Streetcar Named Desire Contextual Analysis

In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams explores the internal conflict of illusion versus reality through the characters. Humans often use illusion to save us pain and it allows us to enjoy pleasure instead. However, as illusion clashes with reality, one can forget the difference between the two. When people are caught up in their illusions, eventually they must face reality even if it is harsh. In the play, Blanche suffers from the struggle of what is real and what is fake because of the difficult events of her past. Blanche comes to her sister Stella seeking aid because she has lost her home, her job, and her family. To deal with this terrible part of her life, she uses fantasy to escape her dreadful reality. Blanche’s embracement of a fantasy world can be categorized by her attempts to revive her youth, her relationship struggles, and attempts to escape her past.

This 1950's theatrical presentation was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Tennessee Williams. It is about a southern bell by the name of Blanche Dubois who loses her father's plantation to a mortgage and travels to live in her sister's home in New Orleans by means of a streetcar called Desire. There she finds her sister living in a mess with a drunken bully husband, and the events that follow cause Blanche to step over the line of insanity and fall victim to life's harsh lessons.

In the classic fairytale of Cinderella, the main character is trapped in an abusive household. However, Cinderella’s self-perception of optimism and hope, enables her to believe that ultimately, her life will naturally improve with these attributes. True to her convictions, Cinderella gets her happily ever after by going to the ball where the prince falls in love with her. Cinderella is saved from her evil. On the other hand, Cinderella can be viewed as a victim who does nothing to enable herself to escape her abusive reality, insteads helplessly waits for fate to intervene. She does not confront the situation nor independently strive to improve her circumstances. Correspondingly, how individuals act when faced with conflict is strongly influenced by their self-perception. It is possible to become confused between reality and illusion, which is determined by their level of self-awareness. In Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the character of Stella struggles between the control of her husband and sister. Throughout the play, this conflict is demonstrated as she struggles with becoming aware of her abusive household and the contrast to the fairytale illusion she desperately clings to. Ultimately, Stella’s choice to maintain her illusion, rather than confronting her reality, is due to the self-perception of her need to depend on others and desire for idealism, which overall controls her fate.

Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire is a play that tells the tale of a family in 1940’s New Orleans. It examines the issues of delusion, escapism, the pitfalls of desire, and the idea that people are reluctant to see the truth when it deviates from what their ‘perception’ or what they want from the world. This is all done from a variety of critical lenses. The aforementioned ‘critical lens’ is mostly simply defined as a specific way of looking at a text, by keeping certain questions and ideas in mind. This is important, as it allows the reader to understand a work beyond a mere two dimensional point of view- by analysis on another layer, with certain key factors in mind, a reader is able to further understand the work and the ‘subconscious meaning’ behind the choices of the author. While A Streetcar Named Desire is a novel about the chains of our own making, the reader’s experience and

In many modern day relationships between a man and a woman, there is usually a controlling figure that is dominant over the other. It may be women over man, man over women, or in what the true definition of a marriage is an equal partnership. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams Stanley is clearly the more dominant figure over Stella. Throughout the play there are numerous examples of the power he possesses of her. Williams portrays Stella as a little girl who lives around in Stanley’s world. She does what he wants, takes his abuse yet still loves him. Situations likes these may have occurred in the 1950’s and lasted, but in today’s time this would only end up in a

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.

Tennessee Williams once said that, “Every artist has a basic premise pervading his whole life, and that premise can provide the impulse to everything he creates. For me the dominating premise has been the need for understanding and tenderness and fortitude among individuals trapped by circumstance.” Williams is an individual trapped by circumstance who gained inspiration for many of the characters in A Streetcar Named Desire from his own life. The play consists of a dysfunctional bunch of characters: a hysterical woman, a ditzy wife, and an aggressive husband, each with a connection to Williams’s personal life.

