Depiction of Abuse and Mental Health in 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

A Streetcar Named Desire is a socially challenging play in light of the way in which Tennessee Williams depicts the capacity of human nature for brutality and deceit.  He takes the viewpoint that, no matter how structured or 'civilized' society is, all people will rely on their natural animal instincts, such as dominance and deception, to get themselves out of trouble at some stage in life.  William's has created three main characters, Blanche Dubois, Stella Kowalski and Stanley Kowalski. Each of these characters is equally as civilized as the next, yet all are guilty of acts of savagery on different levels.  Throughout the play Williams symbolically relates these three characters to animals, 'savages,' through the disclosure of

Established as one of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams used his writing as a form of therapy. The author came from a troubled background consisting of alcoholism, mental breakdowns, and general unhappiness; Williams exploited these unfortunate events and allowed them to motivate his literature. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois’ struggles represent the reality of people’s lives, “an enduring concern of [Williams’] throughout his writing career (Henthorne 1). Blanche captures our focus with her seemingly sincere and fragile nature, but it is later revealed that this is just an illusion within her own mind. She resides in a world of fantasy to shield herself against the harsh threats of reality and her own fears. Blanche’s main objective in the play is to keep herself from falling apart in a world of cruelty through alcoholism and illusion. Through the characterization of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams depicts the coping mechanism of fantasy and its detrimental repercussions by exploring the specific experiences that eventually impede her happiness.

Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire does not employ a variety of dramatic techniques to challenge the audience to explore the idea that the security offered by relationships can decline into a struggle for dominance. Rather, Williams’ uses said techniques to challenge the audience to understand how personal deterioration can lead to the decline in relationships, not through struggles for dominance, but through struggles for the basic conservation of said relationships. This is because the relationships portrayed in A Streetcar Named Desire only provide the illusion of security, seen through the relationship between Stella and Stanley, but provide no real guarantee of security. This concept is effectively explored through Tennessee

In a streetcar named desire, the play shows that substance abuse does not help people occupy in life. Blache is extremely dramatic, and has been through quite a few tragedies in her life. As she arrives New Orleans, she wants to escape from her past, and start a new chapter, although it occurs to be more emotionally unstable. The three main arguments that support the thesis are, she drinks excessive amount of alcohol, she attempts to escape from her reality and she develops unhealthy relationships with others.

Social upheaval in many senses was explicit through the beginning of the twentieth century; two world wars had - for a short time - shifted the balance of power between men and women. Women were increasingly employed to fill positions which had previously been considered masculine. This was not to last however, and by the fifties men had reassumed their more dominant role in society. People were finding new voices at this time by taking pre-existing forms and pushing the boundaries to re-voice established literary forms. Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire around the time this reversal was occurring in American society. Williams was a homosexual from the deep south of America, and his play is about physical, emotional

Tennessee Williams was a well known Modern English playwright. He was born in Columbus, Mississippi and moved to St. Louis, then to Memphis, and later graduated from the University of Iowa in 1983. Williams began to turn his short stories into plays and later on into films. His wildest audiences were in contemporary dramatic literature. Williams’s plays have been produced in England, France, Hally, Germany, Greece, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Cuba and Mexico. One of William’s most intriguing plays is Streetcar named Desire. Streetcar was produced around 1947. The “setting of Streetcar” is a combination of raw realism and deliberate fantasy” (Riddel 16). The main character of the play is Ms.

In the opening two scenes of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams, the audience has its first and generally most important impressions formulated on characters, the plot and the mood and tone of the play overall.

450 million. “That is the current number of people in the world who suffer from or are affected by mental illness”(World Health Organization). Mental illness is quite obviously an issue that affects many people and families around the world. Many writers take a social issue, such as mental illness, and use it to inspire their work and portray it in a new and creative fashion. They take an issue that nearly everyone is familiar with and will recognize and build upon it, creating characters that many readers will connect with and relate to. In this particular play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams clearly portrays the issue of mental illness, and its impact on society is shown in statistics, expert analysis, and expert testimony.

Desire – power and status. antithesis is death, moth, Stanley and Blanche, domestic violence, (chauvinistic), desire to be loved. She was bought to New Orleans literally by a streetcar that was named ‘Desire’, and also by desire in several other ways: her sexual desires and reliance on her body for pleasure meant her reputation and dignity were damaged at the Flamingo hotel and in Laurel where she was forced to leave her job as a school teacher, apparently taking an interest in younger boys; this kind of sexual desire is still something of a drive for her, yet she is not aware of its dangers; and her continuing desire, in an American Dream-like fashion, to re-find the gentility that Belle Reve and her dainty previous lifestyle beheld. It is

“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”- Edmund Burke. The desire to have power can be traced through the natural instinct of competition for dominance over weaker beings, through the human need to be superior. Throughout history, humans have fought for control over everything they believed belong to them, such as land, territory, and food. As humanity has evolved, the fight for control and power has evolved as well, to where violence and rape have become a normal part of society as a whole. Through the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the novels Things fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and the poem A White man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling, rape is used to insert superiority

Tennessee Williams is regarded as a pioneering playwright of American theatre. Through his plays, Williams addresses important issues that no other writers of his time were willing to discuss, including addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness. Recurring themes in William’s works include the dysfunctional family, obsessive and absent mothers and fathers, and emotionally damaged women. These characters were inspired by his experiences with his own family. These characters appear repeatedly in his works with their own recurring themes. Through The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents the similar thematic elements of illusion, escape, and fragility between the two plays, proving that although similar, the themes within these plays are not simply recycled, as the differences in their respective texts highlight the differences of the human condition.

In the beginning of the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Blanche first arrives from Laurel Missouri and immediately becomes the antagonist. As the play goes on Stanley starts to go against Blanche. At the end of the play Blanche becomes the victim. In the end, Stanley sent Blanche off to a mental asylum. This plays demonstrates domestic violence. In the beginning of the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams shows how society accepted it and ignored it.Stanley, one of the characters in the play, found domestic violence to be a positive and very sexual part of him and his wife, Stella's, relationship. Throughout the play, Williams shows that he believes that it is wrong.

In Tennessee Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire” madness continues to get progressively worse in the lives of the main characters Stanly, Stella, and Blanche. Because of low self esteem and her delusional thought process Blanche is most affected by the madness. Blanche’s delusional life style leads her to compulsively lie, live a promiscuous life style, and alcoholism. Blanche tries constantly to deal with her own madness, but her delusional mental state is constantly effect by the people around her. Although she causes most of the problems in her life some of her madness is justifiable. By the end of the play Blanche can no longer fight off the madness and is sent to an insane asylum. Even though most of the madness that occurs

According to Sigmund Freud, there are three different systems in the human brain, all developing at different times. The id, ego and superego are the three different systems that determine your personality. Stanley Kowalski is one of the main characters in A Streetcar Named Desire and Stella’s husband. The id is the impulsive part of the personality and develops when children are infants. The id has no control over decisions and does not understand the effects afterwards.

The setting of the play is limited to the Kowalskis’ apartment and the street directly outside. Williams' play certainly has unity of place; the entire drama takes place in the French Quarter in New Orleans. This unity of place helps to create the conflict between Stanley and Blanche as a fight for territorial dominance because she is an intruder in his home, bringing values and ideas that he hates. The setting is significant as it helps the audience to realize the conflict between Blanche and Stanley. The bed is a central feature in the setting of the play and the bathroom functions as a place of refuge for Blanche (O'Shea 11).