Imagination In A Streetcar Named Desire

The audience already knows that Blanche is mentally unstable, however in this scene Tennessee Williams uses different techniques to demonstrate how the tension aggravates her case. The scene starts with Blanche dressed in a “somewhat soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown (...) placing the rhinestone tiara on her head”. Blanche is drunk and is trying to persuade herself that she is still young and beautiful by wearing a beautiful gown, however even dressed up she cannot hide her true self; the dress in itself is crumpled and soiled, exactly the way Blanche feels about herself and the reason why she tries to purify herself all the time. The audience perceives Blanche’s mental instability when she sees herself in the mirror. “She catches her breath and slams the mirror”, the mirror represents the reality, it contrasts with Blanche’s mind, in which she lives in a fantasy world where she is still young and unsoiled, the fact that she slams down the mirror shows that Blanche is surprised and repelled by her image and therefore has a mental issue with accepting reality and who she has become. Furthermore, in the scene there are “inhuman jungle voices” and “shadows” that represent the threats Blanche is under, Stanley doesn’t notice those features it can therefore be assumed that they are in Blanche’s mind, she is truly afraid and her mind deals with it by creating these sound and images, had Blanche been mentally stable perhap she would have been able to calm herself down

Blanche’s insanity emerges as she retreats fully into herself, leaving the world of actual reality, since is is unable to go forward and accept reality. In order to escape reality fully, however, Blanche must come to perceive the exterior world as that of which she has imagined. This, reality is not a solution to Blanche’s fantasy world. Rather, Blanche adapts a world, which she thinks is true, to fit into her delusions. While this has been accomplished with both the physical and the psychological sections, there is no boundary between fantasy and reality in which for Blanche, is permeable. Blanche’s final, deluded happiness suggests that, to some extent, fantasy is a vital force in every individual’s experience, despite reality’s inevitable triumph. This refers to her reality of how Mitch had came over to apologize to her, and she tells Stanley that she turned him down. This lie backfired, since Stanley knew exactly where Mitch was at this time. As well as Stanley saw through Blanches delusion of how she has received a wire, from Shep Huntleigh, inviting her to go with him down to the Caribbean cruise, in which Stanley later shuts down as

The play “A Streetcar Named Desire” is about an emotionally unstable lady named Blanche. She moves in with her youngest sister and her husband because the landlord took the land away from Blanche because they could not pay for it anymore. After being their for a while Blanche starts remembering her horrible past which is something she was trying to do in the first place. The husband of Stella, Stanley Kowalski was also someone that made Blanche’s life miserable for complicating everything and harassing her in every possible way.

As she was kissing him and reached into his back pocket, took the money for herself and then tucked it in her bra. I found their relationship very affectionate throughout the movie where I did not picture this when reading the play. However, I think that the director was very clever when incorporating their passionate relationship between Stella and Stanley. I believe this because it proved how sexually driven and aggressive Stanley was which almost had a foreshadowing affect on the end relationship between Blanche and Stanley. I also think this portrayal of raw emotion was an extremely important aspect of the film because inner emotion and motives drove every characters actions throughout the play. For instance, Stanley’s aggression led to his ‘relationship’ with Blanche. Stella’s unconditional love for Stanley drove her to believe Stanley instead of her sister, and Blanche’s shame for her past decisions lead her to feel insecure and almost dirty which could have been the reason she constantly took baths. I think it may have been a mental tool to wash away her

Blanche and Stella grew up on a plantation called Belle Reve, representing the Old South. The Old South had a sense of romanticism, focusing mainly on appearances. Blanche is a genuine Southern Belle. Throughout the play, Blanche makes it a point to look her best at all times. Stanley exasperatedly says, “What’s this here? A solid-gold dress, I believe! And this one! What is

“I don’t want realism, I want magic”- Blanche DuBois (Williams 145). In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents readers with the acute presence of fantasy in individuals’ lives. Every character fabricates fantasies in his life to gloss over his struggles and forget each other 's flaws. A Streetcar Named Desire evaluates individual’s use of fantasy as a crutch to avoid the hard truths and give purpose to an empty life.

The themes of violence and power in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ hold an important role in the criticism of 1940s American society. Conflicts perpetuated by violence and power, such as abusive relationships and violent oppression are projected through the characters within the play.  Williams uses these conflicts to highlight his criticisms of faltering values and social norms, from the perspective of an individual constrained by the expectations of a strict, Southern society.

Blanche is projecting the self-image of a person who believes that they are above others. She acts as though she is of a royal family and demands the respect of everyone around her. She loses her family's home to the government and blames it on her sister who left in order to search for her own lifestyle. From the beginning of her visit, Blanche gets an off feeling about Stanley. When she arrives, he starts to stare at her with a sense of caution then soon begins inspecting the paperwork that she brought with her in order to validate her story. A while after she got settled in, Blanche witnessed Stanley physically abusing her sister, Stella, and then started secretly rebuking Stanley to Stella. She saw their relationship as unhealthy and tried everything that she could to destroy it. After overhearing Blanche telling Stella to get rid of him, Stanley begins to steadily contemplate his revenge. He had made it his personal goal to dig deeper into her past and he found pretty much all the information that he needed in order to get rid of her. In order to preserve his relationship with his wife, Stanley came up with an amazingly credible plan to permanently get rid of

