Characterization / Analysis of major
characters
Blanche DuBois: Neurotic central character who
lives in a fantasy world of Old South chivalry
but cannot control her carnal desires.
Stella Kowalski: Blanche’s down-to-earth sister
who seems satisfied with her life as the wife of
a factory worker .
Stanley Kowalski: Stella’s churlish husband and
the bane of Blanche’s existence.
Mitch: Stanley’s poker partner. Mitch, Stanley’s
best friend, woos Blanche until he finds out
about her seamy past.
Eunice: Stanley and Blanche’s upstairs neighbor
Allen Grey: Deceased husband of Blanche. His
homosexual affair and suicide deeply scarred
Blanche.
Young Man: Collector for The Evening Star
newspaper.
Negro Woman
Mexican Woman
Shep Huntleigh: Imaginary beau of Blanche.
Doctor, Matron Physician and nurse from a mental
hospital
* Blanche DuBois appears in the first scene
dressed in white, the symbol of purity and
innocence. She is seen as a moth-like creature.
* the character of Blanche is the most complex one
in the drama.
* She is truly a tragic heroine.
* She is aristocratic and intelligent, and sensitive
and fragile at the same time, also beautiful and
this delicate beauty has a moth-like
appearance.
* Elysian Fields symbolizes paradise beyond
death from ancient lore, Desire expresses
Blanche's desire to be loved and Cemeteries
represents her fear of death.
* Blanche represents a deep-seated attachment to
the past. Her life is a lesson how tragic events
in the past can ruin a person's future. Her
husband's death affects her the most.
* Blanche was only a young girl without any
experience when she got married. She married
Allan Grey, who was only sixteen. Their
marriage started well, but later the young wife
found out that Allan was homosexual.
* Her husband's death wasn't the only tragic in
her life. Blanche watched her parents and her
relatives die-off. She was forced to sell Belle
Reve, the only place where she was happy,
because she had to pay the funeral expenses.
* Then she lived in a second-rate hotel, where she
made meaningless relationships with strangers.
Actually, she was a prostitute.
* She was even dismissed from a school, where
she was an English teacher, because of an
incident with a seventeen years old student
who reminded her of her late husband.
* She had to leave the old family mansion because
it was mortgaged, she had to leave the hotel
because of the strangers visiting her every
night, and she lost her job because the love
affair with the young boy. Blanche became
homeless, lonely and desperate, and she was
out of money.
* All these things weakened her, turned her into
an alcoholic, and lowered her mental stability
bit-by-bit.
* When Stanley went on to rape her, he
completely diminished her mental stability. It
was not the actual rape that represents the
causes for her following madness, but the fact
that she was raped by a man who represented
everything unacceptable to her.
* Blanche's tragedy is a tragedy of an individual
caught between two worlds, the world of the
past and the world of the present.
* She is unwilling to get rid of the past and unable
to come to terms with the present.
* She cannot forget the death of Allan, therefore
she seeks substitute men (especially young
boys) for her dead husband.
* She is enable to face reality in her circumstances
and in herself because she still lives in the past.
She thinks that she is still young and attractive,
although she hates bright light because
it would reveal her.
* Blanche is an intelligent and sensitive woman
who values literature and creativity of human
imagination, but emotionally repressed,
addicted to alcohol, succumbing to illusions,
lies about her past, sexual aberrations, and
madness. Her need to be special and loved
originates from her loneliness and her failure
with her relationships.
* Stanley live with his wife Stella .
* He is a working class auto parts salesman.
* He take special pride in having lured Stella
away from her rich family and he shows her off
to his friends like a trophy.
* He has a vicious temper and always have a fight
with his wife .
* Stanley's life becomes more complicated when
Stella's sister blanche shows up at their door.
* Blanche and Stanley hates each other , she looks
down upon him .
* Blanche describe him as an” ape” and she often
call him a Pollack and yet he get mad because
its remind him that he is not good enough for
Stella.
