A street car named desire - How do the play's settings contribute to its dramatic effect?

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How do the play’s settings contribute to its dramatic effect? You might like to consider;

  • The Kowalski’s flat
  • It’s surroundings
  • The wider American Context

The play and its author beg the question; how does the absolute appearance of surroundings affect an audience’s compassion to the drama that the play perceptibly emits?

        The play unquestionably needs dramatic effects to capitalise the story and also to induce and consume an audience. If, without the use of incarcerating dramatic effects from the surroundings and manipulating them into supplying the story’s tension, then it would ultimately not receive the same desirable reaction that is needed to illuminate the play.

        The depicted ideas of the eminent and radiating title tempts the audience with certain evocative ideas, but are ultimately confronted with a whole new concept of a darker and more dramatic story line. The audience can automatically sense this with the contrast of the title with the melancholy and hoary surroundings of the old corner building, emancipating an ‘atmosphere of decay’, betrayal, self embrace, ugliness and death.  This contrast creates a poignant conflict between ideal standards the audience had prepared themselves to see.  

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        Whilst the synchronisation between ethnic groups and the humbling sounds of the “blue piano” are heard in the opening scene, these merely act as a façade for the troubles that evolve when Blanche Dubois arrives. It anaesthetises the “cosmopolitan” people’s perceptions whilst masquerading Blanche’s true character.

         As we can see, the set consists of the Kowalski’s flat. This radiates the dramatic tension emanated from the constriction and the consistency of the close proximity of the characters. However there is a curtain that restrains the utmost confrontations of the characters, but this also forms a dramatic effect because it is ...

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