the development of the play “A Streetcar named Desire”. In the monologue the tension between Blanche and Stella comes to a zenith as Blanch explodes with rage as she expresses her jealousy-driven feelings to Stella. In doing so Blanche reveals much more, including her unstable mental state, her emotional reaction to the lost of Belle Reve, and most importantly her preoccupation with the theme of death.

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.

In his plays, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams uses different ways to show in the play of social realism. It show each of individual character and focusing on how particular way of viewpoint contrast with men, and the perspective of looking at women. The play explores struggle of two character Stanley and Blanche, between appearances and reality which made the play’s plot more affected reality. Throughout this play, it show the symbolize of the gender roles and the power of men over women in the 1940’s in New Orleans.

She tries to hold on to him but is unable to keep him attracted. Blanche is lost, confused, conflicted, lashing out in sexual ways, and living in her out own fantasies. She has no concern for anyone’s well being, including her own. Thus, this is her utter most harmful demise. She has no realistic outlook for the future.

The next major theme of the book is the relationship between sexuality and death. Blanche’s fear of death manifests itself in her fears of aging and of lost beauty. She refuses to tell anyone her true age or to appear in harsh light that will reveal her faded looks. She seems to believe that by continually asserting her sexuality, especially toward men younger than herself, she will be able to avoid death and return to the world of teenage bliss she experienced before her husband’s suicide. Blanche’s lifelong pursuit of her sexual desires has led to her eviction from Belle Reve, her ostracism from Laurel, and, at the end of the play, her expulsion from society at large. Sex leads to death for others Blanche knows as well. Throughout the play, Blanche is haunted by the deaths of her ancestors, which she attributes to their “epic fornications.” Her husband’s suicide results from her disapproval of his homosexuality.

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.

I would like to analyze a tragic heroine Blanche DuBois appearing in a play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) written by Tennessee Williams. My intention is to concentrate on the most significant features of her nature and behaviour and also on various external aspects influencing her life and resulting in her nervous breakdown. I would like to discuss many themes related to this character, such as loss, desire and longing for happiness, beauty and youth, pretension, lies and imagination, dependence on men and alcoholism.

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

Blanche Dubois, from A Streetcar Named Desire, carries the heavy burden of her past. Blanche was in love with a young man. She discovered her husband in bed with an older man, someone whom she had believed was just his friend. When confronted about the incident, he took his own life by shooting himself in the head. Compounding the sorrow of her husband’s violent suicide, Blanche becomes increasingly fragile with the loss of the DuBois family home, Belle Reve. After the death of her parents, she goes through many financial and personal struggles. Blanche has always been burdened by her tormenting past, the loss of