Comparison Of Stanley And Blanche In A Streetcar Named Desire By Tennessee Williams
Since the play’s debut in 1947, Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire has been considered both his most charming play as well as the most controversial piece of literature he has written. When reading any form of literature, one of the most important occurrences is that of the movement between the author and the reader. Williams uses competing narratives throughout A Street Car Named Desire, inviting a unique perspective for the reader to be able to assess the authority of the storytellers. The text struggles between two focuses and forms a debate on who the real protagonist of the play is: Stanley or Blanche? The two become almost like competitors in an arena and the stage is their battlefield in the play. Both characters have a balance of
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Hans Robert Jauss, a German academic notable for his work in reception theory, divides the reading process into two parts: understanding and interpretation. He suggests that the first reading of a literary text is that of an aesthetical understanding of the work based upon first impressions. Since a reader cannot obtain a clear understanding of the overall story until the last line, Jauss states that “analysis cannot begin with the question of the significance of the particular within the achieved form of the whole; rather, it must pursue the significance still left open in the process of perception that the text, like a ‘score’, indicates for the reader” (141). It is only by the second reading of a text that a reader can truly understand the ways in which each part of the story connects and weaves into the larger picture. This process of reading requires the reader to make tentative probabilities based on expectations from what they understand of the text on their first reading. By the end of the text, these probabilities are either confirmed or contradicted by the overall story. This construction of probabilities is important in creating a reader response throughout the beginning and middle of A Streetcar Named
Hans Robert Jauss, a German academic notable for his work in reception theory, divides the reading process into two parts: understanding and interpretation. He suggests that the first reading of a literary text is that of an aesthetical understanding of the work based upon first impressions. Since a reader cannot obtain a clear understanding of the overall story until the last line, Jauss states that “analysis cannot begin with the question of the significance of the particular within the achieved form of the whole; rather, it must pursue the significance still left open in the process of perception that the text, like a ‘score’, indicates for the reader” (141). It is only by the second reading of a text that a reader can truly understand the ways in which each part of the story connects and weaves into the larger picture. This process of reading requires the reader to make tentative probabilities based on expectations from what they understand of the text on their first reading. By the end of the text, these probabilities are either confirmed or contradicted by the overall story. This construction of probabilities is important in creating a reader response throughout the beginning and middle of A Streetcar Named