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What is the significance of the two poker games in A Streetcar Named Desire?
Quick answer:
The poker games in A Streetcar Named Desire serve as a device to show how crudely Stanley treats Stella. It also is a device that enables Blanche to meet Mitch. The first poker game is significant because Blanche overhears Mitch telling the others that he is not married. The games are also significant because they give Stanley the chance to influence Mitch's feelings for Blanche by presenting her differently than she presented herself.
The significance of the two poker games in the play is that they both give Stanley an opportunity to influence how Mitch thinks about Blanche. When Stanley tells Mitch,
Get y'r ass off the table, Mitch. Nothing belongs on a poker table but cards, chips and whiskey.
he also presages that he intends to lay his so-called cards on the table and tell all he knows or surmises about Blanche, thus sullying Mitch’s feelings for her. Mitch metaphorically lays his cards on the table during the poker game, telling the other players that he worries about his sick mother and that, moreover, when she dies, he will be all alone. He is not married, as the other men are.
Blanche tries to interject herself into the game, saying that she finds poker “so fascinating.” Her goal seems apparent. She has heard Mitch say that he is single and lonely, and she is interested in getting to know him.
The poker game also serves as a device to show how undignified Stanley’s treatment of his wife is when he slaps her on her thigh in front of the other men. Eventually, Stella shouts to the other men to leave if they have “one spark of decency” so that her family blowup can occur in private.
Stella even says,
When men are drinking and playing poker anything can happen. It's always a powder-keg.
Two aspects come to mind:
1) The aspect of luck, fortune and destiny: One underlying theme of "A Streetcar Named Desire" is that people are sometimes arbitrarily subjected to hardship, such as when Blanche and Stella's family lose their home "Belle Reve." Hand-in-hand with this idea, though, is counter statement that people can take charge of their lives and are not necessarily at the mercy of fate (as Blanche often supposes).
2)The leit motif of deception and appearance versus reality: Blanche puts a lot of emphasis on putting forth a good image and making things seem better than they really are. This is certainly a mechanism of defence, but it keeps her from dealing with her problems. Instead she puts on "a poker face" until she talks more honestly with Mitch in the end.
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