Preview

The Great Gatsby the Jazz Age

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2376 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Great Gatsby the Jazz Age
A Streetcar Named Desire : Analysis

From the beginning, the three main characters of Streetcar are in a state of tension.
Williams establishes that the apartment is small and confining, the weather is hot and oppressive, and the characters have good reason to come into conflict. The South, old and new, is an important theme of the play. Blanche and her sister come from a dying world. The life and pretensions of their world are becoming a thing of memory: to drive home the point, the family mansion is called "Belle Reve," or Beautiful Dream. The old life may have been something beautiful, but it is gone forever. Yet Blanche clings to pretensions of aristocracy. She is now as poor as Stanley and Stella, but she cannot help but look down on the humble Kowalski apartment. Stanley tells her that she'll probably see him as
"the unrefined type." The differences between them, however, are more complex and volatile than a matter of refinement.
Desire is central to the play. Blanche is unable to come to terms with the force of her own desire. She is clearly repelled and fascinated by Stanley at the same time. And though she stayed behind and took care of the family while Stella ran off to find a new life, Blanche is both angry and jealous of Stella's choice: she seems a bit fixated on the idea of Stella sleeping with her "Polack." Stella has chosen a life built around her powerful sexual relationship with
Stanley. Blanche is both repulsed by and jealous of the choice. .
The play is haunted by mortality. Desire and death and loneliness are played off against each other again and again. The setting is one of decay; the dying Old South and the dying DuBois family make for a macabre and unsettling background. Blanche's first monologue is a rather graphic description of tending to the terminally ill. There is also the specter of Blanche's husband, who died when they were both very young; indeed, Blanch still refers to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In the commencement of the play, Blanche is quickly described as a damsel in distress. She is portrayed as a wealthy woman “in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earing of pearl, white gloves and hat…” (5). She resembles an embellished white moth. The fact that she is forced to live with her younger sister Stella and her domineering husband truly shows that Blanche is in a truly desperate situation. Her overall character is depicted as a traumatized woman that is in complete desolation. Experiences such as witnessing her family on a “...Long parade to the graveyard” (21). Being forced to live with your family until their tragic demise would emotionally and mentally torment anyone. She lives inside of her own world in which she…

    • 190 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    - 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. the Kowalski household, Blanche pretends to be a woman who has never known indignity. Her false propriety is not simply snobbery, however; it constitutes a calculated attempt to make herself appear attractive to new male suitors. Blanche depends on male…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Blanche’s fall from grace would not have been as devastating if she had grown up anywhere but the traditional, family-oriented, socially cruel South. And surely strong, confident Stella would not have stuck with the crude, abusive Stanley had she lived elsewhere, somewhere far away from the dirt and commotion of New Orleans in the forties that obscured the chaos and brutality occurring behind its closed doors. But the women are Blanche DuBois and Stella Kowalski, not the Bennet sisters. As the Old South began to die, they looked for salvation in different directions, both ultimately ending in tragedy. That place, that time, was just not hospitable to the women. So Stella became submissive, the archetype that would soon pervade 1950s Americana, the woman that exists to serve her man, who exists to serve himself. And Blanche became an anachronism, a “woman out of time”, literally and figuratively. Her flourishing springtime had long past. And that hot, horrible summer in New Orleans ushered in the fast-approaching fall of regrets and broken dreams, the autumn that doomed Blanche to a mental…

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the play, Blanche is living a lie and existing in a fantasy. Blanche DuBois, who is lost and confused, lies to herself through the entire play. At the beginning, Blanche lies to her sister, Stella, about taking a break from her school teaching job, when in reality, she has…

    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The main characters in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ are Blanche, Stanley and Stella. Blanche is from old world America. She moves to New Orleans with her sister Stella and her husband Stanley after she goes through a bad time in her life and losses her job along with her family house. Blanche has power over her sister, and she abuses this power. This is first demonstrated when Blanche asks her sister to get her a drink from the drug store and she does so ‘Blanche- Honey, do me a favour. Run to the drug-store and get me a lemon-coke with plenty of chipped ice in it! – Will you do that for me, Sweetie?’ This demonstrates the power of fear which Stella feels. She believes that if she does not comply with her sisters ‘orders’ then she will have a more stressful and difficult life so she obeys.…

