Essay on Streetcar named Desire

‘’A streetcar named desire’’ is a play written by Tennessee Williams about damaged people. Blanche Dubois was a southern belle from Texas but the decay of high class society took her with it. The story is based around her, her sister Stella and Stella’s husband Stanley Kowalski. Dramatic tension is used throughout the whole play to foreshadow the ending. The beginning of the play sets the scene for the actions of lust, desire and madness of all three of the main characters. 

In the opening of the play Williams uses stagecraft to create tension and to foreshadow events to come. In the first stage directions we get a sense what the setting for the play is going to be. The quarter is ‘poor’ but has ‘a raffish charm’. Williams uses colour and texture of the buildings to show how though it is a rough area and buildings are decaying, there is life and vibrancy still left. It is a run-down area yet you can sense that it’s not dead. It is filled with music and the air has a ‘faint redolence of bananas and coffee’ suggesting a mixture of different nationalities and races. It is a lively part of town where life can be hard yet it never gets unbearable with the constant sound of a ‘tinny piano’ played by ‘infatuated fluency of brown fingers’ playing on the back ground.  You can hear multiple songs and melodies coming from bars all around this sparkling quarter, but the main one that you can hear is the ‘blue piano’ playing everywhere. This melody is the sound of life and vitality, it keeps the life of the city going even through the hardships. Williamson grew up in the south when things were changing and he saw the decay of the society that had ruled for years. He was fascinated by the grotesque beauty of it all and he has created the well named ‘Elysian fields’ as the surviving and soon thriving quarter from the ruins of the old south. It’s like a colourful tree growing out an old broken down house. New life coming from the death of another. Williamson also uses background characters to hint at the main themes. You hear salesmen and customers shouting and living their lives. You hear ‘tapping on the shutters’ and shouts of ‘Red Hots!’ and you know that sex is just around the corner. This part of the town is the place where you can come and do what you want and not be judged. Sailors coming to see prostitutes and to have a nice time in bars. You can get a ‘blue moon cocktail’ that will bleach your brain and erase your worries. Sex and alcohol are prominent all around and instead of seeing them as vices they’re the norm. Every one drinks and everyone lusts. The first thing you hear is a supernatural story told by a Negro woman this 

foreshadows the theme of reality and fantasy. This shows the mysterious side of New Orleans and Elysian fields. Also the main characters are influenced by the themes of sex and alcohol. The first that we see of Stanley and Stella, we see that they’re relationship is sex driven while Stanley ‘heaves the package at her.’ It is a brief appearance but it’s enough to show the sexual tension between those two and it’s effective for this tension and lust drive the play where it’s heading. Stella tells Blanche that she ‘nearly goes wild’ when Stanley isn’t around, which suggest that the relationship is very tight and deep. Stella talks about Stanley like something out of this world, she is very infatuated with him and couldn’t live without him, but she does see that she and him are of two different backgrounds calling him ‘a different species’. This foreshadows the choice of Stella’s to go with Stanley instead of Blanche though she does have her doubts about the end. She, just like Blanche, is driven by sex and lust and this leads to her betrayal.

From the start Williamson uses Blanche’s appearance to show how she doesn’t belong. When Blanche is first seen she is described as ‘incongruous to the setting’ because unlike the colourful and vibrant quarter, she is dressed in ‘white’ and ‘pearls’. There is a humour in the contrast of Blanche’s clothing and the surroundings. Blanche look like she is going to a ‘summer tea or cocktail party in the gardens’ while arriving to the vividly run-down part of town where sex and alcohol flow freely on the streets and the seedy side of humanity isn’t particularly hidden. By describing Blanche as a ‘delicate beauty’ that ‘must avoid a strong light’ Williamson sets her as a victim from the beginning. We see her as a weak, ‘moth like’, something fragile that can be swept away by the wind and we can sense that she won’t last long in this area. You need to be tough to be able to live here, it isn’t an easy life and Blanche clearly doesn’t have the strength to survive. She is ‘uncertain’ and ‘weary’, she needs someone else to take care of her but in this time and place you need to be able to stand on your own two feet. You need to know where you’re going in life. There is contrast in Blanche’s character as well. Her appearance is ‘stiff’ and ‘fluffy’ yet she arrived to the city by a ‘streetcar named desire’ which foreshadows her destiny on the play. She too, though doesn’t look like she belongs there, is driven by sex and desire just like everyone else. Just like a streetcar that cannot change its course of direction, Blanche’s actions have rooted her on to those trails that bring her to her demise. She is probably the most suitable person to be arriving at Elysian Fields there is. She is corrupted by her own vices and indulges in them more than it is heathy for her. The only thing that differentiates her from the people of the city, is that she is brought up not to show these sides of herself and she puts on an act for others. In her mind she is supposed to be the woman for a man and to entertain him in exchange for his approval and protection. But just like her appearance shows, she is too weak to put on this act for longer periods of time leaving her the only option of ‘turning the trick’ and numbing herself with alcohol. Blanche uses alcohol to escape reality, when she starts seeing the truth behind her own stories she needs another drink. When arriving to Stella’s home, she is hit by reality of the situation and the world. She is no longer in a fancy manor with servants, but in a two room shabby rented apartment in a ‘weathered’ city. She needs a way to escape this and the only way she knows how is to drink. This is a surviving mechanism, she doesn’t want to drink; she needs to drink. ‘She springs up’ when she notices a bottle of whiskey in a cupboard. She acts sporadically as if her life depended on it, she pours ‘half a tumbler’ for herself and downs it on one go. This suggest that the pure ‘moth’ of a person she looks to be is all an act. This is effective for we see that there must be something in her past that isn’t quite what is seems for a delicate fair lady to be able to drink like a sailor. After this Blanche washes out her class and puts the whiskey back. She doesn’t want anyone to know she has been drinking, this is shown as well when she tells Stella that ‘one is my limit’. It seems though that after she has gotten alcohol in her system she is able to keep on her act of the perfect southern belle again. 

