What part does fantasy play in the lives of the characters in A Streetcar Named Desire; how is this fantasy presented and to what effect on the audience?

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I.B. ENGLISH

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

ESSAY

Selma Mehmedovic

What part does fantasy play in the lives of the characters in A Streetcar Named Desire; how is this fantasy presented and to what effect on the audience?

I don’t want reality. I want magic.”

In Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, we see how Blanche finds herself in a “desperate situation” as all her “lies and deceit and tricks” begin to haunt her until finally she is no longer able to distinguish reality from illusion. Unfortunately for her, Blanche is “only passing through” Elysian Fields, the quarter with its “raffish charm” and ominous ring (asylum) as we sense that her future is “mapped out” for her “from the beginning”. She engages Stanley in a dramatic battle for territory, creating illusions in a final attempt to find that “cleft in the rock of the world” after having run from “one leaky roof to another” searching for “protection”. Williams makes Blanche’s vulnerability clear from the outset by alerting us to the incongruity between her costume and moth like appearance and the streetcar “that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another”. Blanche is no longer able to deal with reality; the loss of Belle Reve, the death of her young husband, loss of her job and fading looks all force her to turn to illusion. For Blanche, her fantasies are a final, desperate attempt to find “protection” from the harsh reality of Stanley Kowalski, “survivor of the Stone Age” and his deliberate cruelty that is “not forgivable”. Williams has utilized the elements of stagecraft, effectively employing costuming, lighting, characterization, stage directions and sound to present the part that fantasy plays in the lives of the characters in A Streetcar Named Desire.

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Throughout the play, Williams effectively employs costuming to highlight the characters’ ability to “put on a face for the people [they] meet”. Immediately Williams alerts us to Blanche’s incongruity to her setting by dressing her in a “white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat”. With her delicate, moth like appearance and classy and civilized nature she is contrasted to the primary, bold colors of Stanley “the gaudy seed bearer” and his primitive ways. The dissonant tension between Blanche’s “fluffy white bodice” and her “scarlet satin robe” reveals the dichotomy between Blanche’s whore ...

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