Friday, April 20, 2007

◆`Themes


Theme 1 The inability of people to accept the truth. Blanche lives in a cocoon of unreality to protect herself against her weaknesses and shortcomings. including her inability to repress untoward sexual desire. To preserve her ego, she lies about her promiscuous behavior in Laurel; she shuns bright light, lest it reveal her physical imperfections; and she refuses to acknowledge her problem with alcohol. Stanley effectively penetrates her cocoon verbally with his crude insults and physically with his sexual coup de main near the end of the play. Stanley has his own problem: he lacks the insight to see what he really is–a coarse, domineering macho man ruled by primal instincts. Unlike Blanche, though, he is happy in his ignorance. For her part, Stella accepts the truth–partly. She acknowledges that Stanley is crude and that her apartment is cramped and shabby. But, in the end, she refuses to accept the truth about her sister’s past and about Stanley’s violation of Blanche.


Theme 2 The final destruction of the Old South, symbolized by Blanche and Belle Reve.This theme–not unlike that in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind–begins to unfold in the opening scene of the play. Two women, one white and one black, sit as equals on the steps of an apartment building while Blanche arrives on scene accoutered in the attitude and finery of a southern belle of yesteryear. She is an alien, a strange creature from another time, another place.


Theme 3 The despoliation of the sensitive and feminine by the feral and masculine. Blanche and her first husband, a homosexual, cannot survive in the world of Stanley and his kind. Stanley is a robust weed who grows in Blanche’s carefully cultivated garden of lilies.


Theme 4 Unbridled sexual desire lead to isolating darkness and eventually death. Williams establishes this theme at the beginning of the play, when Blanche takes a streetcar named Desire (sex), transfers to one named Cemeteries (Death), and gets off at a street named Elysian Fields (the Afterlife). He maintains the theme during the play with references to Blanche’s first husband, a homosexual who committed suicide after she caught him with another man, and with Blanche’s literal and figurative retreat into the shadows after having many sordid affairs. She shuns bright lights; she dates Mitch only in the evening.

※Climax

The climax of a play or another literary work, such as a short story or a novel, can be defined as (1) the turning point at which the conflict begins to resolve itself for better or worse, or as (2) the final and most exciting event in a series of events. The climax of A Streetcar Named Desire occurs, according to both definitions, when Stanley rapes Blanche. This brutal act marks the completion of her mental deterioration, pushing her over the edge from sanity to madness.

■`Irony and Contrast


Elysian Fields: The street Elysian Fields is not what its name suggests, a paradise, but a shabby thoroughfare in a working-class district of New Orleans. By contrast, a street in Paris with the same name (but in French, Champs-élysées) is a magnificent boulevard. Blanche's attempt to see the world through the eyes of a Parisian is part of the reason for her descent into unreality and insanity.


White and Black: Blanche is wearing white clothing and gloves, as well as pearl earrings, when she arrives in New Orleans to suggest that she has a pristine character. However, she prefers darkness and shadows to mask her physical perfections and, symbolically, her sinful behavior.


Old and new, Fantasy and Reality: Blanche comes from an old fairyland world to live in the real world of a modern metropolis.


Big and Small: In her old world, Blanche lived in a large house; in her new world, she lives in a tiny apartment. The size of the apartment suggests the diminution of Blanche's fortunes–and her sanity. Speech: Blanche quotes poetry and speaks the elegant patois of aristocrats. Stanley speaks the sandpaper language of reality and brutality–coarse, crude, unvarnished.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

