Throughout his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Tennessee Williams uses symbolism to create the characterization of certain individuals. Blanche is certainly one of the most complex of characters, and readers over time learn more and more about her mysterious and even suspicious background. There is much evidence throughout the play to support the idea that Blanche longs to share the secrecy of her past with someone, but because she is fearful of being vulnerably truthful, she hides herself in the darkness, symbolic of hiding behind a mask of deceit. Some may argue that Blanche does not long to share the truth about herself with others because of her resistance to light. Although she does hide herself in darkness, Blanche opens …show more content…
One example of this is when Blanche first reunites with her sister in the beginning of the play. Blanche exclaims, “Let me look at you. But don’t you look at me, Stella, no, no, no, not till later. ... And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare” (18). She does not want Stella to closely examine her when first arriving. She avoids the light, representing truth, because Stella does not yet know that Belle Reve was lost, and does not know the true reason of why Blanche left her job to come to stay with her. This is one of her secrets that she had buried deep within her and was afraid to let out. She also tells Stella, “You haven’t said a word to me.” Stella replied by stating, “ You haven’t given me a chance to, honey” (19). The fact that Blanche rambled on and on without giving her sister time to ask any questions could have meant that Blanche was avoiding ‘interrogation’ so to speak, quite possibly because she did not want the darkness of her past to be exposed. Another example of Blanche’s fear of vulnerability is the fact that she always avoided too much lighting around Mitch. She had him put a paper lantern over the light bulb, reducing the brightness of the room. She also told Mitch that she hated bare lightbulbs, and yet another time, she tells Mitch on their date, “We’ll have a night-cap. …show more content…
Because of her painful and even immoral past, she is afraid of trusting people enough to be completely open with them, because with truthfulness come vulnerability. She therefore misleads others by her mask of darkness and deception, but not only are her actions misleading others, but she also tries to deceive herself. She does not want to accept reality, and by not sharing her secrets and experiences with others, instead of accepting the truth, she buries it deep within her. Sadly, this rejection of reality causes Blanche’s deleterious descent into
It is clear that Blanche DuBois is willing to do what she believes is necessary to get what she wants. This often includes deceit. She feels that she needs to lie about herself in order to seem more appealing. Because Blanche is so afraid of aging, she keeps her age to herself. While she is dating Mitch, she often deceives him by never letting him see her in bright light in order to conceal her faded looks. When she comes to New Orleans, Blanche does not tell her sister that she was fired from her job; she says that she is merely taking a vacation from the job. She says this in order to keep up the fake persona she holds. Blanche is very open about her lies with her sister. “I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth.” (69) This shows that Blanche’s lifelong choice of avoiding harsh realities leads to her breakdown. With all of the lies and deceit Blanche tells, she is living an unreal existence.
It is clear from the beginning that Blanche is not a very honest character. She lives in a fantasy world of her own design. One of the very first things she does when she enters Stella’s
Blanche’s death speech plays a vital role in the development of the play “A Streetcar named Desire”. In the monologue the tension between Blanche and Stella comes to a zenith as Blanch explodes with rage as she expresses her jealousy-driven feelings to Stella. In doing so Blanche reveals much more, including her unstable mental state, her emotional reaction to the lost of Belle Reve, and most importantly her preoccupation with the theme of death.
Blanche repeatedly lied to make herself look pure to others. It only served as a masquerade to hide her dirty, sinful reality. She lied about her age, alcoholism, promiscuity, and why she had to leave Laurel. When Stanley asked her if she wanted a shot, she replied, “No, I—rarely touch it” (Scene 1, page 1548). She could not confront her reality, so she retreated to her world of illusion. This was Blanche’s most prominent flaw. If she could have accepted things for what they are, she could have salvaged her sanity. If, from the beginning, she had been truthful to Stanley’s friend Mitch, he could have forgiven her. Dismally, Mitch would not trust her after finding out everything she said was fabricated. “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it” (Scene 9, page 1590). Blanche feared lights which symbolized her fear of reality. She claimed that with Alan’s death, all light had gone out of her life. “And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this—kitchen candle.”
Blanche’s fear of becoming undesirable has caused her to create an illusion in an attempt to revive her youth. Throughout the entirety of the play, Blanche is constantly worried about her appearance and looks for compliments from others. When she is first introduced, “her appearance is incongruous to this 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”
In A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche’s flaws that lead to her downfall are abundant. If we are to view Blanche Dubois as a tragic heroine, then it is in scene six that her tragic flaws are especially evident, and in particular desire. They are so prevalent here as it is arguably the beginning of Blanche’s demise and as in Shakespearean tragedy; it is in the centre of the play that we see the beginning of the protagonist’s downfall. Desire, as her harmartia, is represented in several ways in scene six.