* We cannot deny the fact that Stanley Kowalski is
a fascinating character. The usual reaction is to
see him as a brute because of the way that he
treats the delicate Blanche. Some will even go
so far as to dislike this man intensely. But this
dislike would stem from too much
identification with Blanche.
* he is seen as common, crude, and vulgar.
Certainly, his frankness will allow for no
deviation from the straightforward truth.
* He is the man who likes to lay his cards on the
table. He can understand no relationship
between man and woman except a sexual one,
where he sees the man's role as giving and
taking pleasure from this relationship.
* To the over-sensitive person, such as Blanche,
Stanley represents a holdover from the Stone
Age.
* He is bestial and brutal and determined to
destroy that which is not his.
* He is like the Stone Age savage bringing home
the meat from the kill. He is animal-like and his
actions are such. He eats like an animal and
grunts his approval or disapproval.
* Even the symbols connected with Stanley
support his brutal, animal-like approach to life.
In the first scene, he is seen bringing home the
raw meat. His clothes are loud and gaudy. His
language is rough and crude. His outside
pleasures are bowling and poker. When he is
losing at poker, he is unpleasant and
demanding. When he is winning, he is happy
as a little boy.
* He is, then, "the gaudy seed-bearer," who takes
pleasure in his masculinity. "Animal joy in his
being is implicit," and he enjoys mainly those
things that are his — his wife, his apartment,
his liquor, "his car, his radio, everything that is
his, that bears his emblem of the gaudy seedbearer."
* With the appearance of Blanche, Stanley feels an
uncomfortable threat to those things that are
his. Blanche becomes a threat to his way of life;
she is a foreign element, a hostile force, a
superior being whom he can't understand. She
is a challenge and a threat. He feels most
strongly that she is a threat to his marriage.
Thus when the basic man, such as Stanley, feels
threatened, he must strike back. It is a survival
of the fittest.
* Stanley feels the first threat to his marriage after
the big fight he has with Stella after the poker
game. He knows that this would not have
occurred if Blanche had not been present. It is
her presence which is causing the dissension
between him and his wife.
* Consequently, when we approach the rape
scene, we must understand that Blanche has
made Stanley endure quite a bit. She has never
been sympathetic toward him. She has
ridiculed him. Earlier she had even flirted with
him but she has never been his.
* Thus, when Stanley finds out that she has slept
so indiscriminately with so many people, he
cannot understand why she should object to
one more. Thus, he rapes her partly out of
revenge, partly because one more man
shouldn't make any difference, and finally, so
that she will be his in the only way he fully
understands.
* Stanley, then, is the hard, brutal man who does
not understand the refinements of life. He is
controlled by natural instincts untouched by
the advances of civilization. Thus, when
something threatens him, he must strike back
in order to preserve his own threatened
existence. If someone gets destroyed, that is the
price that must be paid. It is the survival of the
fittest, and Stanley is the strongest .
* The glaring contrast and fierce struggle between
the two worlds of Stanley Kowalski and
Blanche DuBois are the main themes of
Williams' play. These two worlds are so
diametrically opposed that they can never
meet. Thus, in order to bring these two
together — to have these two encounter each
other — Williams has created Stella .
* By simply having her married to Stanley and by
having her be Blanche's sister, Williams then
creates the perfect opportunity of bringing
these two opposing worlds together under one
roof.
* Blanche’s younger sister, about twenty-five
years old and of a mild disposition that visibly
sets her apart from her more vulgar neighbors.
* Stella 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, Stella married lower-class Stanley, with
whom she shares a robust sexual relationship.
Stella’s union with Stanley is both animal and
spiritual, violent but renewing.
* Stella seems to become the tangible symbol of
victory between Stanley an Blanche warring
parties.
* But Blanche is not alone in her hopes to win over
Stella, for Stanley is also guilty of trying to
mold his wife's mind. He is continually trying
to convince Stella that they had a better life
together before her sister's arrival.
* Stella is reminded of the "colored lights" of their
sex life together and of the happiness they once
shared.
* But Stella's function is not just to be an object in
this struggle, to be merely swayed from one
side to the other. She also seems to be the only
hope of a compromise between these two
different backgrounds.
