Stanley is a practical and physical man as the play opens, seeming to be somewhat of a hero – (one scene at the beginning has him throwing a package of meat up to Stella who was waiting at an open window. This appears symbolic of a cave man bringing home his catch for his woman, but at the same time having sexual overtones – something missing from Blanches life at the moment.) He both works and plays hard, and very obviously adores his wife. He has little time for Blanche’s hysteria and flights of fancy, very early on her appears to distrust her. When she calls him a Polack (as she often does to his face throughout the play) the word is designed to give an image of stupidity and coarseness.
Stella is very much aware of the hostility between Stanley and Stella, and in some ways, it appears that she may inadvertently exacerbate it. Before Stanley and Blanche actually met, Stella admits to Stanley that she has “glossed over their circumstances” by not admitting during correspondence with Blanche that she and her husband live in a tiny apartment. With Stanley’s inflated pride, he feels belittled.
We see Stella’s awareness of the sense of conflict clearly, when she asks Stanley not to mention the fact that she is pregnant in scene two. Stanley later deliberately ignores the request when he realises that Blanche has outwitted him during a discussion of what has happened to his wife’s family home. After rifling through her personal possessions, he throws the news at Blanche, as a calculated move. Stella, her fertility and youth and the birth of their future contrasts sharply with Blanche’s sensation of herself as drying out, fading away, losing her youth.
The conflict soon deepens and becomes more than being about class and family. In scene three, we see Stanley becoming enraged when he perceives that he is not only losing Stella to Blanche, but that she is also beginning to ‘make a move’ on his oldest and closest friend Stanley, and so the conflict gains another strand, the struggle for Mitch’s loyalty.
The men are playing poker at Stanley and Stella’s apartment, and Stanley refuses his wife’s request that they end the game. The women retire to the bedroom to talk, and turn on a radio. Stanley shouts through that they should turn it off, and his friends disagree with him. Saying that it should stay on, they side with Stella and Blanche, and Stanley, angry, goes into the bedroom and turns it off. Mitch leaves the table to use the bathroom but remains in the bedroom with the women, talking to Blanche. They turn the radio on again, and begin to dance. At this point, Stanley loses control of his emotions, and throws the radio out of the window, then strikes Stella after she calls him an animal. She then rushes upstairs with Blanche to spend the night at a neighbour’s apartment.
Stanley has his friends - most specifically his oldest friend, and wife, turning against him. Later on, he calls for Stella, and returning home to him, they spend the night together.
Tennessee Williams uses many ways to illustrate the conflict, not always in the most obvious ways. Stanley is always portrayed as a larger than life character, dressed in gaudy silken clothes, or half stripped. His masculinity is never in any doubt during the play, as he appears half naked, shouting, laughing and fighting. Blanche, in contrast, is portrayed as frail, hysterical, faded. The lighting is bright around Stanley – Blanche is usually in a half-light, bulbs are covered with paper lanterns, she wears white clothes. In scene one, she is described as almost ‘moth like’ whilst the impression the reader gets of Stanley is more like that of a butterfly. Williams also uses music and other sounds to dramatic effect – around the corner of the apartment is a piano bar. During scenes containing conflict, the music often rises to a crescendo. Outside and off scene sounds also add to the atmosphere; a hot tamale seller, a woman singing mournfully that she sells flowers ‘for the dead’.
We see the use of sound and light to emphasise conflict illustrated perfectly in scene four. It opens on the morning after the poker game, and in the street outside, Williams describes ‘ a confusion of street cries like a choral chant’.
Stella invites Blanche to ‘speak plainly’, and Williams writes here that there is the noise of a train approaching. The women wait to speak, and when the train is at its loudest (grating, raucous, booming) Stanley enters the apartment unheard and unseen by the women, and listens to the tirade against him by Blanche. This technique, an intense form of dramatic irony, is used to brilliant effect, as the audience hears Blanche raving against Stanley – “ he acts like an animal, has an animals habits – eats like one, talks like one, moves like one” - and realises that she has no idea that he is there, listening. The train is used once more, when Stanley exits the apartment under cover of the noise. After it is passes, he calls to Stella, she rushes to greet him and he embraces her in full view of Blanche, grinning triumphantly at her over Stella’s shoulder. The lights fade, after a lingering brightness on the embracing man and wife, and the piano bar music is once again prominent – the victorious sound of drums and trumpet.
So, in conclusion, the conflict is illustrated in many ways. Some obviously, through the use of language differences, sexuality, gender, loyalty – and some not so obvious; lighting, sounds, shadows. Together as a whole, the audience of the play is left in no doubt as to the strength of it.