Free Essays on A Streetcar Named Desire

Sometimes in life, there are times when you are faced with a struggle and often times, no matter how hard you try to get yourself out of this struggle, you just can’t and you end up feeling as though you have lost the battle. In â€Å"A Streetcar Named Desire,† by Tennessee Williams, there are four characters that really display this situation. Blanche, Stanley, Stella, and Mitch are the four characters that display this situation. In Tennessee Williams play, â€Å"A Streetcar Named Desire,† there are no victors, only victims. In this play, Blanche is the older sister of Stella and she comes to Elysian Fields to live with her sister because she has nowhere else to live because she was asked to leave the last town that she was living in because of the life that she was choosing to live there. Blanche also lost her family’s estate, Belle Reve. Therefore, she had to go to the last place that she could think of and that was the house of her sister, Stella. Fro m the start of the play, it is imminent that Blanche is the victim of her own life, and not a victor. She first lost her husband when she was a very young girl because of the fact that she found out that he was gay. She was in love with this man and when she found out, she was just heartbroken. However, she didn’t want to tell him that she knew about his secret so she kept it a secret for a while. But then, one night while they were dancing, she all of sudden just came out and told him what she knew. He was so embarrassed by this that he ran out of the room and shot and killed himself. That is one of the battles that she was the victim of. Then when she loses Belle Reve and is forced to live in a town called Laurel, she chooses to live a life that she doesn’t want to. She forces herself into prostitution because she has no other way of making money to help support herself. During this time, she is living in a hotel called the Flamingo and many men are coming up to her room every ... Free Essays on A Streetcar Named Desire Free Essays on A Streetcar Named Desire Deception and Illusion in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche DuBois succinctly summarizes herself and her vision of the world with two words: â€Å"I misrepresent.† (A Streetcar Named Desire, hereafter SND, p. 117 ). In fact, she misrepresents virtually everything about herself and her world. For Blanche DuBois, the world is composed of multiple elements in which she either deceives herself unknowingly or intentionally embraces an illusion. Blanche shows up at her sister’s home in New Orleans, having lost the family plantation in Mississippi. She holds herself blameless for this loss- a deception of personal responsibility. Symbolically, the plantation’s very name, Belle Reve, implies a beautiful dream of a life style that may never have been a reality. Blanche further deludes herself by maintaining a contradiction about the importance of her own physical appearance and constantly misrepresents her own age. She has a personal illusion about love which was tragically shattered when she was very young, and pursues a relationships with Mitch which is, itself, shattered when the deceptions of her past are revealed. This illusion is highlighted by the dynamic tension between Blanche and Stanley, culminating in a harsh rape scene wherein he enacts the reality Blanche has been trying to avoid. As she slips totally into a world of unreality, Blanche even speculates that a knight in shining armor, Shep Huntleigh, an alleged millionaire, is going to come for her. In each of her illusions, Blanche clings to unrealistic views of herself and her world, in order to deny the sad reality to which she has descended as a charity case in her sister’s meager existence. Blanche comes to her sister Stella Kowalski’s home with a valise full of clothes and trappings from another kind of life. It is a life she wants desperately to believe she once led. It bears no semblance to Stella’s rather drab r... Free Essays on A Streetcar Named Desire The play A street car named desire by Tennessee Williams is about a downfall of a fading Southern Belle named Blanche Dubois. The last scene of the play is a significant one as it sums up the whole play and states the ending and the main issues of the play. Here Blanche is taken into a mental asylum due to the rape that has taken place in the previous chapter. This shows the total damage done to her by Stanley. She becomes mental and loses touch with reality. Williams uses various kinds of techniques like the sound effects, changes in characterization and certain issues like being in a world dominated by men, domestic violence and lunacy in order to make this an important scene. At the beginning of the scene its been told that Blanche tells Stella about the rape. Stella is placed with no choice but to not believe her sister. At the start of the scene Stella tells Eunice, "I couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley." Eunice concurs: "Don't ever believe it. Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you've got to keep on going." Eunice argues that male companionship is a womans survival in the face of social convention. She is a victim of society just like Blanche. Knowing that she just had a baby she looks at the future with hope and therefore refuses to believe Blanche. This may place her to be somewhat selfish of choosing her husband over family but in another way she may be doing this for Blanche best interests. After Mitch threw her off, Blanche lost touch with reality, so Stella has arranged a "rest" for Blanche at an insane asylum in the country. In this scene we see Blanche complete loss of touch with reality when she says I shall die for eating an unwashed grape. Here she is completely making up what she thinks how she should die. She is living her dream world. The audience feels compassion towards her as they observe how bad the rape has affected her state of mind and therefo... Free Essays on A Streetcar Named Desire Sometimes in life, there are times when you are faced with a struggle and often times, no matter how hard you try to get yourself out of this struggle, you just can’t and you end up feeling as though you have lost the battle. In â€Å"A Streetcar Named Desire,† by Tennessee Williams, there are four characters that really display this situation. Blanche, Stanley, Stella, and Mitch are the four characters that display this situation. In Tennessee Williams play, â€Å"A Streetcar Named Desire,† there are no victors, only victims. In this play, Blanche is the older sister of Stella and she comes to Elysian Fields to live with her sister because she has nowhere else to live because she was asked to leave the last town that she was living in because of the life that she was choosing to live there. Blanche also lost her family’s estate, Belle Reve. Therefore, she had to go to the last place that she could think of and that was the house of her sister, Stella. Fro m the start of the play, it is imminent that Blanche is the victim of her own life, and not a victor. She first lost her husband when she was a very young girl because of the fact that she found out that he was gay. She was in love with this man and when she found out, she was just heartbroken. However, she didn’t want to tell him that she knew about his secret so she kept it a secret for a while. But then, one night while they were dancing, she all of sudden just came out and told him what she knew. He was so embarrassed by this that he ran out of the room and shot and killed himself. That is one of the battles that she was the victim of. Then when she loses Belle Reve and is forced to live in a town called Laurel, she chooses to live a life that she doesn’t want to. She forces herself into prostitution because she has no other way of making money to help support herself. During this time, she is living in a hotel called the Flamingo and many men are coming up to her room every ...