A Streetcar Named Desire

Belle Reve is the name of the former plantation where Stella and Blanche grew up in faded post-Civil War splendor (or decay, depending on your point of view). It is described as a southern mansion...

Elysian Fields is the name of the street on which Stanley Kowalski lives with Stella. The street runs between the train tracks and the river, and it is in a poor district with what Williams...

The poker games in A Streetcar Named Desire serve dramatic as well as symbolic functions. The first game brings Stanley's male friends into the apartment, allowing Blanche to meet Mitch. The second...

During Scene 9, Mitch confronts Blanche with her deceptions, and she finally tells him the truth about herself. As a backdrop to the scene, a blind Mexican woman selling "gaudy tin flowers that...

Scene 5 is pivotal towards the uncovering of the real Blanche Dubois. Having presented herself at her sister's house wearing her best garments and acting in her utmost polite ways, Blanche is...

At first glance, the title A Streetcar Named Desire refers to the actual trolley that Blanche takes to get to the Kowalski home. It is first mentioned in the opening scene of the play when Blanche...

It would be hard to make a case in today's world (or even at the time the play was written) that it is somehow not an abusive relationship between Stanley and Stella. I would not say that there are...

Light represents reality, the very thing Blanche Dubois dreads most. She says to Mitch right up front, "I don't want realism. I want magic!" Blanche is a romantic who detests ugliness and...

This phrase is a gentile way of suggesting that the "stranger" she is addressing will take care of her, and the unsaid, ambiguous implication is that she will be "grateful" for such care. The...

In Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche arrives at her sister Stella's home via just such a streetcar, both literally and metaphorically. "Desire" refers to Blanche's previous...

In playwright Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, the entrance of Blanche DuBois signifies the end of Stella and Stanley's relationship as they have known it, and Belle Reve, the...

Stella is madly in love with Stanley. She wouldn't consider leaving him. In Scene One she tells Blanche, "I can hardly stand it when he is away for a night . . . " And then, "When he's away for a...

The play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams presents the diverse lives of sisters Blanche Dubois and Stella Kowalski. Blanche and Stella belonged to what was once a very rich and...

Blanche means in this utterance she has seen too much of the brutal realities of life: her husband's suicide over his homosexuality, her own poverty and prostitution, and behind that the fading of...

The old woman in "A Streetcar Named Desire" is walking around selling flowers to mourn the dead. She is a seemingly minor character of little importance, but her presence here is figurative and...

The ironic thing about this passage is that Blanche is, in some key ways, more like Stanley than she realizes. She complains that Stanley is motivated by brutal lust: being very blatant with his...

Many characters experience loneliness in this play, but the one who could be said to be the most lonely- and who acts upon that loneliness- is Blanche DuBois. Blanche spends all of her time in the...

Blanche DuBois is an iconic character because she has created such an engrossing deception about herself, her past, and her present and because of her struggle to continue to maintain this...

In scene two, Stanley is under the impression that Blanche has sold Belle Reve and kept the money to herself, which prompts him to approach her and bring up the "Napoleonic code." In typical...

In A Streetcar Named Desire, light is truth—something that Blanche repeatedly runs from. She is unable to face the truth about herself and her life, so she cloaks herself in shade and darkness....

This is a very good question. Stella's pregnancy may have several functions, such as being a very conspicuous symbol of the exceptionally powerful sexual relationship between her and Stanley and...

The polka music, the Varsouviana, is one of the most important of the play’s many symbols. It represents Blanche’s worsening state of mind in the play. We learn from Scene Six, when Blanche relates...

A Streetcar Named Desire's title operates on many levels. Firstly, it references the name of the streetcar Blanche mentions taking before the play begins. However, the title also works on a...

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams portrays Stella as a woman who loves her husband despite his abusive nature. There are times that the audience hopes that Stella is ready to leave...

It's not so much that Blanche deceives Mitch; it's more that Mitch gets the wrong idea about Blanche. He puts her on a pedestal, believing her to be a fine, upstanding southern lady. He projects...

Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire focuses on an aging Southern belle’s attempt to find a place for herself in her sister’s life. Her encounters with her aggressive brother-in-law...

In the opening scene also shows a poor, blue collar neighborhood and is infused with jazz and blues piano notes that consistently put the audience in the mood of a New Orleans 1940's urban poor...

I will take a bit of a different take on the statement. When Stanley says this to Blanche, it might signify that it was only a matter of time before the former would overtake and subsume the...

There are a couple of quotes by Stanley in scene 10 that suggest that he is going to rape Blanche. He reaches a peak of exasperation with her in this scene over her continual lying and drinking....

Stanley Kowalski's a domestic tyrant, a thuggish autocrat whose word is law in his household. It's not surprising, then, that he should look to the likes of Napoleon and Huey Long as political...

This one is a bit complex. On some level, it is at this point in the drama where the tension between Blanche and Stanley is reaching its zenith. Stanley has been able to assemble what he needs to...

Blanche's fear of the searchlight, as well as any powerful light in general that is stronger than the gentle light of a candle, relates to her fear of being seen as she truly is, which means that...

One of the most important images of the play is the paper lantern that Blanche buys. Blanche "can't stand a naked light bulb" because she is so self-conscious about her aging beauty. She needs the...

I think that the previous post was very well spoken and strong in the analysis featured. I would only echo that the idea of appearance vs. reality is a driving element throughout the play....

Tennessee Williams's play A Streetcar Named Desire falls under different categories, or genres, of drama: family drama, realism, and modern tragedy. "Family Drama" involves conflicts (without...

Soon after the opening of Scene One of A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway in New York City in December 1947, Blanche du Bois enters the stage...

Stanley’s desire is to keep the status quo in his home, which allows him the freedom to express his masculinity. He enjoys his life in his New Orleans tenement, where he lives with his pregnant...

The previous answer set up the historical context for why Stanley would admire the policies of Huey Long. Stanley agrees with the idea that a man should be the master of his own home. Like Long,...

Although we don't discover the true depths of Blanche's mental illness until later, the signs are certainly there early on in the play, as we see from the following words she speaks to Stella: I...

The answer to this question can be found in an early conversation that happens between Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. Stanley actually states that Blanche is a teacher, and then he asks for...

There are multiple internal and external conflicts within "A Streetcar Named Desire". For purpose of ease, I will go through the characters and the conflicts that they face. Blanche DuBois:...

In scene 8 of A Streetcar Named Desire, all of Stanley's annoyances about Blanche and her attitude towards him, as well as, all of the insecurities this seems to bring up, comes to a head. He's...

"Turn the trick" is a double entendre, meaning it has two meanings. The surface meaning is that Blanche realizes she is aging. This makes it more difficult for her to "turn the trick" of presenting...

When Blanche recounts the story of Allan Grey's death, in scene six, she describes him as "a boy, just a boy" who came to her "for help." She says that he was, metaphorically, "in the quicksands...

Blanche is the central character and appears in every scene. The action of the play revolves almost entirely around her. Blanche is a classic Southern Belle, to all appearances genteel and...

In Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the character Blanche comes to live with her sister, Stella, and Stella’s brutish, primitive husband Stanley. Stanley and Stella occupy...

A Streetcar Named Desire does not present a favorable view of the American dream for any of the characters. One walks away from the play feeling as if the American dream is only for men. Even then,...

Another meaning of the name "Blanche" suggests what post#4 discusses: the fading Southern Belle. For, the word blanch means to remove color. Also, it denotes sickness and fear--two symptoms of...

Central to characterization and themes is the use of color by Tennessee Williams in his A Streetcar Named Desire. With intentional irony, Williams has named his main character Blanche DuBois, a...

The most dominant mood in this play is that of tension. There is conflict, whether underlying or overt, in every scene. The tension is created by the presence of Blanche in the Kowalski household....