Preview

Foreshadowed In A Streetcar Named Desire

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
821 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Foreshadowed In A Streetcar Named Desire
Blanche’s Identity and How It Was Foreshadowed In Blanch’s First Lines Of The Play
In Tennesse Williams’ A Street Car Named Desire, Williams sets up the character of Blanche as soon as she is introduced in the play. Her desire, her heartbreak, her downfall, and her extremely complex past are all foreshadowed in Blanch’s first lines of the play, “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!” (Blanche Du Bois, 6). The street-cars, desire and cemeteries, are symbolic to Blanche’s character, even the town’s name, Elysian Fields, has a symbolic meaning that is essential to the development and foreshadowing of further things to come in the play. The,
…show more content…
Later in the scene, we find out that Blanche had lost hers and Stella’s plantation. There were an abundance of other deaths in the family that Blanche had to deal with and pay for. “Death is expensive!” (22), Blanche says to Stella explaining herself. “That long parade to the Graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, That dreadful way! So big with it,…(scene 1, pg 21)” Blanche obviously couldn’t afford all these funerals on a teaching salary. Stanley implies that Blanche had been prostituting in Laurel at The Flamingo, “The Flamingo is used to all kinds of goings-on. But even the management of the Flamingo was impressed by Dame Blanche!” (120). Ultimately Blanche was trying to restore her life after the copious amounts of deaths that she witnessed. Blanche is convinced she caused her young husbands suicide by telling him “You disgust me…” (115). Blanche claims that her husband, Allan, was the only person she ever loved. After that happened she must have been left with a huge hole inside her and just looking for someone to fill it. Her job was lost because of a 17 year old who, “she’d gotten mixed up with! (Stanley, 122) which gives reason to suggest she was trying to relive the best days of her life. It seems like she is trying to doing the same thing in scene 5 with the young man she encounters who makes her “mouth water.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    In scene four of “ A Streetcar Named Desire” Blanche attempts to convince Stella that she can get out of her situation with Stanley, but Stella insists she is not in anything she wished to get out of. Stella makes it clear that she is happy about her relationship with Stanley through their sexual chemistry by saying “ But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark”. Stella believes that there is nothing wrong and she can’t understand why Blanche is so frantic. Blanche tries to persuade Stella that her situation with Stanley is just desire by arguing, “ What you are talking about is brutal desire- just- Desire!- the name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another…”…

    • 212 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The main character in a drama entitled "Street Car Named Desire", written by Tennessee Williams, is an emotional woman by the name of Blanche, who has many afflictions. The setting of this play is in the state of Louisiana. Blanche has the potential to be a very vigorous woman, if she chooses to tap into that unidentified strength. All her life, she’s managed to face scrutiny from every possible direction. She has been ostracized from her community, lied to throughout her entire marriage, lost her inheritance, battling with alcoholism, and invests her fate and well-being in men. Blanche is a wandering soul, who’s wrapped up in life’s misfortunes, and is commonly misunderstood.…

    • 1154 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Critics have praised Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire for its characters. Crude, sensual Stanley; dreamy, burned-out Blanche; bashful, meek Mitch. That being said, the successful portrayal of these characters is the mark of an excellent Streetcar performance. According to many readers, the stunning characterization is what makes A Streetcar Named Desire so compelling and legendary. Yet I would like to disagree. I think it is the play’s setting that makes the story so fascinating.…

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Everyone wants to live a life they do not have. Some people want to be rich, while others want to travel the world and never work a day in their lives. In order to live the lives they do not have, many people create their own fantasies. Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire depicts Blanche and Stella’s lives as lies, while revealing how they do not wish to face their own realities, for they will never to able to live the life they have always hoped for.…

    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sexual desires are a common interest several people tend to have and Blanche Dubois significantly portray and represents the theme of sexual intimacy in A Street Car Named Desire as Tennessee Williams uses allegory, allusion, symbolism, and foreshadow in order to demonstrate how do Blanche’s “trip” through several street cars correspond to the theme of sexual intensions. Each of the “street-car” or form of transportation Blanche rode in have a distinguishing name for each which provides a metaphorical ideology for the trains. Blanche riding in the “Desire” streetcar refers to the theme of sexual aspirations throughout the story which Blanche rides, as she “desires” it. Meanwhile, transferring to the next train “Cemeteries”, foreshadows her upcoming death or misfortune due to Blanche’s initial decision in search of “desire”. Additionally, Blanche concludes her experience of riding several streetcars with “get off at – Elysian Fields”. According to research, “Elysian Fields” is meant to represent the land of the dead according to Greek Mythology therefore utilizing allusion against Blanche Dubois for her initial lustful sexual desires by selecting the “Desire” train, potentially foreshadowing to an unfortunate outcome of her ending up in “Elysian Fields”, the land of the dead. Tennessee Williams uses allegory by illustrating Blanche Dubois’ chronological selection of streetcars from “Desire” to “Cemetery” and eventually “getting off” at “Elysian Fields”, the land of the dead according to Greek Mythology. This allegorical transportation of events portrays Blanche’s poor decision making by initially selecting the “Desire” train, a metaphorical reference to her intimate sexual desires and eventually transitioning to the “Cemetery” streetcar foreshadowing the disastrous outcomes…

    • 1116 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “A Street Car Named Desire” has many symbols in it, but the one that is most relevant is the streetcar. The streetcars are foreshadowing Blanches’ life. “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks then get off at- Elysian Field.” (Williams…

