Examine the Presentation of America in 'A Streetcar Named Desire'.

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Examine the Presentation of America in 'A Streetcar Named Desire'.

In the first scene of the play, one of the central protagonists, Blanche DuBois, is seen arriving at Stella's (her sister) home in Elysian Fields, where 'her appearance looks incongruous to the setting'. The contrast of the character to her setting, and her conflicts with the other characters is a motif used throughout the play to explore the social and cultural changes occurring in America when the play was originally published.

We are introduced to the setting of the play in scene one, a street called Elysian Fields in a run-down quarter of New Orleans. The name Elysian Fields is ironic since, in classical mythology, it is meant to be paradise; the stage directions indicate the street is anything but! The area is described as poor, and the atmosphere is one of decay. Nevertheless, the playwright reveals some affection for the place referring to its 'raffish charm' and his lyrical images of the colours the sky imparts on the buildings in the evenings.
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Stella's apartment is cramped and not to Blanche's taste, she sarcastically remarks that only Edgar Allen Poe, renowned for his macabre poems, could justifiably describe it and surmises that New Orleans must be the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir". Williams provides a more realistic portrait of an urban area through the descriptions of the noises and smells, the sounds of a piano played by the black bar-pianists, the aromas of banana and coffee emanating from the warehouses, and the voices of the throng, where white and black people intermingle. This is the modern America of trade and commerce, Jazz ...

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