A Streetcar Named Desire
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In A Streetcar Named Desire, the playwright has crafted a well-designed play in which the characters reflect different altitudes toward dreams and reality, and these characters are differentiated by the degree of illusion they require to function in this world. This clash represents the theme, which is that people often need illusion in order to survive. Stanley Kowalski is the character seen as most realistic, and his directness conflicts with the need for illusion of someone like Blanche DuBois. His friend Mitch is something of a romantic, while Stanley's wife also takes a realistic position to counter her own romantic nature, though in the end, she also accepts an illusion in order not to destroy her marriage. In this world, those who require the most illusion are also the most easily destroyed when reality intrudes, and Blanche is destroyed by Stanley's version of reality. Blanche DuBois envisions herself as a martyr and often complains about the way life has treated her. The loss of her and Stella's childhood home is a key reference point, the beginning of the need for illusion. Blanche's character is revealed by contrast with that of Stanley. A key conflict is seen in the threat Blanche poses to the domestic life of Stanley and Stella. Stanley is a character who is open and direct. From the beginning of the play he is made to seem animal-like. The first line of the play has Stanley yelling up at his wife, "Hey, there! Stella, baby!" (Williams 13), and he t
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t, however, and succeeds where she fails.
Williams shows both Blanche and the audience that the antidote to the kind of insensitive reality of the Stanleys of this world is art. The play itself is presented as a dream, the dream of the playwright, and so it is a dream with an illusion that assuages the pains of reality in a different way than the singular illusions of a Blanche:
The audience at Streetcar enters the theater only to see one of the characters, Blanche, transform the stage into a theater of her own which she attempts to control by decorating the stage, directing the script, and playing the major role . . . When the artistic act remains interior and thus private--merely an illusion or delusion in the mind--it requires only the self to do the imagining, which is possibly a close analogy to a retreat into madness (Adler 85).
Other characters in the play also reflect different attitudes toward illusion. Stanley resents the interest Mitch shows in Blanche, and when the opportunity presents itself, Stanley exposes Blanche to Mitch and ruins her chances with him. He does so because he believes his friend will be harmed by her illusions. For Stanley, illusions are merely lies--not ways of protecting oneself from t
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1472
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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