“A Streetcar Named Desire” is a story of damaged people. Blanche DuBois, a repressed and sexually warped Southern belle, seeks either atonement or reassurance; she wants someone to help lift the burden of her guilt for her twisted sexuality. Meanwhile, Stanley Kowalski, a horrifyingly abusive...
Abuse, Blanche DuBois, Characters in plays, Domestic violence, Drama film characters, Fictional French-Americans, Marlon Brando, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski
Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche is caught between the contradictions of her own character and the society surrounding her. She persistently fights to conceal the truth of her personality and past, failing to comprehend the changing conditions of post-WWII, post-New Deal America. In the...
Blanche DuBois, Electric Light, Incandescent light bulb, Lauren Reed, Lighting, Reality vs Illusion, Sexual Desire, The Old South and the New South, The Play
“A picture is worth a thousand words.” This timeless saying embodies the ability of imagery to convey multiple messages and themes in an overarching structure. Through detailed nuance, the playwright Tennessee Williams utilizes the imagery found in his characters’ actions and settings to surpass the...
The theme of contrast is key to A Streetcar Named Desire as it is so obviously displayed in every aspect of the play. Most importantly, Blanche is in a stark contrast with Stanley – a contrast which ends up being very problematic – and there...
Blanche DuBois, Characters in plays, English-language films, Holger Ernst, Reality vs Illusion, Southern United States, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski, Tennessee Williams
Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire” is a character who will throughout the duration of the play invoke all sorts of contrasting, even opposite emotions. To analyze one’s emotions is no easy task, and to do so most effectively one must break the play into...
In both Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar named Desire and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, there is extensive concern for how masculinity and femininity are portrayed. Both texts present archetypical interpretations of gender as well as juxtaposing figures that undermine these stereotypes, either actively or passively. One such...
Throughout scenes 1 and 2 of A Streetcar Named Desire, playwright Tennessee Williams presents Stanley as extremely powerful and authoritative through the use of dialogue as well as stage directions. The audience immediately learns how strong Stanley is in a physical sense; however, we soon...
The purpose of this paper is to approach film adaptation as a modality of translation and show an analysis of changes occurring in the adaptation of the famous play A Streetcar Named Desire for the big screen. Novels, plays and film have been the most...
An individual’s perception of reality can be impacted by negative events from her past. These events could cause the person to develop an illusion of reality that feels more secure than what is real. However, an imagination of reality can affect a person negatively by...
Patriarchy refers to a social system in which men categorically hold more power than women. They occupy powerful positions in society and their actions and decisions carry more authority than those of women. Patriarchy is embedded in society’s institutions and the ways in which we...
Using the first three scenes of “A Streetcar Named Desire”, it is safe to use certain words to describe Stanley Kowalski: animalistic, dominance-driven, and hotheaded. Stanley has grown up as a city-boy who developed a behavior that would drive most people into the opposite direction....
“Blanche is a victim of the fact that she is a female.” With reference to the dramatic methods used in the play, and relevant controversial information, show to what extent you agree with this statement. The play “A Streetcar Named Desire” written by Tennessee Williams...
Blanche DuBois, Characters in plays, Domestic violence, Drama film characters, English-language films, Female, Femininity and Dependence, Fictional French-Americans, Gender
Class differences lie behind conflict in the play. Through close analysis of the dramatic methods used in the play, and drawing upon relevant external information on social class in the southern states of America, show to what extent you agree with the statement above. Throughout...
Blanche DuBois, Bourgeoisie, Class consciousness, Cultural Conflicts, Marxism, Middle class, Petite bourgeoisie, Proletariat, Social class, Social classes
The endings of A Street Car Named Desire in the movie and in the play by Tennessee Williams are very different. Initially, they both follow the same storyline, which follows Stella’s struggles between choosing Blanche or Stanley. Near the end, Kazan changes the turning point...
