Name:________________________________________________
Characters:
a. Blanche DuBois
f. Steve g. Pablo
L. Mexican Woman
b. Stella Kowalski
h. Allan Grey
m. Shaw
Streetcar Named Desire Study Guide
c. Stanley Kowalski
i. Shep Huntleigh
n. Kiefaber
d. A Young Collector
e. Eunice
j. A Negro Woman
k. Harold Mitchell
o. Prostitute
p. A Doctor
q. A Nurse
___1. Stanley’s poker buddy who lives upstairs with his wife, Eunice. Like Stanley, he is a brutish, hot-blooded, physically fit
male and an abusive husband.
___2. A supply man who is Stanley’s coworker and his source for stories of Blanche’s disreputable past in Laurel, Mississippi. He
travels regularly through Laurel.
___3. Stella’s older sister, who was a high school English teacher in Laurel, Mississippi, until she was forced to leave her post.
She is a talkative and fragile woman around the age of thirty. After losing Belle Reve, the DuBois family home, she arrives in
New Orleans at the Kowalski apartment and eventually reveals that she is completely destitute. Though she has strong sexual
urges and has had many lovers, she puts on the airs of a woman who has never known indignity. She avoids reality, preferring
to live in her own imagination. As the play progresses, her instability grows along with her misfortune. Stanley sees through this
and finds out the details of her past, destroying her relationship with his friend Mitch. Stanley also destroys what’s left of her
sanity by raping her and then having her committed to an insane asylum.
___4. In Scene One, she is sitting on the steps talking to Eunice when Blanche arrives, and she finds Stanley’s openly sexual
gestures toward Stella hilarious. Later, in Scene Ten, we see her scurrying across the stage in the night as she rifles through a
prostitute’s lost handbag.
___5. Blanche’s younger sister, about twenty-five years old and of a mild disposition that visibly sets her apart from her more
vulgar neighbors. She possesses the same timeworn aristocratic heritage as Blanche, but she jumped the sinking ship in her late
teens and left Mississippi for New Orleans. There, she married lower-class Stanley, with whom she shares a robust sexual
relationship. Her union with Stanley is both animal and spiritual, violent but renewing. After Blanche’s arrival, she is torn
___8. A vendor of Mexican funeral decorations who frightens Blanche by issuing the plaintive call “Flores para los muertos,”
which means “Flowers for the dead.” This scene offers a foreshadowing of Blanche’s ultimate undoing—complete insanity/death
of reality.
___9. Stanley’s army friend, coworker, and poker buddy, who courts Blanche until he finds out that she lied to him about her
sordid past. Like Stanley, he is around thirty years of age. Though he is clumsy, sweaty, and has unrefined interests like muscle
building, he is more sensitive and more gentlemanly than Stanley and his other friends, perhaps because he lives with his
mother, who is slowly dying. He and Blanche are an unlikely match: he doesn’t fit the bill of the chivalric hero, the man Blanche
dreams will come to rescue her. Nevertheless, they bond over their lost loves, and when the doctor takes Blanche away against
her will, he is the only person present besides Stella who despairs over the tragedy.
___10. Stella’s friend, upstairs neighbor, and landlady. She and her husband, Steve, represent the low-class, carnal life that
Stella has chosen for herself. Like Stella, she accepts her husband’s affections despite his physical abuse of her. At the end of
the play, when Stella hesitates to stay with Stanley at Blanche’s expense, she forbids Stella to question her decision and tells
her she has no choice but to disbelieve Blanche.
___11. The young man with poetic aspirations whom Blanche fell in love with and married as a teenager. One afternoon, she
discovered him in bed with an older male friend. That evening at a ball, after she announced her disgust at his homosexuality,
he ran outside and shot himself in the head. His death, which marked the end of Blanche’s sexual innocence, has haunted her
ever since. Long dead by the time of the play’s action, he never appears onstage.
___12. A former suitor of Blanche’s whom she met again a year before her arrival in New Orleans while vacationing in Miami.
Despite the fact that he is married, Blanche hopes he will provide the financial support for her and Stella to escape from
Stanley. As Blanche’s mental stability deteriorates, her fantasy that he is coming to sweep her away becomes more and more
real to her. He never appears onstage.
___13. Stanley’s poker buddy. He is Hispanic, and his friendship with Steve, Stanley, and Mitch emphasizes the culturally
diverse nature of their neighborhood—Elysian Fields.
between her sister and her husband. Eventually, she stands by Stanley, perhaps in part because she gives birth to his child near
the play’s end. While she loves and pities Blanche, she cannot bring herself to believe Blanche’s accusations that Stanley dislikes
___14. A teenager who comes to the Kowalskis’ door to collect for the newspaper when Blanche is home alone. The boy leaves
bewildered after Blanche hits on him and gives him a passionate farewell kiss. He embodies Blanche’s obsession with youth and
Blanche, and she eventually dismisses Blanche’s claim that Stanley raped her. Her denial of reality at the play’s end shows that
she has more in common with her sister than she thinks.
presumably reminds her of her teenage love, the young poet Allan Grey, whom she married and lost to suicide. Blanche’s
flirtation with him also displays her unhealthy sexual preoccupation with teenage boys, which we learn of later in the play.
