A streetcar named desire - Blanche and Stanley.

A streetcar named desire was written by Tennessee Williams in his mid thirties. Williams takes the audience to New Orleans where the relationship of Blanche DuBois, her sister Stella and brother illuminated. In this play Blanche, Stella and Stanley were very important and controversial because they represent a distress society by problems of class differences. This essay will point out the similarities and differences of Blanche and Stanley as well as my own impression about the characters.

The first impression that I received from Blanche is that she’s a very high class, intelligent, beautiful, and arrogant with aristocratic background lady. The example from the play is when Blanche was very shocked by the place that her sister is living in. Blanche is a very sensitive and emotional woman. This is shown when Stanley asked her about the boy that she has married to, her impression is suddenly changed. She seems to me as the person with inability to face reality. She can’t accept the fact that she’s thirty; she still seeks put compliments on her appearance from her sister and other people in order to fulfill herself and her self-esteem. To me she also seemed to be a flirting type of person. In this play it’s clearly shown that she’s trying to attract Mitch and also when she asked Stanley to button her dress. She attempts to make herself appear attractive to new male suitors.

She also seemed to me as a person with a mental problem, in the way she act and talk which doesn’t seem like a normal person does. For example, the fact that she can’t exposed herself in the light, and the fact that she said that she was told to have her days off from her current job because of nervous breakdown. Also the fact that she likes to take a bath many times a day and she likes to dress up with cheap evening clothes make me think that she’s the kind of person that is stick to her ...

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The impression of Stanley is that he seems to be a kind of guy that has a quick tempered, and often violent. If he orders something then that thing has to be done as he wanted it to be or said to be domineering man. When Blanche turn the radio on when Stanley was playing the poker, so Stanley ordered her to turn it off but then Blanche doesn’t listen to him so he with his hot tempered throw the radio out of window. However he seems to be quite a smart person as he is protecting his wife from being tricked. His smartness seemed to me as a very contrast thing to drinking and his personalities.

The most obvious similarity between Blanche and Stanley is that they both want Stella. Blanche wants Stella; in this case means she doesn’t want her to be with Stanley after she has seen that Stanley beats her, she doesn’t want her to go back together with him. Stanley also wants the same thing as Blanche does. He doesn’t want his wife to be or to get too close with Blanche. This is because that he afraid that she is going to ‘tricked’ her again.

Another similarity is that they are both having an economically problem. Even though Stanley is having his normal life now but he will not be as normal after he has a baby, because it is going to cost him and his wife more than they are using now. For Blanche it may not be a very poor condition to stay with her sister, but to compare with her background then it is considered to be quite a bad condition.

The physically similarity between them is that they are both addicted to alcohol and they both also married.

One of the differences between them is in their English. For Blanche, her English is supposed to be very good as she said she is an English teacher. But for Stanley his English is not so good both the vocabulary and his accent. This is because he’s not American so he has this foreign accent and also he most of the time speak in slang.

Another difference between them is that Blanche seems to have much more tragic past than Stanley. She has to see her love ones die one by one including her husband, which could be the reason for her mental problem.

In conclusion, I think that both characters have their advantage and disadvantage. Blanche seems to be a woman which is very sensitive and high class and in contrast Stanley is very rough and low class.

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