    • 1013 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    From the early stages of the play it is clear that Blanche and Stanley are polar opposites in terms of their personality, upbringing, and social outlooks. Stanley interprets Blanche to be a threat to his wife and home, although she sees herself as the protectionist and sees Stanley as an “ape” who has dragged her dear sister down into squalid living conditions. At the time the play was written, the notion of a Southern Bells had faded, and the Old American South had lost allot of its old grandeur through the war and was not only reeling from it but also having to deal with a wave of civil rights campaigners. The world has moved on around it, including mass European immigration that catalysed a new era for America. The immigration levels peaked in 1907 when well over a million people entered the country. The characters of Blanche and Stanley not only are significant in terms of the plot but also display a microcosm between the clash of the old and new America.…

    • 1679 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dubois shows a mixed array of actions that confuses the audience into whether she is to be sympathized or not. At the beginning of the play, the author Tennessee Williams shows us the arrogant and demanding side of Blanche, provoking the audience to dislike her, but as the play goes on, Williams gradually reveals more about Blanche’s troublesome past, making the audience sympathize her more. Blanche arrives at the Kowalski household— Elysian Fields, dressed fancily. “She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and ear-rings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district.”…

    • 583 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    v. When Blanche first arrives at Stella’s house she is shocked to see the conditions that Stella is living in considering she comes from a very wealthy background.…

    • 475 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Stella has a fight, mid-way into the story, with Stanley and even though it ends forgiveness, it really shows how unstable that the relationship is. What is funny about Stanley’s anger and Stella’s reactions is the fact that they are mirrored by their neighbors. Stanley struck Stella and Stella fled to safety. Steve struck Eunice, and she escaped. In the end of both of the fights, the women also forgave their husbands.…

    • 1285 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Research Paper

    • 1228 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Stella and Blanche come from a world that is rapidly dying. Belle Reve, their family's ancestral plantation, has been lost, and the two sisters…

    • 1228 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Blanche Vs Stanley

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Blanche, waiting in the bedroom to be taken away, has succumbed in mind and body to Stanley’s brutality” (Brooks 179). Blanche and Stanley are constantly trying to receive approval and affection from Stella. It is confirmed in the final poker scene that Stella betrays Blanche. Once Stella realizes that Blanche is accusing Stanley of rape, “I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley” (Williams 165). Stella is forced to choose between her sister or husband. Blanche’s lifestyle and behavior does not compete between the traditional gender roles establish during this time period. Therefore, Blanche is taken away and Mitch and Stella betray Blanche in her time of what she believes was going to be a time to rebuild her life and reputation. Blanche is taken away while Stanley continues to play poker, “This game is seven-card stud” (Williams 179) symbolizing that life goes on and Stanley is still…

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stanley Kowalski struggles to cope with Stella's background as she seems to appear somehow “superior” to him because of her past and where she comes from. He believes he has finally managed to bring Stella into his world when Blanche storms into their lives and tries to win Stella over. This initiates a tug of war between Stanley and Blanche.…

    • 636 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    that 'the best I could do was make my own living, Blanche', Williams invites his audience to…

    • 1521 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche refuses to accept reality and tries to resuscitate her idealized past through memory. She allows desire to conduct the way she lives and as a matter of fact is ultimately destroyed by the pursuit of her sexual desires. The correlation between death and desire is a prominent aspect that Williams explores in A Streetcar Named Desire. Throughout the play, death and desire are frequently and consistently entwined on many levels, particularly in the connotation of sexual desire inevitably leading to death or extreme wreckage of some kind and vice versa.…

    • 1196 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stella leaves her plantation, with the knowledge that “The best [she] could was to make [her] own living.” And so Stella left the safety of her farm in order to make herself feel important and worthy of grandeur. Stella then marries herself to Stanley, someone to tell her he loves her and put her up on a pedestal. He refers to her as “[his] baby doll,” and showers her with compliments. Stanley makes Stella feel wanted. When Stanley acts…

    • 403 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays