Analysis on The Conclusion of Tennessee Williams’s Book, a Streetcar Named Desire Vs The Film Adaptation

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 from what Tennessee Williams wrote. The impact of the different endings dramatically changes the reactions from the audience.

In the play, Eunice is telling Stella that she cannot believe what Stanley did because her life needs to go on. Stella takes the baby, and she goes back to Stanley, and when the baby stopped crying it is as if life is back to normal. When Blanche is gone they treat their lives no differently than when she was there. In this case, Stanley wins the “poker game,” because he has a better hand than Blanche. Stella cries frantically and it shows how badly she feels about admitting Blanche into an insane asylum. The end of the play says “7 card stud.” This tells the audience that the play has gone back to normal. This ending is very different from the movie because Stella makes a different decision than she does in the book.

In the movie, Stella does not go back to her normal life. The book has Eunice giving Stella the baby, but in the movie Eunice does not give Stella the baby and as Blanche is being forced to leave Stella thinks about what Stanley has done. It makes her too sick to even think of Stanley, and she says “Don’t you touch me, don’t ever touch me again.” She relays the amount of hatred she has toward Stanley and it impacts the decision she makes in the end. When Mitch watches Stella being taken away he yells at Stanley and says, “what have you done to her?” and this skepticism was not shown during the play. The movie does not have life going back to normal and although Blanche did not win the poker game, Stanley did lose. Stella goes back inside to Eunice as Stanley continues to call for her. This change is very difficult to comprehend because the result of the play and the movie are opposite. This ending shows the change between who has won the pot: Stanley, Blanche or No One.

As a result of the alternate endings the audience becomes very confused as to why they are so different. If a change had been made earlier in the movie it would not be as drastic as making a change to the ending. This alters the meanings that can be interpreted by the play and movie. The question that many still wonder is why are the endings different if the movie was produced only a couple years after the book? The alternate endings have a negative impact on how people interpret the endings.

Works Cited

1. Williams, T. (1947). A Streetcar Named Desire. New Directions.
2. Kazan, E. (Director). (1951). A Streetcar Named Desire [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.
3. Boulanger, C. (2000). "A Streetcar Named Desire" on Film: The Impact of Elia Kazan. Literature Film Quarterly, 28(3), 234-240.
4. Bloom, H. (Ed.). (2010). Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire. Infobase Publishing.
5. Thompson, M. (1998). Drama after Darwin: Does Tennessee Williams's 'A Streetcar Named Desire' Tell Us Something About Human Nature? Journal of American Studies, 32(2), 195-213.
6. French, P. (2018). The Making of a Masterpiece: Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire. Bloomsbury Publishing.
7. Griffin, A. (2011). Representations of Madness in the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Palgrave Macmillan.
8. Cowan, M. (2003). A Streetcar Named Expire: Tennessee Williams's Psychological Landscapes. The Southern Quarterly, 41(3), 69-81.
9. Mahabir, A. (2001). Menageries and Theatres of Desire: Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire. South Asian Review, 22(2), 173-190.
10. Spoto, D. (2005). The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams. Da Capo Press.