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Essay on There Is a Fine Line Between Reality and Illusion

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‘There is a fine line between reality and illusion’

How can we distinguish between reality and illusion? Is reality an illusion, or is an illusion simply reality? Albert Einstein once stated that ‘reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one’. The statement suggests that what we interpret to be real may well be an illusion and this is evidenced mainly through dreams and aspirations. For example if someone has dreamt of one day being a doctor their reality, which is described as the state of things that actually exist, shifts or changes in order for that idea to become real. Reality is tangible while illusion is a faculty or activity of imagination. What may be reality for one person may be an illusion for another and this …show more content…

Blanche DuBois from ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ has a similar reaction to her reality. Her reality is that she has lost the love of her life to suicide, no longer remains a teacher and does not own any assets as she has lost the property known as Belle Reve. In order to endure her life Blanche rejects her reality and manipulates it with lies, makeup and lighting in order to hide from the truth. ‘I don’t want realism I want magic’, Blanche desires for a life of pure happiness and excitement, however her imagination is indistinguishable from her reality and the series of lies and dimmed lights soon begin to fade as she is met with Stanley Kowalski. Stanley Kowalski, a brutish and arrogant realist finds it difficult to understand Blanche’s reality. Unlike Blanche, Stanley needs reassurance that what he knows is perfectly real and reliable. In the play the two characters continuously disagree with each other and eventually Stanley’s animalistic behavior threatens Blanche’s safety. Blanche and Stanley are a great example of how one individual’s reality is different to another’s, these conflicting ideas and perceptions of life occur often between people and have been proven to cause disagreement. People around us have great influence of how we perceive things although there are other major influences that contribute to our perceptions for instance the media.

The media has brought forward many deceiving images of models and famous Hollywood stars. These images of

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