♥ Allusions and References ♥

  • Ghoul-haunted ghostland of Weir: This line, spoken by Blanche as she looks out a window, is quoted from Edgar Allan's 1847 poem "Ulalume." The poet is attempting to cope with the loss of his love. Blanche, course, is still coping with the loss of Allen Grey.
  • Napoleonic code: Laws established by Napoleon on which Louisiana based its civil law. Stanley cites this law, telling Blanche it means that what belongs to a wife belongs to a husband. Therefore, Stella as part-owner of Belle Reve was entitled to part of the property. If Blanche mismanaged it or used proceeds from it improperly, then she mismanaged or misused property Stanley owned, under the Napoleonic code.
  • The blind are leading the blind: Blanche speaks this line when Stella leads her away from the poker game. This is a paraphrase of Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 15, Verse 14, which says that if one person leads another blind person, both will fall into a pit.
  • And if God choose, / I shall but love thee better–after–death!" This is an inscription on Mitch's lighter, read by Blanche. The line is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnet 43." The significance is that Blanche still thinks about her deceased husband, Allen.
  • Arabian Nights: Blanche tells the young collector for The Evening Star newspaper that he looks like a young prince "out of the Arabian Nights." She kisses him, then tells him he must go because "I've got to be good–and keep my hands off children." This scene tells the audience that wanton desire still haunts Blanche.
  • My Rosenkavelier: Blanche addresses Mitch this way this way when he brings her a bouquet of roses. Der Rosenkavelier (The Knight of the Roses) is the title of a 1911 opera by German romantic composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949).
  • Pleiades: While surveying the night sky, Blanche says she is "looking for the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters." The Pleiades were seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the ocean nymph Pleione. Their names were Alcyone, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, Sterope, and Taygete. They became a group of stars (constellation). Unlike the Pleiades, Blanche is alone. She has a sister, yes, but it becomes increasingly clear that Stella sides with Stanley against her.
  • Je suis la Dame aux Camellias! Vous êtes–Armand! Blanche speaks this line to Mitch. It is from La Dame aux camélias, a play by Alexandre Dumas the Younger (1824-1895), which he adapted from his 1848 novel of the same name. The line means, "I am the Lady of the Camellias! You are–Armand!" In Dumas's play, the lady is a courtesan (prostitute catering to the nobility) who forsakes Armand. It may well be that Blanche foresees the outcome of her relationship with Mitch. Notice that author Williams uses the English spelling, camellias, rather than the French camélias.
  • Huey Long: Stanley, asserting himself against encroachment on his authority by Stella and Blanche, cites Huey Long (1893-1935) as saying, "Every man is king!" Long, who was elected governor of Louisiana in 1928 and U.S. senator in 1932, took the part of the downtrodden and the dispossessed. Although he enjoyed popularity among the people, he was dictatorial and manipulative. He was assassinated in 1935.
  • Queen of the Nile: Stanley's reference to Blanche that compares her, in response to her pretensions to elegance, to Egypt's Queen Cleopatra.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

○●○Symbols○●○

Streetcar named Desire is Blanche's desire. Although Blanche arrives in New Orleans as a somewhat broken woman, she keeps alive her desire to be with a man and to lead a life as an elegant, respectable woman.
Streetcar named Cemeteries is the old, disgraced Blanche, which she left behind–dead, so to speak–in her hometown of Laurel, Miss., to begin anew in New Orleans. This streetcar can also suggest that life is over for the new Blanche as well, for she is damaged property edging toward madness.
Street named Elysian Fields is the new life Blanche is seeking. In Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields (also called Elysium and the Elysian Plain) made up a paradise reserved for worthy mortals after they died. Because Blanche's old self "died" in Laurel, Miss., she traveled to New Orleans to seek her Elysium.
Belle Reve This is the name of Blanche's family home in Mississippi. It represents the "beautiful dream" (the meaning of Belle Rêve in French) that Blanche seeks but never experiences.
Blanche's white suit is the false purity and innocence with which she masks her carnal desire and cloaks her past.
Blanche's frequent bathing is her attempt to wash away her past life.
Alcohol is another way Blanche washes away bad memories.
Bright light is the penetrating gaze of truth that sees the real Blanche with all of her imperfections. When she greets Stella the first time in the apartment, she says, "And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won't be looked at in this merciless glare!" Blanche avoids bright lights throughout the play.
Blanche: Blanche means white in French, and–in keeping with her name–she wears a white dress and gloves in the opening scene of the play to hide her real self in the purity that white suggests.
Stella: Stella means star or like a star in Latin, although she lives in a shabby apartment building in a lower-class section of New Orleans. It could be argued that she is the star of her husband’s life and the star that led Blanche to New Orleans.
Stanley: Stanley is an Old English name meaning stone field. Thus, it is possible he represents a cemetery for Blanche. Stanislaus was the name of a king of Poland. Clearly, Stanley is the king of his household.
The small Kowalski apartment: The size and plain surroundings of the apartment suggest the size and plainness of the life to which Blanche, who formerly lived in a splendid mansion, must adjust.
Allen Grey: The memory of him symbolizes a gray area of Blanche's life, between the bright light that she avoids and the darkness she seeks. She loved him, but he betrayed her. In New Orleans, she remembers the good and the bad of her relationship with him.
Paper: Imagery centering on paper represents impermanence, unreality, or artificiality. For example, the paper legal documents Blanche brings with her to New Orleans attest to the loss of the family homestead, Belle Reve. The youth collecting for the local paper, The Evening Star, represents the ephemerality of sexual gratification. Apparently, he reminds her of Allen Grey. On a whim, she suddenly kisses the youth but then dismisses him, mindful of the disgrace she brought upon herself with her liaison with a student. The song Blanche sings while bathing, "Paper Moon," symbolizes the fantasy world of love.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

