A Street Car Names Desire Essay

A Street Car Named Desire deals with a culture clash amid the Old Souths plantation mentality (priding itself on out of true pretenses) and the New Souths relatively uncivilized, yet real, comprehend on realism. The two characters who come to represent this tension are Blanche and Stanley Kowalski. Blanche advertises herself as a champion of Southern Honor. This entails an unfaltering dedication to virtue and culture. These are not, however, operate factors in her life but only mask her alcoholism and delusions of grandeur.By contrast, Stanley is an industrial worker who acts on habit and structure. Tennessee Williams juxtaposes illusion and human beings by depicting the antagonistic relationship between the two by systemati bawly employing symbolism. Blanche is constantly escaping the realities of life by retreating into her own fabrications. Her plummet into a neurotic world begins when her beloved husband make knowns himself to be gay and, soon after, shoots himself. She go into a spiral of affairs after this event in a search to find emotional satisfaction and to reaffirm her womanhood.She ignores the obvious baneful effect of her intimacies because all she essentials is to be happy again to be loved. Blanche physically escapes the reality of her life by leaving Belle Reve and Laurel to go to her sisters home in New Orleans. Here, she misrepresents who she is and enters another relationship where she recreates her identity. When confronted nigh her lies, Blanche explains that she lies because she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her I dont want realism. I want magic Yes, yes, magic I try to make believe that to people.I misrepresent things to them. I dont tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it (Williams, 34) equivocation to herself and to others allows her to make life appear as she thinks it should be rather than as it is. Her final, deluded happiness (as her sister and Stanl ey commit her to an insane asylum) shows her acceptance that illusion is an seemly reality, but it also shows realitys inevitable triumph. The driving pluck of reality, embodied by Stanley Kowalski, quickly dismantles all the falsities Blanche comes to represent.He is a hard-nosed man firmly grounded in the physical world who disdains fabrications. He finds pith only in the primitive and straightforward Theres something absolute bestial some him He acts like an animal, has animals habits Yes, something ape-like about him (71). An animal would not create an alternate reality for a circumstance but would act according to the real, harshness of life in magnitude to ensure its own survival. Stanleys animal habits can be looked at as an appreciation only for tangible truths. In the end, Stanley succeeds in repudiation all the false images Blanche created about herself.He goes out of his dash to reveal Blanches past and then flaunts it in a crude, insensitive way Take a look at yourself here in a worn-out Mardi Gras outfit, rented for 50 cents from some rag-picker Do you know that Ive been on to you from the start, and not once did you pull the wool over this boys eyes? Ha ha Do you hear me? Ha ha ha (67). Stanley again asserts his bestial tendency, but this time to show his dominance. When he proceeds to physically rape her, he metaphorically strips her of the false reality she created.Williams uses symbolism to show that Blanche is trapped in a life of delusion. The Varsouviana trip the light fantastic and the use of light are reoccurring symbols that elude to her disconnect with reality. The Polka is the euphony that played the night her husband committed suicide. Blanche sound outs that it ends only after she hears the salutary of a gunshot in her head. It plays at various points in the play, symbolise this event that triggered her mental decline. Whenever a situation gets too real, Blanche firmly believes she hears the Varsouviana, panics, and l ooses her grip on reality.Also, throughout the play, Blanche avoids appearing in direct, bright light, especially in front of Mitch And turn that over-light off Turn that off I wint be looked at in this merciless glare(45). It is exonerate she avoids the lights in efforts to conceal the reality of her age and fading beauty. Symbolically, Blanche avoids light in order to prevent Mitch from seeing her for who she is. She, once again, retreats into her own world of illusion. Blanche is never able to be looked at in the light and exposed.She never faces reality. twain Stanley and Blanche have a hard time relating to the other gender without sexual implications. The difference is that Stanley is upfront about this animalistic behavior towards women, while Blanche tries to key fruit herself as above the primitive nature of her sexual impulses. We can call one approach realistic and the other delusional, but it doesnt permute the fact that both characters approach interactions in a s exual way. What does this say about the nature of what is real and what isnt? Williams seems to draw an ambiguous line. This implies that reality and illusions coexist in our lives, and what we choose to label our views and actions is just a social function of perspective.