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Empathy In A Streetcar Named Desire

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Many people tell lies to make others feel empathy for them. Weak people buy into these lies and get develop and weak adaptation towards them. Whilst others ignore the empathetic feelings toward them and become strong against them or the forces against them. In Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire” we can see two male characters have contrasting resilience toward Blanche Dubois, this resilience is directly tied in with the empathy they feel towards her life story. Mitch feels sorry for her while Stanley doesn’t.

Empathy leads to a weak resilience towards people we care about. Mitch has a large amount of Empathy for Blanche after hearing her sob story and develops an extremely weak resilience to her when he eventually learns about …show more content…

This aids the lack of empathy that Stanley has towards her. Stanley is always questionable about her situation and does not get “swindled” by her methods of seduction or her lies. This resilience to Blanche allows Stanley to remain the “king around here”. During a majority of the play, Blanche attempts to break Stanley’s resilience to her slutty character by flirting with him. Stanley only once breaks this resilience of her sexual tendencies by raping her. In raping her he also gains more resilience by already receiving what Blanche was offering, making her flirting pointless Also, in making her more of an object. Blanche also lost the fight because Stanley humiliated her, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. As I said before, Blanche is not a stranger to Stanley. He knows the truth. His reaction to Blanche’s truth contrasts Mitch greatly. Mitch, who was emotionally invested in her, was unable to recover from finding out the truth. Stanley however sends her to an institution to get help. His lack of empathy towards her allowed him to do the logical and sensible action on what to do for Blanche.

Blanche has attempted many men to feel empathetic for her; two of these men are Mitch and Stanley. Mitch, who is greatly in love with her, becomes empathetic for her when he learns about her sad history. His resilience is weak when he learns about the rest of her story. Then there is Stanley, whom doesn’t care for

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