A piece of evidence that I found in paragraph 7 that could contribute to ideas was In sentence 1 stating," CORE planned the first freedom ride in 1961." So from the recent knowledge that has been given to me, a freedom ride is a civil right activist who rode buses. Also in paragraph 7, it states that several participants were arrested in bus stations, many because the police thought that they were working and that they didn't want to feel bad for what they were doing so that arrested them for their crimes.

Tennessee Williams, “A Streetcar Named Desire” relies heavily on the setting and the time period to create and carry to play. Williams uses events and influences from the time period to develop his characters and the conflicts presented to them. Using the characteristic of New Orleans and America in 1947, Williams detailedly interpreted the surrounds not only for visual but symbolic meaning within his characters and their actions through the setting. This symbolism within his stories drive deeper meaning into the overlying plot.

In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams there are two roles of womanhood represented. Williams touches on the topic regarding that women are forced to conform in society, and uses the play to create an outcome for those who don't conform. Femininity and the dependence of men can be clearly seen in both the sisters Blanche and Stella, through their behavior and traditional southern values. Both of their femininity is depicted in very different ways, Blanche is fragile and over-imaginative whereas Stella shows her femininity through her passive and easily influenced nature as well as her dedication to her husband. But their inability to be independent is very clear in the plot.

Laurel realizes the malice behind her father’s actions and words in his interactions with the Mennonites. She realized her father had taken advantage of a humble people’s belief, in doing good to all people, with the sole purpose of seeing “a white man on his knees doing something for a black man for free,” (Packer 27)—without even a nice word of “thank you.” Here was a people (the Mennonites) who were able to overcome racial prejudice in their service to all men (any ethnicity) and a man who refused to see beyond it. This was also shown in Arnetta’s desire to hurt a scout troop of Caucasian girls. Unable to see anything beyond the color of their skin and a TV version of “ponytailed and full of energy, bubbling over with love and money,”

I wonder if the foreclosure of Belle Reve, in Tennessee Williams’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, causes Blanche to create the illusion that surrounds her and her relationships. Blanche's sought-after relations with men could be a coping mechanism she uses to help with the loss of her beloved home. On the other hand, after the loss of Belle Reve Blanche seeks to find a suitor to save her from living a poverty stricken and uncertain existence. However, the problems that arise from the painstaking reality of her fading beauty cause her to create a false reality in which she uses lies to deceive her future suitors. Evidence suggests that the latter suits Blanche’s intentions the best. Therefore, Blanche purses relationships with men to satisfy her needs.

A Streetcar Named Desire is a play, written by Tennessee Williams which is set in 1940’s New Orleans. The south, mainly the state of Louisiana, was booming during the 40’s, and everyone was happy, the jazz revolution was in full swing in the south and was sweeping up anyone in its way, however, New Orleans definitely was not thriving economically. Alongside the issues of money in Louisiana, there were also problems with domestic violence and racism. The location of the play makes all the difference, if the story’s location changes the setting changes, the behavior of the characters would change as well, and the play would be dramatically different if written into any other city. Often throughout the book, either the narrator or the stage directions give city specific examples which would make the play different if the story was moved from New Orleans to anywhere else.

Blanche is the story’s protagonist, the story is centred her and how she perceives the world. Blanche mentions to Mitch that she lies as she refuses to accept the life she was given. The only person she is lying to is herself as she wants to seem higher status than she is. She is very insecure about who she is as a person which is a another contributing factor to why she lives. Blanch lives in her own world where she thinks that she can save Stella from a long miserable life with Stanley. As she struggles to see the good in Stanley because they are both different characters who come from different social class. She believes that a husband will save her from a life of tragedy and that she will run away with Shep (millionaire).

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams portrays a former southern belle’s fight against the change in her surroundings. The protagonist, Blanche DeBois, no longer lives on her family’s plantation, Belle Reve, and moves to her sister’s home in New Orleans French Quarter. Although Blanche loves her sister, she begins to despise and look down on her husband because of his status and actions. When Blanche eventually conveys her thoughts to her sister, she seems to oblivious to her own personality.