'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.
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
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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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 cries. This final image is the sad climax point of Blanche's vanity and total dependence upon men for happiness, showing her insecurity and apparent attempt to "pull the wool over" the eyes of people around her trying to help her, did not result in helping her fight for survival. All her stubbornness and inability to realise there is need for help shows us is that as in the story and in life this only leads to losing a survival battle never winning it. We all need to face our faults and if need be ask or accept help to progress and definitely to survive and maintain sanity, which Blanche failed to do.
Stanley Kowalski can be seen as an egalitarian hero (meaning person upholding equality of all people) at the start of story. He is loyal to his friends and passionate to his wife. Stanley possesses an animalistic physical vigour that is evident in his love of work, of fighting, and of sex, which could give some clarity to his personality and maybe his need for survival with him trying to live life to the fullest and maybe he has some hidden pains or problems. These could consist of him feeling inadequate or inferior to everyone else for being from Polish heritage. His family are from Poland, and several times he expresses his outrage at being called "Polack" and other derogatory names. When Blanche calls him a "Polack," he makes her look old-fashioned and ignorant by correcting her that he was born in America therefore making him American "people from Poland are Poles, not Polacks but what I am is one hundred per cent American ..and proud as hell of it", As well as justifying his nationality he defends Polish people. Stanley represents the new, diverse America to which Blanche doesn't belong, because she is a old-fashioned from an extinct social hierarchy. He sees himself as a social Leveller and egalitarian, as he tells Stella in Scene Eight "Every man is a king I am the king around here, so don't forget it! My place is cleared! You want me to clear your places ! ".
Stanley's intense hatred of Blanche is motivated in part by the aristocratic past Blanche represents. This, giving more reason to his personality, maybe he is jealous of Blanche and his wife's past and wish he could have been or be rich and provide that better lifestyle for his wife again and his child, but he know he can't , but tries to give reason to it "the Kowalski's and Dubois have different notions". He want's to survive and be a good husband and father and feels blanche's imposing with all her critical and snobbish talk is making him and his lifestyle look bad or inferior. Then again he could just be looking for some one to blame for his general anger and grumpiness. . He also sees Blanche as untrustworthy and does not appreciate the way she attempts to fool him and his friends into thinking she is better than they are. Stanley's animosity towards Blanche manifests itself in all of his actions toward her; his investigations of her past, his birthday gift to her, his sabotage of her relationship with Mitch.
In the end, Stanley's down-to-earth character proves to be vulgar and brutish. His chief amusements are gambling, bowling, sex, and drinking, and he lacks imagination. His disturbing, degenerate nature, first hinted at when he beats his wife, is fully evident after he rapes his sister-in-law. Stanley shows no remorse for his brutal actions. This basically shows that Stanley could have done with some psychological help, because story shows more than just an angry man in Stanley, but a sick animal, as he is consistently described in story as with words such as "lurch", and "Slapping Stella's leg giving large whack sound". The play ends with an image of Stanley as the ideal family man, comforting his wife as she holds their newborn child. The wrongfulness of this representation, given what we have learned about him in the play, ironically calls into question society's decision to exclude Blanche.
Harold "Mitch" Mitchell perhaps because he lives with his dying mother is noticeably more sensitive than Stanley's other poker friends. The other men pick on him for being a "mama's boy". Even in his first, brief snatch of conversation in Scene One, Mitch's more gentlemanly behaviour stands out in contrast with the behaviour of the other men. Mitch appears to be a kind, basically decent human being who, we learn in Scene Six, hopes to marry so that he will have a woman to bring home to his dying mother "She wants me
to be settled down before she-".
Mitch does not fit the bill of the idealistic gentleman of whom Blanche dreams. He is clumsy, sweaty, and has unrefined interests like muscle building. Though sensitive, he lacks Blanche's romantic perspective and spirituality, as well as her understanding of poetry and literature. She toys with his lack of intelligence for example, when she teases him in French because she knows he won't understand, fooling him into
playing along with her self-flattering charades.
Though they come from completely different worlds, Mitch and Blanche are drawn together by their common need of companionship and support, and they therefore believe themselves right for one another. They also discover that they have both experienced the death of a loved one. As Blanche says in reference to Mitch's dying mother and her dead husband "I loved someone too, and the person I loved I lost too". This seems to be his concern which is his mother and to be loved, so he needs and wishes to survive being alone and hopefully cure the pain of this by finding a lover in Blanche and having his mother for as long as possible. The snare in their relationship is sexual. As part of her prim-and-proper act, Blanche repeatedly rejects Mitch's physical affections, and spurns his sexual advancements. Once he discovers the truth about Blanche's sordid sexual past, Mitch is both angry and embarrassed about the way Blanche has treated him. When he arrives to speak his mind her, he states that he feels he deserves to have sex with her, even though he no longer
respects her enough to think her fit to be his wife and after kissing her, she asks if they can be married and he says no more basically that he could not marry such an unclean woman, Blanche says "marry me", Mitch replies "I don't think I can marry you anymore....you're not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother".
The difference in Stanley and Mitch's treatment of Blanche at the play's end underscores Mitch's fundamental gentlemanly attributes. He does not succeed in finding a lover as even though at te end we see the love being reciprocated he no longer wants Blanche after finding out of her sordid past. Though he desires and makes it clear that he wants to sleep with Blanche, Mitch does not rape her and leaves when she cries out. Blanche says "What do you want from me?" Mitch replies "what I have been missing all summer". Also, the tears Mitch sheds after Blanche struggles to escape the fate Stanley has arranged for her show that he genuinely cares for her. In fact, Mitch is the only person other than Stella who seems to understand the tragedy of Blanche's madness. Mitch speaking to Stanley on his plan for Blanche on two separate occasions "you...you....brag....brag....bull....bull" and "I'll kill you".
Stella Kowalski is Blanche's younger sister, about twenty-five years old and of a mild disposition that visibly sets her apart from her more vulgar neighbours. Stella possesses the same faded aristocratic heritage as Blanche, but she left before things got worse in her late teens and left Mississippi for New Orleans. There, Stella married the lower-class Stanley, with whom she shares a robust sexual relationship. Stella's union with Stanley is both animal and spiritual, violent but renewing. I believe this to be reason behind her personality and her survival ended up to be from Stanley's violence, but even though she needs to survive this. She seems to like his roughness and even admitted it after describing how Stanley took her slipper and smashed things with it she describes "I was sorta thrilled by it". However she could just be trying to justify his behaviour thinking he is all she has and that it is the father of her baby and if they split up she will become like her sister Blanche. After Blanche's arrival, Stella is torn between her sister and her husband. Eventually, she stands by Stanley, perhaps in part because she gives birth to his child near the play's end. While she loves and pities Blanche, she cannot bring herself to believe Blanche's accusations that Stanley dislikes her; she eventually dismisses Blanche's claim that Stanley raped her. Stella's denial of reality at the play's end shows that she has more in common with her sister than she thinks.