* As Blanche and Stanley represent two
diametrically opposed worlds, so Stella
represents a bridge between the two poles.
* For Stella shows that a meeting point of
coexistence is possible between Blanche's and
Stanley's separate worlds.
* Stella still has many qualities of Belle Reve. She
has not allowed a gentle and refined nature to
completely disappear simply because she has
accepted Stanley and all he stands for. Nor has
she allowed her upbringing to stand in the way
of enjoying life with her raw and lusty
husband.
* She has, rather, combined both worlds into one
and has shown that these two apparent
opposites are, if not compatible, at least coexistable.
* The problem between the play's two main
characters seems not to be the irreconcilable
worlds which they represent, but the rigid
inflexibility of Stanley and Blanche in their
respective attitudes. Stella seems to indicate
that such a reconciliation is possible. She is not
a perfect blend; however, she does show that a
mixture of the two viewpoints can be
workable.
* Thus, the character of Stella fulfills two basic
functions. She is deeply involved in the battle
between her sister and her husband. She is torn
between the two factions unmercifully. But she
is also the only one who can attempt to bridge
the gap between these two arch enemies and all
that they represent. She certainly does have
some thoughts independent of the dynamic
forces in her home; however, on the whole, she
maintains a passive role .
* After Blanche’s arrival, Stella is torn 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 Blanche, and she eventually
dismisses Blanche’s claim that Stanley raped
her. Stella’s denial of reality at the play’s end
shows that she has more in common with her
sister than she thinks.
* Perhaps because he lives with his dying mother,
Mitch is noticeably more sensitive than
Stanley’s other poker friends. The other men
pick on him for being a mama’s boy.
* The players speak coarsely, enjoying primitive,
direct humor, mixing it with the cards, chips,
and whiskey — that is, all except Mitch.
* He seems to be somewhat different. He is first
distinguished from the other three when he is
teased about his concern for his mother.
* He excuses this soft-heartedness by explaining
that she is ill and unable to sleep until he comes
in at night.
* a second aspect of Mitch is revealed as he meets
Blanche DuBois.
* His awkward courtesy and embarrassment
show a consciousness of manners seldom seen
in that raffish section of New Orleans.
* Blanche is quick to notice the hint of sensitivity
in him that makes him seem superior to the
others.
* Although he carries a silver cigarette case
engraved with a quote from a sonnet, his
words describing the romance and sorrow that
inspired it seem trite and inadequate.
* At this point, Blanche provides the imagination
and sympathy, while Mitch answers with his
characteristically sincere commonplaces.
* His sensitivity appears rather clumsy in
comparison, but he does half-apologize, saying
that Stanley and his friends must strike Blanche
as a pretty rough bunch.
* The difference in Stanley’s and Mitch’s
treatment of Blanche at the play’s end
underscores Mitch’s fundamental
gentlemanliness. Though he desires and makes
clear that he wants to sleep with Blanche, Mitch
does not rape her and leaves when she cries
out. Also, the tears Mitch sheds after Blanche
struggles to escape the fate Stanley has
arranged for her show that he genuinely cares
for her. In fact, Mitch is the only person other
than Stella who seems to understand the
tragedy of Blanche’s madness.
* Mitch's awkward imitation of the romantic
gestures of Blanche is shown in the stage
direction of this scene. He is a "dancing bear"
following the steps of her waltz. But this first
appearance does characterize Mitch as the most
sensitive member of the Kowalski world.
* A Streetcar Named Desire is a
psychological drama portraying neurotic
people who are victims of their own passions,
frustrations and loneliness. In the play
Williams sympathizes depth characterization,
he develops strong and interesting characters
like Blanche and Stanley, and he uses symbols
which strengthen their features.
* With this drama Tennessee Williams has created
such an impressive and salutary story with
which he revolutionized the American
theatre, and wrote his name into the book of
history of literature .
Maha Bokhary
Nadya khan
Malak Halwani
Lujain Bogari
Wala’a Al-Kahali
Layla Al-Solami