A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams uses Blanche's fascination with teenage boys as a way to characterize her. It makes her seem somewhat decadent, a relic of the Old South. Her perversity leads to her decline and...

Blanche DuBois is depicted as a rather complex character in Tennessee Williams's classic play A Streetcar Named Desire. She is certainly not an innocent woman, but it would be considered harsh and...

I skimmed through Streetcar and couldn't find anything about which cigarettes Stanley and Stella liked to smoke. I also couldn't find anything about Stanley disliking Lucky Strike cigarettes. I...

Remember that a play is really meant to be seen and heard rather than read. The stage directions set the mood for each scene, as in the opening one at Stanley and Stella's ghetto apartment. In a...

An anachronism is defined as "something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time, especially a thing or person that belongs to an earlier time." Belle Reve, the...

The play's title is appropriate for a number of reasons. A street car is an urban machine, existing only in cities; this is very much an urban play, depending on close contact and crowding to put...

There's so much loneliness in A Streetcar Named Desire, yet no one ever seems to find a remedy for it. Blanche certainly doesn't. She's the loneliest character in the whole play, not least because...

Escapism as a means of coping with the disappointments or hardships of reality has long been the occupation of many a person throughout all time. Certainly, the title of Williams's play indicates...

The dynamic of "A Streetcar Named Desire" is actually very simple. Two people are fighting over control of a third. In this case it is Stanley and Blanche who are fighting over Stella. Blanche is...

In A Streetcar Named Desire, women are portrayed as victims by simply existing within their time period. The women of the play operate in a world that is not only openly hostile toward their well...

The term "American Dream" was coined by James Truslow Adams (October 18, 1878, to May 18, 1949), an American journalist, in his 1931 book The Epic of America in which he stated: The American Dream...

If "fate" can be defined as external conditions outside the control of the individual, I think that there is much out in the world that conspires to ensure that Blanche finds difficulty in being...

I think that we have to start off with a premise that Blanche is not operating " on a full tank of gas." I think it might be a bit on the crude side, but it gets the point across. There are so...

The title of Tennessee Williams's play A Streetcar Named Desire is taken from a quote spoken at the beginning of the play where Blanche says the following words to a woman on the street in Scene...

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir felt that the idea of womanhood is unnatural, something imposed upon women by the patriarchy. Women are told they are inferior to men mentally and physically....

In the play "A Streetcar Named Desire" Blanche ends up being institutionalized in a mental ward. Many things lead to her final breakdown. Perhaps the most prominent thing which led to her breakdown...

There are a number of reasons. For one thing, their respective characters and personalities really couldn't be more different. Blanche sees herself as a traditional Southern belle—elegant, refined,...

In Tennessee William's play A Streetcar Named Desire the character of Blanche Dubois, a Southern belle of sophisticated tastes and mannerisms and formerly rich woman, enters the household of her...

Blanche is a romanticist. This is due to a number of influences. She was raised like a Southern belle in a typical Southern mansion called Belle Reve (which means beautiful dream). Girls of that...

No, according to the classic definition, mainly because the main characters are not of high rank and therefore cannot “fall from a high place.” The correct term might be “melodrama,” if you...

After Blanche rocks up at the apartment she shares with Stanley, Stella is anxious that her sister and her husband get along. Stella loves both Stanley and Blanche, and so it would naturally make...

This question as to which is the best tragedy is quite a subjective one. However, I'll argue for A Streetcar Named Desire. Streetcar differs from Oedipus and Julius Caesar in that the heroine is...

It is interesting to note in the beginning of Scene One when Blanche DuBois first steps off the streetcar, the stage directions describe her as "daintily dressed" and having "a delicate beauty"...

In scene six, of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Mitch and Blanche are returning from an amusement park close to Lake Pontchartrain. The scene directions state that Blanche is...

The biggest desire in the play is Blanche's. She desires more than anything else to be accepted, find a place in the world, be loved, be cherished, and be cared for. Yet she is destined never to...

It would be simplistic to state that class conflict is the main problem between Blanche and Stanley, but there is an element of truth in this. Stanley is a working-class man who has "married up"...

Given the violence and tragedy of A Streetcar named Desire I tend to disagree with the assumption that there is much "comedy" in it. However, readers and audiences, from our perspective nearly 70...

I don't know a whole lot about French, but isn't it possible that the feminine form of the adjective is used because the name is not referring to a dream but to a house or a plantation? Both maison...

Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi possess one major theme in common: sin. In Streetcar, sin is evident in two of the main characters, Blanche and...

A significant symbol is contained within the play's title. According to Tennessee Williams, the streetcar is "the ideal metaphor for the human condition." The specific streetcar line that is...

Structuralist criticism is one of many different critical approaches that can be useful in analyzing Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire. As the word “structuralist” suggests,...

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski as polar opposites in many regards. However, both characters are disappointed with the current state of...

Imagination plays a rather large role in Tennessee Williams' play "A Streetcar Named Desire." Perhaps the most poignant part where imagination is apparent is through the character of Blanche....

In her final monologue, Blanche imagines herself dying at sea after eating an unwashed grape. The situation seems to be one of relative opulence, on a yacht or a luxurious ocean liner, where the...

Realism was a literary period which came about in the mid-nineteenth century. Realism depicted life as it really was, using common settings and characters. Not completely happy with the genre of...

As your assignment sheet suggests that you will need to write an outline as your first step, this response will address how you might structure your outline and essay. Introduction: You might argue...

Blanche is her own worst enemy. It is true that she had situations in life which left her to face desperate circumstances, to which she elected each of the outcomes. When she found her husband in...

I think that Williams' drama has much in it that relates to the modern setting. In many of the topics raised in the drama, Williams was ahead of his time for they are issues that we see in society...

I am not sure if logic is the best descriptor of what Stanley does to Blanche. As far as the development of the plot and the intricacies of character development, it is an almost inevitable...

In reality, the character of Stanley basically goes from bad, to worse, to worst. His development in the play resembles that of a storm: the atmosphere changes at first, then the wind begins to...

Blanche somewhat unwisely shows a general disdain for Stanley from the moment they meet. As a working-class man, Stanley is "beneath" her, with her ideas, real or imagined, about her gentrified...

The music gives not only atmosphere, but takes you back in time to the lives of the characters, particularly Blanche's. “Polka music sounds, in a minor key, faint with distance.” This is the The...

Stella's and Stanley's shabby apartment in a New Orleans ghetto falls very short of Blanche's expectations. In fact, she is appalled that her sister could ever accept such living conditions, and...

When Stanley is having a confrontation with Blanche while Stella is at the hospital delivering her baby, the story of his cousin functions as evidence of Stanley's animal, bestial nature. Stanley...

The opening stage directions of Streetcar Named Desire tell us that the playwright intends his play to be read as well as acted. It begins with a poetic epigraph from Hart Crane, which would be a...

One of the most tragic characters in American Drama finds her home in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Blanche Dubois comes to New Orleans to live with her younger sister and finds...

If Mitch flutters around Blanche much as a moth to the light, he knows inasmuch that he might "get his wings burned." Later in the story, Stanley even threatens Blanche to tell Mitch about the...

In Tennessee Williams "A Streetcar Named Desire," the major conflicts of the play revolve around Stanley Kowalski. First, he is displeased that Blanche DuBois, sister of Stella, has come uninvited...

I think that it is very difficult to divorce the autobiographical elements from Williams's work. This becomes especially valid in A Streetcar Named Desire. There are two specific quotes from...

The most important example of nostalgia in the play is Belle Reve, the Mississippi plantation on which Blanche and Stella grew up. Blanche later reveals to her sister that the property has been...