*.Analysis of Major Characters.*

Blanche DuBois


When the play begins, Blanche is already a fallen woman in society’s eyes. Her family fortune and estate are gone, she lost her young husband to suicide years earlier, and she is a social pariah due to her indiscrete sexual behavior. She also has a bad drinking problem, which she covers up poorly. 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. Her manner is dainty and frail, and she sports a wardrobe of showy but cheap evening clothes. Stanley quickly sees through Blanche’s act and seeks out information about her past.
In 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 sexual admiration for her sense of self-esteem, which means that she has often succumbed to passion. By marrying, Blanche hopes to escape poverty and the bad reputation that haunts her. But because the chivalric Southern gentleman savior and caretaker (represented by Shep Huntleigh) she hopes will rescue her is extinct, Blanche is left with no realistic possibility of future happiness. As Blanche sees it, Mitch is her only chance for contentment, even though he is far from her ideal.
Stanley’s relentless persecution of Blanche foils her pursuit of Mitch as well as her attempts to shield herself from the harsh truth of her situation. The play chronicles the subsequent crumbling of Blanche’s self-image and sanity. Stanley himself takes the final stabs at Blanche, destroying the remainder of her sexual and mental esteem by raping her and then committing her to an insane asylum. In the end, Blanche blindly allows herself to be led away by a kind doctor, ignoring her sister’s cries. This final image is the sad culmination of Blanche’s vanity and total dependence upon men for happiness.

Stanley Kowalski





Audience members may well see Stanley as an egalitarian hero at the play’s start. He is loyal to his friends and passionate to his wife. Stanley possesses an animalistic physical vigor that is evident in his love of work, of fighting, and of sex. His family is from Poland, and several times he expresses his outrage at being called “Polack” and other derogatory names. When Blanche calls him a “Polack,” he makes her look old-fashioned and ignorant by asserting that he was born in America, is an American, and can only be called “Polish.” Stanley represents the new, heterogeneous America to which Blanche doesn’t belong, because she is a relic from a defunct social hierarchy. He sees himself as a social leveler, as he tells Stella in Scene Eight.
Stanley’s intense hatred of Blanche is motivated in part by the aristocratic past Blanche represents. He also (rightly) sees her as untrustworthy and does not appreciate the way she attempts to fool him and his friends into thinking she is better than they are. Stanley’s animosity toward Blanche manifests itself in all of his actions toward her—his investigations of her past, his birthday gift to her, his sabotage of her relationship with Mitch.
In the end, Stanley’s down-to-earth character proves harmfully crude and brutish. His chief amusements are gambling, bowling, sex, and drinking, and he lacks ideals and imagination. His disturbing, degenerate nature, first hinted at when he beats his wife, is fully evident after he rapes his sister-in-law. Stanley shows no remorse for his brutal actions. The play ends with an image of Stanley as the ideal family man, comforting his wife as she holds their newborn child. The wrongfulness of this representation, given what we have learned about him in the play, ironically calls into question society’s decision to ostracize Blanche.



