A Streetcar Named Desire- overview

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Jasmine Yu

October 13th 2008

A Streetcar Named Desire Essay

“A Streetcar Named Desire” centers on a devastated southern-belle named Blanche DuBois. She had a wonderful life until she found out that her husband was having a homosexual affair. Her husband was disgraced by this and committed suicide. After that she loses her job as a school teacher due to the fact that she had a sexual relationship with a 17-year old student. She has also lost Belle Reve, the family residence. Blanche tries to escape her past and questionable reputation by fleeing to New Orleans, where her sister Stella, is happily married to Stanley Kowalski, a common laborer. Throughout the play we see that Blanch is frightened by her past and tries to lead the life of an elegant lady and does her best to keep up appearances, even if she has to lie to others to do so. Blanche lives in her own fantasy world.

I extremely enjoyed Jessica Coplan’s performance as Blanche DuBois because she made Blanche seem like a real person going through all of these issues. She allowed the audience to believe that she was Blanche not Jessica Coplan. It was as if Blanche was right in front of us, continuing her life as we saw her try to fake everything about herself, trying to make others believe that she is more than she actually is. During the performance I felt so connected to Blanche that I thought I knew what she was going through and her pain, but in reality it was the performance that captivated me, that made me see Blanche in a different way. I thought that it was amazing for Coplan to be a crazy alcoholic woman one minute and then the next, being happy and acting as if there was nothing going on that should be frowned upon. The line that resonated most for me was “Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”. Blanche says this to the doctor that takes her to an institution. I think that this line wraps up many points of the story, and connects them. Eunice, Mitch, the men she had affairs with were all strangers to her, but they helped her and were kind to her, and she depended on them.

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I feel terrible when I think about Blanche and when I watched her in the play, because she has lost so much from her life. She has lost a husband, that she adored, her family’s residence, which she has lived in for many years, and she has also lost her job as an English teacher. Since she lost everything that she lived for, she looked for comfort and took it wherever she could find it, and she usually found it in the arms of men. Blanche also had to move from her comfort zone of Belle Reve to New Orleans, ...

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