- Look at Blanche’s long speech about death in Scene Eleven. Identify the main elements in the speech and show how they summaries Blanche’s vision of what “ought to be the truth”.
This long speech is mostly about love and death. She speaks of the man who should have come to get her from New Orleans. When Eunice offers her a grape, she takes the idea of an unwashed grape to the extreme “I shall die of eating an unwashed grape… out on the ocean”
Her loneliness and isolation:
- Can you justify the view that Blanche’s last words in the play (“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”) are a perfect expression of the sort of life she has led
Throughout the play it is evident Blanche relies on some sort of support, whether it is from her illusions, or the people around her. The play ends with the statement “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” is this a perfect expression of the sort of life she has led, as not only does her sister leave the family to suffer, but leaves Blanche on her own to take care of Belle Reve. After unfortunate consequences, Blanche is left alone, to fend for here self emotionally and physically. In truth, strangers have been kind only in exchange for sex. Since she was declared “out of bounds” and banished from Belle Reve, she had to opt to stay with her sister, where she took to the kindness of Mitch a gentle stranger in the beginning who becomes her boyfriend. Otherwise, strangers like Stanley, Mitch, and the people of Laurel have denied Blanche the sympathy she deserves after knowing her past. In scene five, Blanche shockingly kisses a virtual stranger. Blanche has always depended on strangers rather than herself, and due to this she was not able to take charge of her own life. Therefore in the end she finds humanity in the stranger, the doctor who helps her leave New Orleans.
Her contradictions:
- How fitting do you think that early description of her being like a “moth” is?
A repeated symbol in the play she then puts an artificial lantern on a light bulb. Light represents truth, and Blanche wants to cloak the truth by covering it up. However, later in the play Stanley "brings to light" the truth of Blanche's life. And moths go away from the light, as they do not like it. She wears white, to present herself as pure, and untouched, something which she is far from. Her appearance and her behavior contradicts the reality of who she really.
Stanley:
- A critic once said that “Stanley is William’s vision of the rapacity of the life force and the pragmatism of survival”. What evidence is there to justify this statement?
Stanley’s character contrasts with Blanches’ portrayal of how she wants to be presented. Stanley’s pragmatism of survival is that he wants Blanche to leave, so everything is back to normal within the household. Stanley’s motif once Blanche comes to visits is he wants her to leave so he can have sexual intimacies with his wife (Stella). He is ignorant to the material and superficial objects which Blanch possesses; he is unable to understand the value of each thing. He has a great desire for wealth, Stella confirms, he is the “only one that would get anywhere” from his group, indicating he is able to survive and earn the money. Furthermore he is not ignorant toward the law, as he questions Blanche about the “Napoleonic code”, a law stating everything which belongs to the wife belongs to the husband as well.
Stella
- Is Stella a static character?
A static character is someone who remains unchanged throughout the play. Stella would be the static character within this play, since she her opinions do not change no matter what is said. She cannot face the truth and forces herself to ignore reality and only see the untrue hope. Ironically, Blanche tells he sister to “pull [herself] together and face the facts.” And no matter how hard Blanche tries to convince her to leave Stanley, she stands by her man. This shows she is a static character as her opinions and her beliefs cannot be steered.
The Themes
The past:
Death- “Death is my best theme, don’t you think? The pain of dying is what worries me, not the act. After all, nobody gets out of life alive.”- Tennessee Williams
The south- “I write out of love for the South… it is out of regret for a South that no longer exists that I write of the forces that have destroyed it”. Tennessee Williams
Survival-“the play, and its author, beg the question of the price of survival”.
How important are illusions and fantasy as themes in the play?
A human illusion is a distorted sense of reality in which a one creates and lives. Most characters use illusions in an attempt to escape their flawed realities. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, each of the characters live within an illusion which helps them to escape their realities, which they all do not want to accept. The themes illusion and fantasy are important themes in the play as they play a role which allows the characters to live in a different world from reality.
Reality versus illusion is one of, if not the major theme of the play. It also has the most relevance to the way in which Blanche, Stanley and Stella are living in their own fantasy worlds. The protagonist, Blanche Dubois, lives in her own fantasy world and has constant delusional outbursts. Perhaps the reason Blanche chose illusion rather than reality is because of her somewhat troubled past. At a young age, she fell in love with an adolescent boy named Allan Grey and soon married him. Her illusion of the perfect marriage she was living was shattered when one day she entered what she thought was an empty room, but instead found her husband and an older male friend. As quoted from the scene, “He was in the quicksand and clutching at me - but I wasn't holding him out, I was slipping in with him!" (183). She started to fall deep into her illusion, becoming completely lost in her fantasy world, even going far enough to say, “Afterwards, we pretended that nothing had been discovered”. After the tragedy of the boy’s suicide, Blanche believed that by having intimacies with strangers, she would be able to “fill [her] empty heart” and shortly cover her desire for that perfect relationship. By meeting Mitch, she realized that he is the man who could relieve her of her nightmares from the tragedy. Mitch, who also endured similar problems, tells Blanche,” You need somebody and I need somebody too”. Her hopeful illusion of getting a “hold of [herself] and [making herself] a new life” was shattered because her sister’s husband, Stanley, enlightened Mitch of Blanche’s convoluted history. Blanche says “A woman’s charm is 50% illusion”, invoking the idea that she lives in a fantasy world. She told Mitch that she “thanked God for [him], because [he] seemed to be gentle- a cleft in a rock of the world I could hide in,” she wants, “Magic!...I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth…” Due to the false impressions she built around her life, it caused her to lie to others and herself. The intricate lies and unwanted reality jointly caused her to wind up in an insane asylum.
Blanche was not the only one to live in a world full of illusions. Her sister, Stella, also lived in an unreal existence in regard to the way which she pretended she was living in a happy home with an ideal husband in a world full of fantasies. Although told to, Stella would laugh and refuse to leave her husband regardless of the fact he constantly mistreats her with no consideration for the child she is carrying. She cannot face the truth and forces herself to ignore reality and only see the untrue fantasy. Ironically, Blanche tells he sister to “pull [herself] together and face the facts.” Blanche lives in a life full of lies and she does not believe her sister should as well. Once Blanche confronts Stella about her husband raping her, Stella is broken, however her illusion is not. Her false reality is alive as shown by the responses, “I couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley," and, "Don't ever believe it. Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you've got to keep going." By not believing her sister, the illusions won the battle over reality, and unfortunately lead to the demise of both characters. Stella never knew the truth and is starting a family based on a lie, and worse Blanche lost touch with reality and went insane. The world outside the apartment is not any better than inside, yet the home in which one should seek for refuge from problems, turned out to be the source of their largest problem; this may have added to the confusion between fantasy and reality.
Out of the three main characters, Stanley is the only one which does not live in a fantasy world and is straightforward with what he does. He questions Blanche’s possessions with ignorance, and is not bothered if he hurts anyone’s feelings.
We learn how Stanley keeps Stella under the thumb. However violent Stanley might be, she won’t reveal that her relationship has problems to Blanche or anyone. Blanche puts up a wall, and creates a performance and acts like a person she is not living in a fantasy life.