Harold “Mitch” Mitchell




Perhaps because he lives with his dying mother, Mitch is noticeably more sensitive than Stanley’s other poker friends. The other men pick on him for being a mama’s boy. Even in his first, brief line in Scene One, Mitch’s gentlemanly behavior stands out. Mitch appears to be a kind, decent human being who, we learn in Scene Six, hopes to marry so that he will have a woman to bring home to his dying mother.
Mitch doesn’t fit the bill of the chivalric hero of whom Blanche dreams. He is clumsy, sweaty, and has unrefined interests like muscle building. Though sensitive, he lacks Blanche’s romantic perspective and spirituality, as well as her understanding of poetry and literature. She toys with his lack of intelligence—for example, when she teases him in French because she knows he won’t understand—duping him into playing along with her self-flattering charades.
Though they come from completely different worlds, Mitch and Blanche are drawn together by their mutual need of companionship and support, and they therefore believe themselves right for one another. They also discover that they have both experienced the death of a loved one. The snare in their relationship is sexual. As part of her prim-and-proper act, Blanche repeatedly rejects Mitch’s physical affections, refusing to sleep with him. Once he discovers the truth about Blanche’s sordid sexual past, Mitch is both angry and embarrassed about the way Blanche has treated him. When he arrives to chastise her, he states that he feels he deserves to have sex with her, even though he no longer respects her enough to think her fit to be his wife.
The difference in Stanley’s and Mitch’s treatment of Blanche at the play’s end underscores Mitch’s fundamental gentlemanliness. Though he desires and makes clear that he wants to sleep with Blanche, Mitch does not rape her and leaves when she cries out. Also, the tears Mitch sheds after Blanche struggles to escape the fate Stanley has arranged for her show that he genuinely cares for her. In fact, Mitch is the only person other than Stella who seems to understand the tragedy of Blanche’s madness.


http://sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/canalysis.html

Monday, April 16, 2007

Plot Summary¨゚゚・




It is just after dusk in New Orleans on an evening early in May after World War II. In front of a shabby apartment building on a street named Elysian Fields, a white and a black woman are sitting on the steps while piano music plays in a nearby tavern. The white woman, Eunice, lives in the building’s upstairs apartment. The black woman lives nearby. Two white men in work clothes–Stanley Kowalski and his friend Mitch, both no more than 30–round the corner.

Stanley and his wife, Stella, about 25, occupy the first-floor apartment. After Stanley shouts for her, she steps out on the landing and he throws her a package of meat. He and Mitch then reverse direction to go bowling at an alley around the corner. Stella decides to follow and watch them.


A moment later, Stella’s sister, Blanche DuBois, rounds the corner with a valise after arriving from Laurel, Mississippi. She checks an address on a slip of paper, then looks in disbelief at the apartment building. Could Stella really live in such a run-down dwelling? Blanche, about 30, is elegantly attractive but somewhat fragile and vulnerable. In her white suit, complemented by pearl earrings and white gloves, she is out of place in this working-class neighborhood. When Eunice asks whether she is lost, Blanche says, “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at–Elysian Fields.” Eunice confirms that Blanche has come to the right street and right address, 632. The black woman goes to the bowling alley to fetch Stella.

After the sisters reunite and exchange pleasantries, Blanche looks for liquor and finds it, and Stella does the pouring because Blanche is shaking. Blanche assures her sister that she is not a drunkard but “just all shaken up and hot and tired and dirty.”