Williams and Yates have set their works in the American, post-World War II, conformist society, they illustrate the terrible effects of this society on women through the genre of modern tragedy. A Streetcar Named Desire is set in 1947, in the atypical American setting of...
20th century, Abortion, American Revolutionary War, Conformity, Cultural Conflicts, Female, Femininity and Dependence, Gender, Gender identity, Gender role
The brutality and inescapability of oppression is a dominant theme in literature as it is a key theme presented in A Streetcar Named Desire. Williams calls for the reform of social constructs such as patriarchy in this play and brings to light modes of oppression...
Abuse, Build-up of violence, Crescendo of violence, Domestic violence, Inescapability of oppression, Light modes of oppression, Male dominance, Norm, Oppression, Patriarchy
In both the play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and the novel ‘Mrs Dalloway,’ the protagonists are primarily isolated within society by the consequences of their pasts. While Williams and Woolf use the past to evoke both nostalgia for a better time and regret over the...
A Streetcar Named Desire and Blues for Mister Charlie are both concerned to a large extent with tensions between different ethnic groups and, since in both plays the ethnicity of each group defines its social position, different social groups as well. The two plays are...
Loneliness and isolation are themes explored in various differing ways throughout Tennessee William’s play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (1947) and Colm Toibin’s novel ‘Brooklyn’ (2009), mainly through the way their protagonists are presented and developed. In ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, loneliness is caused...
In Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the nature of theatricality, “magic,” and “realism,” all stem from the tragic character, Blanche DuBois. Blanche is both a theatricalizing and self-theatricalizing woman. She lies to herself as well as to others in order to recreate the...
The climax of Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire occurs in “Scene Ten,” when Stanley ultimately rapes Blanche, his sister-in-law. Many audiences and readers have debated whether or not this act was premeditated or done impulsively, as to some the play is laden with evidence...
Tennessee Williams uses a variety of techniques to produce a strong sense of dramatic tension throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, as he mainly focuses on the interactions between characters to create an edgy mood. For example, Williams’ presentation of Blanche suggests she is actually the...
A Streetcar Named Desire is at its surface, an undoubtedly heterosexual play. Allan Grey, its unseen gay character, makes homosexuality a seemingly marginal topic within the play. But a deeper reading of the text suggests the opposite. Tennessee Williams uses heterosexual characters as surrogates to...
Both Webster in ‘The Duchess of Malfi,’ a Jacobean revenge tragedy, and Williams in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ a 20th century modern-domestic tragedy, use entrapment as a pivotal focus for chief dramatic moments. The playwrights especially focus on the physical and psychological entrapment of females...
Any time a play or a novel is adapted into a film portrayal of the text, critics will evaluate the film either in a positive or a negative manner. It is necessary to understand the freedoms a director has, and understand that an adaptation allows...
The tragedy in A Streetcar Named Desire can be interpreted through the medium of not just watching it, but reading it. Williams achieves this through the use of stage directions written in poetic prose, which create imagery with likeness to a novel. Arguably, the most...
Blanche DuBois, Cultural Conflicts, Domestic tragedy, Domestic violence, Drama, Poetics, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski, The Old South and the New South
In Webster’s Jacobean revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi, and Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, written in 1947, both men consider the themes of chastity and the effect chastity has on the main female characters’ reputation within society. Both are widows, but Blanche is desperate...
The postmodernist writers emerged after the Second World War, and their fierce critiques of human nature showed a race that was vile and heinous at best, with Tennessee Williams’s depiction being no different. In his play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams explores the gruesome nature...
Stanley Kowalski stumbles home drunkenly to his upstairs apartment. He sees his pregnant and glowing wife Stella preparing him dinner. Without explanation, he feels an uncontrollable rage of emotions. Stella is confused and frightened. Stanley needs to leave without explanation. This is an everyday encounter...
In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, despite Blanche Dubois’ desire to start fresh in New Orleans, her condescending nature, inability to act appropriately on her desires, and denial of reality all lead to her downfall. Blanche believes that her upper class roots put her...
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