'A Streetcar Named Desire' - How concerned are each of the four characters with their own survival? Discuss their needs and how they go about fulfilling them, and evaluate their success in terms of surviving events of the play.

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AS English: 'A Streetcar Named Desire' homework assignment

How concerned are each of the four characters with their own survival?

Discuss their needs and how they go about fulfilling them, and evaluate their success in terms of surviving events of the play.

I believe all characters are concerned with their survival as all humans are but most extensively seems to be Blanche Dubois. Blanche, when the play begins is already a fallen woman in society's eyes. Her family fortune and estate are gone, she lost her young husband to suicide years earlier, and she is a social outcast due to her indiscreet sexual behaviour. She also has a bad drinking problem, which she covers up poorly. Behind her front of social snobbery type behaviour. Blanche is an insecure individual. She is an ageing Southern belle who lives in a state of continuos panic about her fading beauty. Her manner is delicate and frail, and she shows off a wardrobe of showy but cheap evening clothes. Stanley quickly sees through

Blanche's act and seeks out information about her past.

Blanche's fear of death manifests itself in her fears of ageing and of lost beauty. She refuses to tell anyone her true age or to appear in harsh light that will reveal her faded looks. She seems to believe that by continually asserting her sexuality, especially toward men younger than herself, she will be able to avoid death and return to the world of teenage bliss she experienced before her husband's suicide. However, we all know this to be impossible but shows the mental instability of Blanche in her lasting grasping moments for survival.

Throughout the play, Blanche is haunted by the deaths of her ancestors, which she attributes to their "epic fornication's." Her husband's suicide results from her disapproval of his homosexuality. The message is that allowing one's desire in the form of uncontrolled promiscuity leads to forced departures and unwanted ends. In Scene Nine, when the Mexican woman appears selling "flowers for the dead," Blanche reacts with horror because the woman announces Blanche's fate. Her fall into madness can be read as the ending brought about by her flaws and her inability to act appropriately on her desire and her desperate fear of human mortality. Sex and death are fully involved and fatally linked in Blanche's experience

In the Kowalski household, Blanche pretends to be a woman who has never known embarrassing or humiliating treatment. Her falsity in views and personality is not simply snobbery, however; it is a calculated attempt to make herself appear attractive to new male bachelors. Blanche depends on male sexual admiration for her sense of self-esteem, which means that she has often gave way to passion for self gratification and morale boost. By marrying, Blanche hopes to escape poverty and the bad reputation that haunts her. But because the well mannered approach used by Southern gentleman in courting represented by Shep Huntleigh, she hopes will rescue her is extinct. This again relates back to our survival topic, as Blanche wants to survive by using marriage as a way and means of financial stability as used back in older days especially in England. Blanche is left with no realistic possibility of future happiness. As Blanche sees it
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Mitch is her only chance for contentment, even though he is far from her ideal.

Stanley's relentless persecution of Blanche foils her pursuit of Mitch as well as her attempts to shield herself from the harsh truth of her situation. The play chronicles the subsequent crumbling of Blanche's self-image and sanity. Stanley himself takes the final stabs at Blanche, destroying the remainder of her sexual and mental esteem by raping her and then committing her to an insane asylum. In the end, Blanche blindly allows herself to be led away by a kind doctor, ignoring her sister's ...

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