Blanche says she is on leave from her job teaching English at a high school in Laurel. In fact, she was fired for promiscuous behavior with a teenager. Pretentiously aristocratic, Blanche bemoans her sister’s plebeian surroundings. The apartment is run-down and spare, with only a kitchen and a bedroom–separated by a curtain–and a small bathroom. Blanche fishes for compliments about her appearance, asks for another drink, and wonders whether it will be proper for her to stay in such close quarters with Stella’s husband roaming about. Stella tells her that everything will be fine, although she cautions Blanche that Stanley’s friends are common and unrefined.

Blanche then informs Stella that creditors back in Laurel have seized their family homestead, Belle Reve, even though Blanche “fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it.” She scolds Stella for not staying behind in Mississippi to help manage the property.

“You just came home in time for funerals, Stella,” she says.

The upshot is that Stella will never inherit a single cent from her share in the property, because there is no property. After Stanley arrives home and hears the news, he demands evidence of the property loss. He is crude and mouthy, not at all afraid to speak his mind, and suspicious. Blanche allows him to see the appropriate legal documents, which she has brought with her, that confirm the loss. Stanley says he will have a lawyer examine the papers, adding, “You see . . . a man has to take an interest in his wife’s affairs–especially now that she’s going to have a baby.” It is the first time Stella has heard of her sister’s pregnancy, and she congratulates Stella.
Stanley’s friends–Mitch, Steve, and Pablo–arrive for a poker game on the kitchen table. Hours later, at 2:30 in the morning, while the boys are still playing cards, Stella introduces Blanche to Mitch–Harold Mitchell–who works in the spare-parts department at the plant employing Stanley. Blanche seems interested in Mitch. Unmarried, he lives with and watches over his ailing mother. After he asks Stanley to deal him out, he talks with Blanche. She tells him that she’s younger than Stella (although she’s five years older) and that she is in New Orleans to look after Stella–“She hasn’t been well, lately”–even though she is there because she has nowhere else to go. She also says she is an old maid schoolteacher (although she was married once to a homosexual who committed suicide), and that she teaches high school English (although she was forced out of her job for having an affair with a student).

When Blanche plays a radio and dances suggestively, Mitch imitates her movements. Irritated by the noise, Stanley–now full of drink–throws the radio out the window. Stella scolds him and Stanley moves menacingly toward her. She runs. He follows and strikes her. After the other men restrain Stanley, Mitch says, “Poker should not be played in a house with women.” Stella goes upstairs with Blanche to Eunice’s.
After the card game, Stanley enters the hallway and calls upstairs repeatedly for “my baby.” Eventually, Stella comes down and they embrace tenderly on the steps, and Stanley carries her to bed. When Blanche later comes downstairs, she glances in at Stanley and Stella in carnal passion and runs outside. Mitch materializes from around the corner, and he and Blanche have a cigarette, sit down, and talk. Romance blossoms.
The next day, while Stanley is out getting the car greased, Blanche tells Stella that she’s married to a “madman” and urges her to abandon Stanley. Stella, however, shrugs off Stanley’s violent behavior of the night before and assures Blanche that he is really gentle and loving. Blanche says she “trembles” for Stella. A train rumbles by while the sisters continue their conversation in the bedroom. Stanley returns, unheard and unseen by the sisters, and overhears Blanche criticizing him: “He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits. Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one!”
Over the next several months, Stanley and Blanche become mortal enemies, and Stanley dedicates himself to her destruction while she keeps company with Mitch. Opening up to Mitch, she tells him about her deceased husband, Allen Grey, who killed himself after she found out he was a homosexual and told him he disgusted her while they were out dancing a polka called the Varsouviana. Meanwhile, Stanley probes Blanche’s past and gets “the dope” on her from a supply man at his plant who regularly travels through Laurel and stays at the Flamingo Hotel there. He has told Stanley that Blanche carried on affairs with many men while living at the Flamingo, a second-rate hotel, and was evicted because of her promiscuous behavior.
“Did you know,” he says to Stella, “that there was an army camp near Laurel and your sister’s was one of the places called ‘Out-of-Bounds’?”
While Stanley is laying out the dirty details, Blanche is bathing in the bathroom, singing the lyrics of "Paper Moon": "It's only a paper moon, Just as phony as it can be– / But it wouldn't be make-believe If you believe in me."
Stanley also tells Stella that Blanche is not on a “leave of absence” from her teaching job but was “kicked out” of the high school before the end of the spring semester as the result of an affair with a 17-year-old. Stella says she doesn’t believe the stories but admits that Blanche did “cause sorrow” at home and was always “flighty.” While defending her sister, Stella says Blanche suffered a devastating blow when she was young and married to a young man (Allen Grey) who wrote poetry. She worshipped him but found out he was a “degenerate.”
While talking, Stella pokes candles into a cake, saying it is Blanche's birthday and Mitch has been invited. However, Stanley says Mitch won’t be attending. It seems Stanley has tattled on Blanche to Mitch and, Stanley says, Mitch has “wised up.”
“He’s not going to jump in a tank with a school of sharks,” Stanley says.
Later, Stanley gives Blanche a birthday gift: a bus ticket back to Laurel. His behavior upsets Blanche. Suddenly ill, she retreats to the bathroom. While Stella rebukes Stanley for his cruelty, she goes into labor pains, and Stanley takes her to a hospital.
Hours pass. Blanche drinks and packs her clothes. In the giddiness of her drunken state, she dresses in a white evening gown, a pair of silver slippers, and a rhinestone tiara. While she is in the bedroom admiring herself, Stanley returns after stopping at a bar for a few drinks and two quarts of beer. He tells Blanche that Stella is still in labor and that the baby will not come until morning. Stanley removes his shirt and opens a quart of beer, then enters the bedroom to remove pajamas from a bureau drawer. He asks Blanche why she is wearing “those fine feathers.” She fabricates a story, saying she has received a telegram from an old beau, Shep Huntleigh, inviting her on a Caribbean cruise. She says Huntleigh is a millionaire who lives in Dallas, “where gold spouts from the ground.”
“Well, it’s a red-letter night for us both,” Stanley says. “You having an oil-millionaire and me having a baby.”
After Stanley returns to the kitchen, Blanche tells him that Huntleigh respects her and that she, as an intelligent and cultivated woman, has much to offer him. Then she insults Stanley, saying, “I have been foolish–casting my pearls before swine. . . . I’m thinking not only of you but of your friend, Mr. Mitchell [who] came back [and] implored my forgiveness.” But, she says, she bid farewell to him.
Stanley asks, “Was this before or after the telegram came from the Texas oil millionaire?”
“What telegram?”

Her response gives her away. Stanley says was she lying not only about the Caribbean cruise but also about Mitch’s return visit because “I know where he is.” Then he says, “Take a look at yourself in that worn-out Mardi Gras outfit, rented for fifty cents from some rag-picker. And with that crazy crown on! What queen do you think you are?” He answers his own question, saying, “The queen of the Nile! Sitting on your throne and swilling down my liquor!”
Stanley reenters the bedroom and goes into the bathroom. Frightened, Blanche picks up the phone receiver and requests the number of “Shep Huntleigh of Dallas,” who she says is so well known that she need not provide the operator an address. Moments later, she cancels the call and asks for Western Union to send a message that she is in “desperate circumstances.” Stanley emerges from the bathroom in his pajamas. He leers at her. She smashes the top of a bottle and threatens him with the jagged edge. He subdues and rapes her.
Weeks later, Stella packs Blanche’s belongings while Stanley plays poker with Mitch, Steve, and Pablo. Eunice comes down and asks about Blanche, who is bathing. Blanche is now deeply disturbed–in fact, insane. Stella answers that she told Blanche arrangements were made for her to rest in the country. Stella also says, “I couldn’t believe her story [about the rape] and go on living with Stanley.”
When a doctor and a matron (nurse) arrive for Blanche, Blanche struggles against them. Stella says, “Oh, God, what have I done to my sister?” Stanley soothes Stella as the doctor and matron take custody of Blanche for treatment in an institution. The poker game continues as Steve says, “This game is seven-card stud.”