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Tennessee Williams’s Blanche is the epitome of the bygone era of a southern belle; she embodies the classical social inequalities. As her social and cultural stances deeply diminish she develops a fear of fleeting beauty and old age. Williams conveys this idea of vanity, fear of death and old age throughout the play. In scene 5 the use of the Young man is in essence part of Williams’s exposition, he uses the Young Man to foreshadow Blanche’s fatal flaw and expose the importance of age in A Streetcar Named Desire. Elia Kazan’s adaptation of Williams’s play reflects this quintessential theme as he adopts Williams’s dialogue in Scene 5 accurately. Kazan’s film adaptation of Scene 5 is more or less true to Williams’s play as he encompasses the main themes evoked that of beauty, vanity and old age through the precise dialogue and the sequence of events. Nevertheless the similarities found in the adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire remain superficial, Kazan’s interpretation of Williams’s stage directions in regard to the Young man are poles apart. Although the original and its film adaptation aim to foreshadow Blanche’s denouement and portray the fear of vanishing beauty…

    • 1674 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    When the play begins, Blanche is already a fallen woman in society’s eyes. Her family fortune and estate are gone, she lost her young husband to suicide years earlier, and she is a social pariah due to her indiscrete sexual behavior. She also has a bad drinking problem, which she covers up poorly. Behind her veneer of social snobbery and sexual propriety, Blanche is an insecure, dislocated individual. She is an aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty. Her manner is dainty and frail, and she sports a wardrobe of showy but cheap evening clothes. Stanley quickly sees through Blanche’s act and seeks out information about her past. The notion of death is apparent through Blanches maiden name, Grey, which suggests bleakness and unhappiness. Indeed we are introduced to the fact that behind…

    • 1679 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thesis: In the play A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams ultimately portrays the struggles of a woman in the 1920s. Through the demonstration of the main character, Blanche, we depict the struggles between alcoholism, the conflicts in social classes and the indifferences in sexuality.…

    • 475 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The quote “Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength....” By, Henry Ward Beecher is a quote to agree with. This is because, if an individual uses all their strength, and puts it into something and tries their hardest to do the best that they can do, then thats greatness because that individual put all they had into something. All that matters is how that strength and power is used by the individual. Two works of literature that support this quote are “A Street Car Named Desire” By, Tennessee Williams and “Macbeth.” By, William Shakespeare. In the play write “A Street Car Named Desire” there are many examples of greatness and power in characters in which they weren't strong but they knew how to use the power and strength that they had and others didn’t know how to use their strength and power.…

    • 619 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    An illusion is something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality. In Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire, characters such as Blanche Dubois, Harold Mitchell (Mitch), and Stella Kowalski often use illusion in an attempt to escape reality. Blanche Dubois is a woman who uses fantasy in order to protect herself from her own fears and the undesirable circumstances which occur in her life. Mitch uses illusion by regarding Blanche as the perfect woman in order to escape her lies and false reality. Stella uses illusion to make it seem as though she has a happy marriage in order to make her life and the abuse from Stanley bearable.…

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Symbolism is an important literary device used to give the reader an understanding of a character. Tennessee Williams, with the use of symbolism, brings his character’s alive in his play, A Streetcar name desire. In the story the reader follows a young southern woman by the name of Blanche Dubois as she moves to New Orleans to live with her sister, Stella, and her brother-in-law, Stanley. From there the reader slowly sees the Blanche’s descent into madness as she begins to lose her grip on reality. In the play Blanche is characterized using symbols like, bathing, light, and music.…

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    She would later get run out of her home in Laurel after she became the disgrace of the town, town slut, and she loses her job after she attempts to have intimate relationships with her students. These two events leave her homeless and without a job, so in order to survive she decides to call on her younger sister, Stella, who is living in New Orleans with a war veteran. She believes that if she was to go and live with Stella, both Stella and Stanley would be happy to provide for her as she lives out the rest of her fantasies and possible finds herself a new man. She succeeds in finding a new man, Mitch, however, he later calls her a dirty slut that is not clean enough to bring into the house with his mother. Basically, Blanche got caught in her web of lies after she began attacking Stanley`s authority and out of spite he tipped of Mitch about Blanche`s true self and the Mitch dumps Blanche. This triggers an emotional breakdown, in which Blanches false hopes begin to come crashing down around her and in the end, Stanley decide to exert his dominance over her, which causes for Blanche to completely fall apart at the seams. Blanche is so emotionally distraught about what had happened to her that she gets sent away to a mental asylum so that she would finally be able to get the help she needed or at least live out her illusions away from everyone…

    • 1372 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    To what extent do the Kowalskis and the DuBois represent a clash of cultures in “A Streetcar Named Desire”?…

    • 636 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    a gothic short story

    • 1759 Words
    • 8 Pages

    At the beginning of the play, Blanche is already in a nervous breakdown as she was drinking wine that she found in Stella’s house. She was using it to calm her nerves. When Stanley came home from his bowling game, he had a conversation with her. At the end of the scene, he asks her about her husband. She started to break apart as she says “The boy – the boy died; [She sinks back down] I’m afraid I‘m - going to be sick! [Her head falls on her arms],” (p. 31). This represents that her husband’s death has resulted her to go into a depression. She is unstable whenever she is reminded of her husband. She had some memories with her husband that she cannot forget causing her to be really sad. It is later revealed in the play that her husband was with another man. He killed himself due her revulsion towards him. She states “by coming suddenly into a room that I thought was empty – which wasn’t empty, but had two people in it...the boy I had married and an older man who had been friends for years...” (p. 95) and “I’d suddenly - said I saw you disgust me...” (p. 96). She loved her husband but he was…

    • 1759 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays