into the intensity of the scene.

Throughout the play Williams uses external sounds as a kind of commentary on the action of the play, almost in the way a Greek chorus would function. During the initial confrontation between Stanley and Blanche, both the screeching of a cat and music—as throughout the play, a polka—punctuate the statements the two are making. Later, a street vendor's voice cries out, "Red-hot!" in anticipation of the poker night scene in which violence is going to occur. Later, the music on the radio is what causes Stanley to blow up; it symbolizes both Blanche's faded dreams and, ironically, the brutal behavior of Stanley toward her. Later in the scene, after Stanley has beaten up Stella, a low-tone clarinet is heard as she comes back down the stairs and the two reunite, making "low, animal moans."

Later, when Blanche confesses to Mitch the details about her marriage, the sound of a locomotive is heard just as she reveals that she found her husband together with another man. And then the polka music resumes, with the recurrent reference to dancing the "Varsouviana." The music stops, then starts again after she tells Mitch the husband shot himself. Interestingly, in the 1951 movie, the director, Elia Kazan, includes the literal sound of a gunshot at this point, perhaps to make up for the fact that film censorship of the time disallowed the explicit reference to the husband having been gay.

In the final scene between Mitch and Blanche in the play, however, there is the literal sound of a distant revolver shot, and we are told, "Blanche seems relieved," because it makes the recurring polka music, which is a haunting symbol of her lost life with the young man she married, stop. The most disturbing sound, however, is that of the blind Mexican woman selling flowers. Her eerie call, "Flores para los muertos" ("flowers for the dead"), is a signal of Blanche's own spiritual death in being raped by Stanley and driven out of her mind.

The diegetic use of sound in the play A Streetcar Named Desire is an effective technique that infuses music, as well as other auditory effects, in tandem with climactic scenes, or with the internal world of the character whose presence initiates them. It is also successful in creating the atmosphere of the scene, serving as a background that colors it with either sadness, nostalgia, or exhilaration. An additional result of the use of sound is that it gives the scene a form of "personality", for the sounds, or the music, often come from the memories, or from the deep emotions, of a character.

The first example in A Streetcar Named Desire of the use of music as an expressionistic detail is the use jazz background and the street sounds that are required in the stage directions.

[Scene One] Stage direction (the music of the Blue Piano grows louder)

It is the music that takes the audience right into the heart of New Orleans, and it is the use of the street sounds that alerts the audience of Stella's living conditions.

Another example is the use of Varsouviana polka music. It first happens early in the play when Blanche meets Stanley, whose heritage is Polish. We see this motif again during Blanche's conversation with Mitch about her late husband, Allen Grey. During this specific scene the music plays erratically and louder. This happens at the same time as Blanche remembers the night when she found her husband in bed with another man, and then pretending that nothing happened, went with them to dance to that very music. Hours later, her true emotions surfaced, leading her to tell her husband the words that, ultimately, drove the man to shoot himself and commit suicide: "You disgust me."

[Polka music sounds, in a minor key faint with distance]

We danced the Varsouviana! Suddenly, in the middle of the dance the boy I had married broke away from me and ran out of the casino. A few moments later -- a shot!

[The polka stops abruptly. Blanche rises stiffly. Then, the polka resumes in a major key]

The music often comes back to haunt Blanche, particularly, because the only thing that stops the music from playing in her head is the sound of her husband's gunshot as it occurred that night.

Concisely, the combination of sounds and music works for a theatrical piece as effectively as a musical score works for a film: it produces an atmosphere that intensifies the emotion of the characters, or the uniqueness of the scene. In A Streetcar Named Desire the use of sound plays the additional role of shadowing Blanche's emotions and serving as the foundation of a very bad memory. In all, the use is quite effective and serves the purpose that it is meant to serve.

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 Varsouviana, and the music plays each time Blanche is reacting or doing something that is a reflection of the mourning of her husband, or when she retells how he died. Blanche's husband, Allen, died of a self inflicted gunshot after being caught in bed with another man by his wife. When she mentions the gunshot, the music always stops. This is going back in time for her.

Also, the jazz music in the beginning gives the jive and dressed down atmosphere of the place where Blanche is about to make her "majestic" all-in-white entrance.