Blanches’ emotional state of mind is also conspicuous at the start of the play as she circumvents direct light, fearful of showing her fading looks and the light would make her vulnerable to the truth. Blanche is unable to withstand harsh light, calling the light a ‘merciless glare’(S1:pg.120*) because with Allan’s death, the light had gone out of her life and the effect this had is that she wanted dim lights hiding the reality of her painful memories. This links to the theme of dream and reality as Blanche, a delicate character, refused ‘to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion’ (*2), living on the borders of life similar to a moth which creates the image of Blanches’ fragility.
Blanche's devistating past is just one of the reasons I felt sympathy for her. Troubled from her past, Blanche has a sence of falseness, which increasingly becomes apparent to Stanley. Her secrets are revealed, and this unveals a haunting past, and insecurities which were unknown to Stella. It would appear that the lies and desperate clutches to hold onto
Throughout the play Blanche also lies about her real age because she want to be perceived as younger, since she is still single she doesn't want people to think that she has lost her opportunity. Because of this she uses paper lanterns and avoids being seen in light since she doesn't want people to realize the truth. She justifies this by saying she “never was hard or self-sufficient enough... You've got to be soft and attractive. And [she's] fading now! [she] don't know how much longer [she] can turn the trick” (92). The paper lanterns are a way she can conceal her true identity, it's a way for her to not deal with the reality. She's living in this lie where she thinks that by putting paper lanterns everything is seen in those pastel colors, concealing the truth behind them. But I don't think she is conscience that that is not how it works and sooner or later she must face reality. Another event she conceals is her ex husband's death. She lies about what had really happened to him and the reasons why he had died. Being left because your husband was a homosexual would affect her reputation. People would talk about her behind her back and spread rumors which would ruin blanche’s reputation. That is why instead she created her own story. After hearing herself tell Mitch the real story she says she had never lied “Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart” (9.59). Meaning she had believed all the lies she had been saying. She had immersed
due to her past blanche’s actions are unusual and to many they are considered inappropriate. Blanche lives through some very dark and intense incidents before the play takes place, she witnesses the death of her entire family, she loses her family home, and to add to the misery she believes she is the reason her husband killed himself. In an act to move on she retreats into illusion acting as if these incidents never happened. Blanche decides to lie to everyone, from her sister to the man she potentially wanted to marry, she does not give them the truth. She wants to marry mitch but does not tell him about her past, mitch had all right to know, yet she led him on, actions like these in an environment of connection is inappropriate beyond a doubt. Because of her lies and illusions Blanche ends up losing everything, she loses her only chance at a future with Mitch and her freedom when she is sent to the mental institution. Blanches motivation by the past caused her life around her dissolve.
Without realizing, Blanche compares herself to being like the light bulb and how it uses a paper lantern to cover up. She is however, fully aware of her alternating personality and that she uses it to impress others because in order for people to like her she feels she has to act like something that she is not making her very vulnerable. In order to protect herself, Blanche covers up by making fake stories and lying to everyone to seem more attractive. When her sister asks why she cares so much about her age, Blanche responds, “Because of hard knocks my vanity’s been given. What I mean is—he thinks I’m sort of prim and proper, you know. I want to deceive him enough to make him—want me . . .” (Williams 58). As opposed to letting herself shine, Blanche uses the
I would like to analyze a tragic heroine Blanche DuBois appearing in a play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) written by Tennessee Williams. My intention is to concentrate on the most significant features of her nature and behaviour and also on various external aspects influencing her life and resulting in her nervous breakdown. I would like to discuss many themes related to this character, such as loss, desire and longing for happiness, beauty and youth, pretension, lies and imagination, dependence on men and alcoholism.
Blanche is not really lost in illusions; rather she uses them as camouflage. She wears them as she wears her clothes and her glass necklaces, as protection from a reality that she finds horrifying. One must not think of Blanche as just a fragile, delicate blossom. There is a fierce desire in her for life at any cost. Her masquerade may
One of the play’s main characters, Blanche, has by no means had an easy adulthood. She has had to deal with her sister setting off to New Orleans with her new husband, the death of her father, losing her own husband, and the loss of their family’s beloved plantation, Belle Reve. With all of this going on, Blanche disguises her pain and delusion, and pretends that is does not exist. In a way,
Tennessee Williams was once quoted as saying "Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama...the purest language of plays" (Adler 30). This is clearly evident in A Streetcar Named Desire, one of Williams's many plays. In analyzing the main character of the story, Blanche DuBois, it is crucial to use both the literal text as well as the symbols of the story to get a complete and thorough understanding of her.