Essay On Light And Darkness In A Streetcar Named Desire
In Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, binary oppositions of light and darkness, or fantasy and reality, reveal the roles they play in the major characters and how these binaries cannot come together. The motif of light illuminates Blanche’s loss of innocence, while darkness hides her insecurities and shadows her fear of reality.
Blanche fears light because of the loss she experienced as a teenager; since she has always avoided strong light and stuck to the shadows and darkness of the world. Blanche confesses to Mitch, her suitor, that falling in love with her now dead husband, it “was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that’s how it struck the world for me” (114). Love brought a light to her life that she had never experienced before, however, this light did not last forever, as it rarely does. She fears the light when she discovers that her husband …show more content…
She hides the reality of how old she is by putting up a lantern over the light bulb of Stanley and Stella’s apartment so no one will see the real her. Subsequently, with this darkness she can hide the reality of how old and vulnerable she is. “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!--Don’t turn the light on!” (145). She deceives people to cover the fact that she has lost a husband, lost her entire family besides Stella, lost her reputation, her job, and her family home. It all started from Allan dying, and progressively the entire world around her just got darker and darker. This magic she craves hides the reality in which she is trying to escape from because the reality in which she is pretending to be real is much more
Blanche fears light because of the loss she experienced as a teenager; since she has always avoided strong light and stuck to the shadows and darkness of the world. Blanche confesses to Mitch, her suitor, that falling in love with her now dead husband, it “was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that’s how it struck the world for me” (114). Love brought a light to her life that she had never experienced before, however, this light did not last forever, as it rarely does. She fears the light when she discovers that her husband …show more content…
She hides the reality of how old she is by putting up a lantern over the light bulb of Stanley and Stella’s apartment so no one will see the real her. Subsequently, with this darkness she can hide the reality of how old and vulnerable she is. “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!--Don’t turn the light on!” (145). She deceives people to cover the fact that she has lost a husband, lost her entire family besides Stella, lost her reputation, her job, and her family home. It all started from Allan dying, and progressively the entire world around her just got darker and darker. This magic she craves hides the reality in which she is trying to escape from because the reality in which she is pretending to be real is much more