Stereotypical gender roles have existed as long as human culture has, becoming a natural part of all of our lives. Within each gender lies a variety of stereotypes and expectations. Most notably for men they are often depicted as tough and the family provider. Whereas women are often shown to be soft and vulnerable. Throughout the play A Streetcar Named Desire the author; Tennessee Williams illustrates the main characters, Stanley, Stella, Mitch and Blanche with these stereotypes. The play takes place in the 1950s in New Orleans containing a diverse population. However, is race discriminated against, those who go against classifed gender roles are often discriminated and have trouble finding their way in society. Although gender equality has

In the play a common sense of familiarity helps to shape the identities of Stella and the speaker of the poem. It can be inferred that Stella replaced her sister Blanche’s bossy and authoritative behavior with Stanley’s. Stella tells Blanche “I like to wait on you, Blanche. It makes it seem more like home”(pg 93). In the poem in line 18 to 20 the speaker says “I do not live to retrieve or multiply what my father lost or gained”(Baca). We can assume that the father in the poem was enduring hardships and their child was very able to see that. The hardships were so difficult that the child doesn’t want to be at all associated with

These rumors were a threat to what she has created in order to help her with the chaos in her life. Although she tried to build a new life with Stella, Stanley never gave in to her act and was constantly suspicious of her actions. Stanley's constant investigations and interrogations on Blanche’s old life. This is a representation of reality is starting to creep in of Blanche's newly created life. From the beginning Stanley has doubted Blanche, this is seen as he went through Blanche's things with Stella, questioning her belongings, “has she got this stuff out of teacher's pay?”(2.33). Stanley continues to impose his reality onto Blanche, which causes her more anxiety relying more and more on herself to create more of an illusion by creating an admirer for herself, saying that she ended it with Mitch because she does not deserve “deliberate cruelty”, and crating this alter ego for herself as being pure. While Stella is in the hospital, he and Blanche are left alone for the night as she continues bragging about her admiration coming from Sheep Hunt Leigh and how she just got a wire from him. Stanley catches her in her life, finally tearing apart Blanche's illusions. Although Stanley has been a threat to her through his suspicion and empowering masculinity over her, the last scene is where he finally takes final control over her, or symbolically where reality has a final triumph over her illusions. While catching her in the midst of her lies she reveals to Blanche that “[he’s] been on to [Blanche] from the start!” (10.225). towards the end of the play Stella, Mitch, and Stanley play a role in imposing reality into her allusions. As Stella calls for the Doctor to pick Blanche up it rips her away from her fantasies with Shep Huntleigh. When Mitch reveals to Blanche that she isn't pure enough to take home to his

In Scene 10, Blanche is begging Stanley to let her get by and he is not moving to let her through. Stanley says that he thinks Blanche would not be too bad to interfere with in a sexual way going back to Scene 6, when he would walk through the rooms in his underwear at night near Blanche. Blanche complained about the little bit of privacy she had in the house and that was exemplified when Stanley later picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. Blanche had thought in the beginning that her situation was frightful, but never to the degree in which she experienced towards the end of the

In a scene with Mitch Blanche says, “I don’t want realism, I want magic! [..] Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!” Blanches magic is seen through her illusions and delusions. In Blanches world Mitch doesn’t fit however she has reached a point of intimacy by being honest about her first husband and the guilt she endures as she begins to share the painful moment of her life with him. Stanley’s intrusion ruins her plans of marriage with Mitch and yet again she had to retreat in the world of her delusions. Stanley who represents realism in this novel and play pops Blanche’s illusion bubble through seeing the realism in scene ten he says: “not once did you pull any wool over this boy’s eyes!” Not only Stanley had broken her world of illusion, but also Mitch who is influenced by Stanley and destroys the protection of darkness by exposing her to the bright light. Stanley bringing up the past contributes to how Blanches ends up, alone and insane expressing the theme that what happened in the past determines the present, and illusion and fantasy directly correlate.

Blanche feels the need to be appreciated by men at all time and seeks attention when she does not receive it, especially from Mitch. “She dupes him regarding her age and declares herself younger to Stella, tries to fool him regarding her drinking habits, avoid going out with him until after dark and manages to avoid being seen in direct bulb-light!”(Kararia 24). Blanche is portrayed as a liar and attention seeker who wants to be showered with compliments from Mitch. She tries to fool and flirt with Mitch so she can secure her future with him. “She sees in Mitch an opportunity to prove her allure and score an easy sexual conquest.”(Kataria 24). Blanche desires to be desired by Mitch. Before Blanche met Mitch, she was trying something with Stanley. “She flirts with him, sprays him with her atomizer asks him to button up her blouse…”(Kataria 27). Since Blanche has not had men attracted to her in a while, when she meets Stanley, she flirts with him. Not only does she want attention from men, but she is willing to obtain it from young boys. “You make my mouth

Tennessee Williams is acclaimed for his ability to create multi faced characters such as Blanche Dubois in the play, A Streetcar Named Desire. She comes to New Orleans after losing everything including her job, money, and her family’s plantation Belle Reve, to live with her sister Stella. During her time there she causes many conflicts with Stella’s husband Stanley and tries to get involved with the people there, all while judging them for their place in society, although she is imperfect too. Through her, Williams has created a complex character. She is lost, confused, conflicted, lashing out in sexual ways, and living in her own fantasies throughout the entirety of the play. Blache is destroyed by her own characteristics: alcoholism, promiscuity, and cruelty.