Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire is filled with many characters and each have many different sides to them. The main character Blanche is surrounded many supporting ones, the main ones being Stanley, Mitch and Stella.

Q: Explore how far you think Williams succeeds in developing other characters. People aren't one sided. We are all complex being and are each unique. So well developed characters should be complex and many sided as well. Tennessee William's play "A Streetcar Named Desire" is filled with many characters and each have many different sides to them. The main character Blanche is surrounded many supporting ones, the main ones being Stanley, Mitch and Stella. Stanley is introduced as a social man with a zest for life but the audiences sympathy towards him shift as the play goes on. He is portrayed as the symbol of new America, a polish immigrant who works hard and plays hard as well. Williams frequently uses animalistic language to show a character reliant on base instincts. His first action of "heaving" a package of meat to Stella conjures up the image of a caveman returning with fresh kill. However from scene two, Williams shows an unsavoury side of Stanley's character, showing him to be insensitive, cruel and brutish. In that scene he is disrespectful to his wife and blindly hateful towards Blanche. He hates Blanch due to her upper class past and snobbish attitude and this leads to his investigation into her past as well as general unkindness towards her throughout the play. His animal instincts are further shown by Williams when he beats Stella after an argument. The

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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'Discuss A Streetcar Named Desire' as a portrayal of a broken world.

Williams uses a poem on the title page. Discuss A Streetcar Named Desire as a portrayal of a broken world. Hart Crane's stanza, printed on the title-page of A Streetcar Named Desire, speaks of love's voice as "an instant in the wind". The last line goes on to allude to its transiency. Given that this is placed under the banner of a "broken world", a play that otherwise boasts the subtlety of its imagery seems to get a rather blunt prefix. William's intention was to create for Blanche a form of heroism. Here, on the first page, he pronounces love to be a dying entity. He tells us that it cannot be a permanent force within the vessel of human decision making. In the scenes that follow, he introduces a character positively wrestling with her internal nihilism, a character in contemplative turmoil about whether there is something more to her being-and her decisions. She quickly enters wholly hedonistic and materialistic surroundings, where her fading romanticism is contrasted with the apathetic humanism of Stanley. There is not, as the question suggests, a deep and deliberate flaw spanning the world of A Streetcar Named Desire. Indeed, such an assertion entirely misses the point. Perhaps it is a semantic difference, but the world depicted in the play is an entirely functional one; it is a world in which all the coherent parts play off each other, with both friction and

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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A good piece of travel writing aims to entertain and educate. How far do you think Mongolian Wedding by StanleyStewart is successful in this?

A good piece of travel writing aims to entertain and educate. How far do you think Mongolian Wedding by Stanley Stewart is successful in this? Introduction Stanley Stewart is a well known writer for his travel books. He has won various awards. He writes about travel in the broadsheet newspapers. Mongolian wedding is taken from and account of a 1000 mile horseback ride from Istanbul across mountains and deserts of central Asia. Stanley uses Mongolian words like Ger, arki ect, for authenticity of the piece. The passage is a lively piece; it has humoured all the way through. Mongolian wedding is informative, entertaining and amusing. Stewart uses himself as the first person narrator. He is interested in other people's culture and emotions. He describes places which are remote, often dangerous and unglamorous. He uses original language often of a literary kind. Stanley aims to educate readers by telling us the absurdity of marriage rituals and ceremonies, "When the arrived the groom would be obliged to search for his bride who by tradition must hide from him" Stewart respects the Mongolians and they respect him. You can tell that they respect him because on Ln1-6 they warn him about themselves. They say that the following day would be difficult, Weddings are boisterous occasions. People can become unpredictable. He was advised to get away early before anything got out of

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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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.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

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Stella is not a character in her own right but simply a pawn in Blanche and Stanley's game. Discuss.

Transfer-Encoding: chunked “STELLA IS NOT A CHARACTER IN HER OWN RIGHT BUT SIMPLY A PAWN IN BLANCHE AND STANLEY’S GAME.” DISCUSS. Stella is Blanche’s younger sister and Stanley’s wife. Throughout the play Stella is represented as the calm foil to Blanche’s hysterical nature and Stanley’s violence. There is a huge degree of ambiguity about Stella’s character. The stage directions when she is introduced offer little information about her. The only description provided is that she is “a gentle young woman … of a background obviously quite different from her husbands.” Even in the little description of her, Tennessee Williams uses the noun “husband,” this shows that the only reason to mention Stella is to reinforce and develop Stanley’s character. Her descriptions are also a huge contrast to the descriptions of Blanche and Stanley. Blanche’s description consists of base adjectives such as “incongruous” and is very detailed: “her appearance is incongruous to the setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district.” This could’ve been done by Tennessee Williams to show that Stella isn’t as superior a character as Stanley and Blanche, and could therefore suggest that she is

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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How does Williams present Blanche in Scene 1 and 2 of a Streetcar Named Desire?