___6. At the play’s finale, he arrives to whisk Blanche off to an asylum. He and the nurse initially seem to be heartless
institutional caretakers, but, in the end, he appears more kindly as he takes off his jacket and leads Blanche away. This image
___15. Also called the “Matron,” she accompanies the doctor to collect Blanche and bring her to an institution. She possesses a
severe, unfeminine manner and has a talent for subduing hysterical patients.
ironically conforms to Blanche’s notions of the chivalric Southern gentleman who will offer her salvation.
___7. The husband of Stella. and the epitome of vital force. He is loyal to his friends, passionate to his wife, and heartlessly
cruel to Blanche. With his Polish ancestry, he represents the new, heterogeneous America. He sees himself as a social leveler,
and wishes to destroy Blanche’s social pretensions. Around thirty years of age, he, who fought in World War II, now works as
an auto-parts salesman. Practicality is his forte, and he has no patience for Blanche’s distortions of the truth. He lacks ideals and
imagination. By the play’s end, he is a disturbing degenerate: he beats his wife and rapes his sister-in-law. Horrifyingly, he
shows no remorse. Yet, Blanche is an outcast from society, while Stanley is the proud family man.
___16. Moments before Stanley rapes Blanche, the back wall of the Kowalskis’ apartment becomes transparent, and Blanche
sees a streetwalker in the street being pursued by a drunk. Her situation evokes Blanche’s own predicament.
___17. Supply Man for the company Stanley and Mitch work for who verifies the story about Blanche for Mitch’s benefit.
Quotes: Match the quote to the character who said it.
a. Stella
b. Blanche
c. Stanley
d. Mitch
e. Eunice
f. Steve
g. Negro woman
h. Mexican woman
____1. I never listen to you when you're being morbid.
____2. Is there something wrong with me?
____3. She knew she was dying when she give me this. A very strange girl, very sweet—very!
____4. Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable, and the one thing of which I have never,ever been guilty of
___ 29. I am not a Pollack. People from Poland are Poles. They are not Pollacks. But what I am is one hundred percent
American. I'm born and raised in the greatest country on this earth and I'm proud of it. And don't you ever call me a
Pollack.
___ 30. Listen, baby, when we first met - you and me - you thought I was common. Well, how right you was. I was common as
dirt. You showed me a snapshot of the place with them columns, and I pulled you down off them columns, and you
loved it, having them colored lights goin'.
___ 31. You can’t beat on a woman and then call her back! She won’t come!
____6. This old maid, she had a parrot that cursed a blue streak and knew more vulgar expressions than Mr. Kowalski.
___ 32. Oh I don't mind you being older than what I thought. But all the rest of it. That pitch about your ideals being so oldfashioned and all the malarkey that you've been dishin' out all summer. Oh, I knew you weren't sixteen anymore. But I
was fool enough to believe you was straight."
____7. Hey, toots! Canary bird, will you get out of the bathroom!
___ 33. No, I don't think I want to marry you anymore... No, you're not clean enough to bring into the house with my mother.
____8. Young, young man. Did anyone ever tell you, you look like a young prince out of the 'Arabian Nights'?
___ 34. Did you ever hear of the Napoleonic code, Stella?... Now just let me enlighten you on a point or two... Now we got
here in the state of Louisiana what's known as the Napoleonic code.
____5. No, we got a noisy woman in the place.
____9. Call the police. I’m going to call the police!
___ 10. Capricorn - the goat!
___ 11. He smashed all the lightbulbs with the heel of my slipper…Actually, I was sorta thrilled by it.
___ 12. And you let him? Didn't run, didn't scream?
___ 13. I like you to be exactly the way that you are, because in all my experience, I have never known anyone like you.
___ 14.I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
___ 15. Tarantula was the name of it. I stayed at a hotel called the Tarantula Arms…Yes, a big spider. That's where I brought
my victims. Yes, I've had many meetings with strangers.
___ 35. You think I'm gonna interfere with you?... You know, maybe you wouldn't be bad to interfere with.
___ 36. The blind are leading the blind!
___37. Tiger, tiger. Drop that bottle top. Drop it.
___ 38. Hey you two hens, cut out that cacklin' in there.
___ 39. they told me to take a streetcar named Desire, then transfer to one called Cemetery and ride six blocks and get off
at Elysian Fields.
___ 40. Hey, Stella! Hey, Stellaaa!
___ 41. This game is seven-card stud
___ 16. I never met a dame yet that didn't know if she was good-looking or not without being told, and there's some of them
that give themselves credit for more than they've got.
___ 42. I am ashamed of the way I perspire. My shirt is sticking to me.
___ 17. Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
___ 43. He was a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery—love.
___ 18. I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is 50% illusion.
___ 19. Flores para los muertos, flores—flores…
___ 20. I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell
truths. I tell what ought to be truth.
___ 21. What was that package he th’ew at ‘er? Catch what?
___ 22. Hey, STELLA.
___ 23. Poker should not be played in a house with women.
___ 24.How 'bout cuttin' the re-bop?
___ 25. I wish you'd stop taking it for granted that I'm in something I want to get out of.
___ 26. May I speak plainly?... If you'll forgive me, he's common... He's like an animal. He has an animal's habits. There's even
something subhuman about him. Thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is. Stanley Kowalski,
survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle. And you - you here waiting for him.
Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you, that's if kisses have been discovered yet. His poker night you call
it. This party of apes.
___ 27. She is as famous in Laurel as if she was the President of the United States, only she is not respected by any party.
___ 28. Mr. Kowalski is too busy making a pig of himself... Your face and your fingers are disgustingly greasy.