The contrast between Blanche and Stella is a driving force in the play. The sisters portray the old south and the new world. Blanche is a remainder of the decay and destruction of the old southern high class society, where women were meant to be pretty and entertaining and men were providers. Whereas Stella has left all this behind, she ‘mixed her blood’ with the immigrants and is now a part of the new way of life. She has integrated to survive and to keep on going. This is even shown through how the sisters speak. Blanche’s language is very poetic and longwinded, she tells stories and uses a lot of imagery. She is used to having to amuse guests and men with her wits and glamour. This was her only job, this is the only thing she can do well. In contrast Stella’s language is very monosyllabic, one word answers straight to the point. She doesn’t bother with veiling her words and making what she is saying pretty. She says what she needs to and moves on. This shows her nature, Stella gets things done that need to be done and moves on to the next one. She does this to survive. She is stronger than her sister but there is still the same qualities in her. It might be that Stella is afraid that she can’t go on if she stops and thinks of what’s happening. She’d rather run away from her problems and deny them than come face to face with them, she is too afraid that she won’t be able to handle them. This is very prominent in the issue of Belle Reve. Stella left once she noticed that things weren’t going to get better. She left before the final fall happened. Stella wanted to survive and the only way she thought she could was to leave everything behind. This foreshadows the act of leaving Blanche behind in the end of the play, she has already once left everything; she could do it again. Blanche, who wasn’t smart enough to escape in time, was left to take care of the estate.  Someone else might have been able to keep the manor, but Blanche isn’t even strong enough to keep a hold of herself. Even though it was clear that the demise of Belle Reve was a family effort and every Dubois had something to do with it and that Blanche can’t be faulted for it, she also had a fair share in the destruction. But this is the part she won’t admit. She was the one that did everything she could to keep it afloat, Stella left and everyone else died, but she stayed. It is effective to show how in odds the sisters are for it creates tension in the household. A small apartment meant for a newlywed couple waiting for a baby, isn’t a place for the old fashioned older sister that is grasping the values of yesterday for her life. 

Williamson uses the character of Stanley to show the powerful masculinity that was running the world at this time. Williamson himself was an effeminate gay man, so he had almost an outsider’s view of the strong masculinity around him. Stanley is portrayed as the man’s man, a true protector and a strong king of house. He is ‘Animalistic’ and he ‘sizes women up at a glance’. Sex and lust are important to him as well. He takes charge in any situation and won’t back off until he has won. This indicates the future confrontation between Stanley and Blanche. He is strong and ‘crude’ and she is weak and submissive.  From the first time they meet it is clear that this relationship cannot end well. Both of them trying to provoke the other by any means, Blanche by flirting and Stanley with his attitude of not caring for Blanche’s act. Stanley doesn’t care for ‘jasmine perfume’ and doesn’t fall for Blanche’s performance and flirting. He sees Blanche for what she truly is, a desperate lying woman, and wants to reveal this to everyone. He is annoyed by Blanche’s act because he sees it as deceitful and unnecessary. He is straight-laced no nonsense kind of man and it is clear that Blanche in his house is going to make him the antagonist. The end of chapter one shows this well, Stanley knows that Blanche’s husband has died but he still asks about it just to get a reaction out of Blanche.

In conclusion, “A streetcar named Desire” by Tennessee Williams is a play in which a central characters obsessive behaviour shows the reader who the characters really are underneath. Williams effectively shows this through his use of stagecraft and characterisation to create contrast which leads to conflict. The beginning of the play effectively foreshadows the events of the play, setting down a tone of destruction and a slight sympathy for Blanche, since it is clear that she won’t make it out of Elysian Fields in one piece.