How does Williams present Blanch in Scene 1 and 2 of a Streetcar Named Desire? Williams immediately presents Blanche Dubois as an outsider, one who is “incongruous” to the setting of the French Quarter, not only in her delicate appearance, but in her prejudices against the working class. He also reveals her the fragility in her character, shown not only in her “delicate beauty” but also foreshadowing her weak mental health. Williams explores Blanche’s difficulty to fit in in Scenes 1 and 2 of a Streetcar named Desire. Blanche is presented as an outsider in the world of Stanley and Stella. Her name itself translates to white in French which displays nominative determinism as it holds connotations of purity and innocence. However, as we learn later, this is ironic in the case of Blanche. The play begins with Blanche arriving at the chaotic Elysian Fields. Her dainty image “in a white suit with a fluffy bodice” contrasts with “the atmosphere of decay” that surrounds New Orleans. This juxtaposes Blanche’s obsession with cleanliness as she is often bathing in the play. This could be linked to Blanche wanting to present herself as pure and delicately beautiful in order to “wash” or hide away everything that has tarnished her past. She asks Stella to “look at [her] figure”, which shows that relies on compliments as “reassurance” for her looks. She

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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With close reference to the language and action of the following passage, discuss Williams presentation of Blanches first appearance in the play.

Improvements Needed: I would like to improve the length of my essays, shorten my introduction and use far more quotations more effectively. With close reference to the language and action of the following passage, discuss Williams' presentation of Blanche's first appearance in the play. Introductions and first impressions play an important role in a novel. Streetcar Named Desire, the character of Blanche is the center of the play, in which all the problems that arise are as a result of Blanche's actions or simply her presence. Tennessee Williams conveys this in the beginning scene of the play, where Blanche is instantly distinguished as a stranger to the setting. She is seen being patronizing towards the other characters of the play, giving of the impression to the audience of a snobbish attitude. Blanche's character may just be the most interesting character, and arguably the main character, as we see her character evolve from the start due to the ways she finds ways to cover her true self, like by her clothing; she dresses as a noblewoman to come across as a classy Victorian lady, but this facade deteriorates significantly. When she enters, it is fairly easy to see that Blanche is new to the neighborhood, through her action of looking at "a slip of paper", which was an address. The numerous ornamental accessories ("necklace", "earrings of pearl") give the feeling that

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  • Level: AS and A Level
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A Streetcar Named Desire

Literature: A Streetcar Named Desire Choose a play in which the deterioration of a marriage or a relationship is important. Show how the dramatist presents the deterioration and why it is in your opinion important to the play as a whole. Tennessee Williams fast paced drama "A Streetcar Named Desire" is centred on the relationships of the Kowalski family and their relation Miss Blanche Du Bois. The plays sees the relationship between in-laws Blanche Du Bois and Stanley Kowalski form and deteriorate following events which the play itself entails. The dramatist develops the deterioration of this relationship in several ways and we find that the deterioration of this relationship proves to be important to the play as a whole. This essay will explore the various ways in which the dramatist achieves the deterioration of the relationship between Blanche and Stanley and this deterioration's importance to the play as a whole. The drama "A Streetcar Named Desire" is centred on the Kowalski-Du Bois family and deals with the issues that arise when Stella Kowalski's Sister Blanche comes to live with her and Stanley. Stanley and Blanche come into conflict resulting in catastrophe and Blanche's eventual demise. Towards the beginning of the book it would appear to the reader that the relationship between Blanche and Stanley is fairly neutral if not a little flirty. However it becomes

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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A streetcar named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire How does Tennessee Williams use the dramatic device of conflict in "A Streetcar Named Desire?" Write about the different types of conflict in the play. Overview In this assignment, I am going to write about conflict and how it is represented in the stage production 'A Streetcar Named Desire' in addition to describing how it is used as a dramatic device, by Tennessee Williams. The play is revolved around a feeble yet elegant woman named Blanche Dubois. Blanche, a schoolteacher from Laurel, Mississippi, arrives at the New Orleans apartment of her sister, Stella Kowalski. Despite the fact that Blanche seems to have fallen out of close contact with Stella, she intends to stay at her apartment for an unspecified period of time. Blanche informs Stella that she 'lost' Belle Reve, their ancestral home, following the death of all their remaining relatives. She also notifies her on the fact that she has been given a leave of absence from her teaching position, due to her 'bad nerves'. The area Stella and her husband, Stanley, live in is a relatively poor, deprived one, and it becomes no surprise when we discover Stanley is determined to rid of it and instead fulfil the American dream. So when he receives the news that Blanche 'lost' Belle Reve he obviously becomes furious, as it may have been one of the only opportunities he gets to leave the appalling life

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire - V.EVANS )Scene one creates an environment in which the reader should feel welcome; this is to be achieved by the impressions that the reader gets of the quarters. I see the quarter as being a 'poor' area in 'decay', which might have been a once prosperous area as the buildings are described as having 'ornamented gables' and 'galleries' which to me suggests that at the time of building the houses the area was much wealthier. The use of the word decay also suggests that there has been an aesthetic change for the worst, Williams describes the houses as being 'mostly white frame, weathered grey'. Despite the lack of money in the area, 'Elysian Fields' has a 'warm' sense of happiness and contentment about it, Williams actually uses the word warm in his stage directions to illustrate physical warmth of the area and the warmth of the people who live there. The people therefore are immediately portrayed as being hospitable and kind, and as it is the people who create the atmosphere of a place this helps us to feel the generally tender nature of 'Elysian Fields'. The people seem jovial in nature, which is seen through the way they joke and laugh, particularly the coloured woman. The characters have excesses of energy in the way they speak and move, which gives the reader the feeling that 'Elysian

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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