A Streetcar Named Desire Scene One IB Analysis

International Baccalaureate Languages

A Streetcar Named Desire: Scene Analysis

Scene One:

Imagery: The setting is the exterior of a corner building on a street called Elysian Fields, which runs between the river and the train tracks in a poor section of New Orleans that has “raffish [crude] charm.” The hum of voices in the street can be heard, as well as the bluesy notes of a cheap piano playing in a bar around the corner. (Williams notes that the music from this piano is to set the mood throughout the play.) It is an early May evening, and the sky at dusk is almost turquoise.

Stanley vs. Blanche: The play immediately establishes Stanley and Blanche as polar opposites, with Stella as the link between them. Stage directions describe Stanley as a virulent (dangerous) character whose chief pleasure is women. His dismissal of Blanche’s beauty is therefore significant, because it shows that she does not exude his same brand of desire. On the other hand, Blanche’s delicate manners and sense of propriety are offended by Stanley’s brutish virility. Stanley’s qualities are variously described as vitality, heartiness, brutality, primitivism, and lust for life, animalistic. Blanche comes across as a frivolous, hysterical, insensitive, and self-obsessed individual as she derides her sister’s lesser social status and doesn’t express joy at seeing Stella so in love.

Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes. Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of I, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens. Branching out from this complete and satisfying center are all the auxiliary channels of his life, such as his heartiness with men, his appreciation of rough humor, his love of good drink and food and games, his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears his emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer. He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them.” (pg. 29)
Blanche, who arrives in New Orleans having lost Belle Reve and having been forced to leave her job, exudes vulnerability and emotional frailty. Stanley’s cocky interactions with Blanche show him to be insensitive—he barely lets Blanche get a word in edgewise as he quickly assesses her beauty.

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Double Entente: Stanley’s entrance with a package of meat underscores his primitive qualities. It is as if he were bringing it back to his cave fresh from the kill. His entrance also underscores the intense sexual bond between him and Stella, which is apparent to the other characters as well. Throwing the meat, is an action represents Stella being a “piece of meat” to Stanley

Light vs. Dark & Appearance vs. Reality: “[Blanche’s] appearance is incongruous to the setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of ...

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Double Entente: Stanley’s entrance with a package of meat underscores his primitive qualities. It is as if he were bringing it back to his cave fresh from the kill. His entrance also underscores the intense sexual bond between him and Stella, which is apparent to the other characters as well. Throwing the meat, is an action represents Stella being a “piece of meat” to Stanley

Light vs. Dark & Appearance vs. Reality: “[Blanche’s] 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 of cocktail party in the garden district. She is about five years older than Stella. Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth” (pg. 15)

Light is symbolic of reality. The fact that Blanche’s character must avoid a strong light suggests that as a character, Blanche chooses to avoid reality, and instead, turn to illusion
The metaphor of Blanche being compared to a moth, a creature of the night that is drawn to light suggests that Blanche is drawn to reality, which foreshadows her downfall and metaphoric death when reality becomes unavoidable.
Light is also symbolic of the truth, which Blanche has distanced herself from

Journey to Destruction & Verbal Irony: “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at- Elysian Fields!” (pg. 15)

Blanche speaks these words to Eunice and the Negro woman upon arriving at the Kowalski apartment at the beginning of Scene One. She has just arrived in New Orleans and is describing her means of transportation to her sister’s apartment. The place names that Williams uses in A Streetcar Named Desire hold obvious metaphorical value. Elysian Fields, the Kowalskis’ street, is named for the land of the dead in Greek mythology. The journey that Blanche describes making from the train station to the Kowalski apartment is an allegorical version of her life up to this point in time. Her illicit pursuit of her sexual “desires” led to her social death and expulsion from her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi. Landing in a seedy district that is likened to a pagan heaven, Blanche begins a sort of afterlife, in which she learns and lives the consequences of her life’s actions. Blanche makes it clear from the start that her actions are involuntary – "they," some unknown entity, told her to take a street-car named Desire. This is both meaningful in the present tense and on a deeper thematic level. Blanche is lost; her life is falling apart and she has nowhere to go. Only desperation and a lack of other options has brought her to Elysian Fields, a tenement as different from its heavenly title as can be imagined by Blanche's sheltered mind. And we will learn that throughout Blanche's adult life, without any agency, she has been riding two metaphorical streetcars named Desire and Cemeteries – the dual themes of lust and death that will be paired constantly through the play.

Light vs. Dark: “A light goes on behind the blind, turning it light blue. Blanche slowly follows her into the downstairs flat. The surrounding areas dim out as the interior is lighted” (pg. 16-17)

Light represents the truth, which inevitability is following Blanche wherever she goes, almost as if it is haunting her, yet Blanche continues to ignore it
“And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” (pg. 19)

The light, or the truth, is obviously bothering Blanche.

Light vs. Dark & Appearance vs. Reality: “God love you for a liar! Daylight never exposed so total a ruin!” (pg. 21)
“You’ve spilt something on the pretty white lace collar!” (pg. 22)

Suggests that Stella is no longer pure, in Blanche’s opinion, because of where she is living

Double Entente & Foreshadowing: “Some people rarely touch it, but it touches them often.” (pg. 30)

Drink represents desire. Stanley is in fact saying, that some people rather touch what they desire, but desire will touch them, foreshadowing Blanche being touched by he who desires her (Stanley).

“I never was a very good English student” (pg. 30)

Signifies the differences between Stanley and Blanche

Double Entente: “You going to shack up here” (pg. 31)

Shack = sex

Blanche feels sick throughout this scene, which is caused, metaphorically, by her lies. Reality is catching up to her, and she is feeling it strangle her.