A
How do the street cars embody the
play’s interlinked themes of desire
and death?
The Desire and Dream for a Better Life
• What do the characters in both plays desire or dream for?
• What does Blanche/Stella/Stanley/Mitch desire?
• Blanche dreams of a better life not unlike the immigrants who have
come to Elysian fields.
• She desires more than sexual companionship…she desires a
respectable life - human dignity and reputation are also key
concerns in Othello – Iago strips Othello of his dignity and his
reputation…he hides behind the curtain of shame after he murders
Desdemona, Blanche avoids a strong light like a moth p. 5
• Blanche is haunted by the very thing she runs away
• Desire to make a life, jobless there is struggle to survive at the most
fundamental level
• Her past is depicted as a liability to herself. She does not know how
to survive? To what extent is Othello’s past presented as a liability
to himself?
gradual removal of the individual from rural community into
urban isolation
focus of production deflected from the human being,
making him a minor part of the process => displacement,
alienation, despondency and finally despair
{Conflict between the Old and New}
• Subtle hints of urban industrial life:
• Commodification of Sex “ You’ll hear them tapping on the
shutters”
• Commodification of food: Street Vendors: “Red Hot! Red
Hot”
• Commodification of space: rooms/spaces rented out
• Symbolises also the Mexican immigrant in search of the
American Dream, Mexican flower seller
• “Warm breathe of the brown river…” subtle hints of the
decay from industrial life
• The lyricism is like a smoke screen that deflects our
attention from the atmosphere of decay…
The Great American Dream
The Epic of America, James Truslow Adams coined the phrase
the American dream, which is “that dream of a land in which
life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with
opportunity for each according to ability or achievement…
It is a dream of social order in which each man and each
woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which
they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what
they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or
position”
The Great American Dream
• May strip man of his humanity
and dignity in spite of the
promise of the great American
Dream.
• Suggests perhaps that the desire,
the dream comes at a cost.
Is the lure of the American
dream presented as a
destructive force rather than
life giving one by Tennessee?
{Stanley Kowalski}
Age: 25
Origin:
Polish Descent
Marital Status:
Married
Occupation:
Factory Worker
Hobbies:
Bowling, Poker, Drinking
Stanley Kowalski Embodies the
Paradox of the new urban life
• Stanley Kowalski is a symbol of the new urban life: he is
also portrayed as having a raffish charm; his crude
ways are engaging and even attractive (compare with
Iago and his banter with Desdemona with all the sexual
connotations)
• But his actions are brutal and devoid of humanity as he
violates Blanche sexually – “emblem of a gaudy seed
bearer” p.14
• His detachment and his lack of sympathy is evident as
he strips the paper lantern to expose Blanche: stripping
her of all her dignity in a final blow as she gets booted
out of the Kowalski household. p.87
{Ambiguity}
Yet, Stanley has a force of character which has
been interpreted as excitingly
life-giving on the one-hand, and brutally
destructive on the other
The child of immigrants, he is the new,
untamed pioneer, who brings to the South,
Williams seems to be saying, a power more
exuberant than destructive, a sort of
Power that the South may have lost.
(J.H. Adler, in Tennessee Williams, A tribute, p.41)
{
Life giving yet life denying
}
More laughter and shouts of parting come from the men. Stanley
throws the screen door of the kitchen open and comes in. He is of
medium height, about five feet eight or nine, and strongly,
compactly built. Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his
movements and attitudes. Since earliest manhood the centre of his life
has been pleasure
with women, the giving and taking of it, not
with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and
pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens.
Branching out from this complete and satisfying centre are all the
auxiliary channels of his life, such as his heartiness with men, his
appreciation of rough humour, his love of good drink and food and
games, his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears his
emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer. He saw women up at a glance, with
sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and
determining the way he smiles at them.
• What is the nature of alienation in the 2 texts?
• Is the alienation real or perceived, psychological or
due to societal forces?
• How are characters alienated?
• To what extent do individuals have control over their
lives?
How is Alienation
presented?
alienation from own communities?
alienation from closer connections, including family and
loved ones?
alienation by religious institutions?
alienation from God himself?
most extreme form of alienation lies in those who feel
alienated from everything: family, society, and the whole of
modern life?
{Blanche DuBois}
Age: 30
Hometown:
Laurel, Mississippi
Marital Status:
Widow (married at 16)
Occupation:
English School Teacher
Traits:
Averse to light
Past:
Tragic
{Blanche DuBois}
• Blanche – White
• DuBois – French origin, p. 30
• Dubois “means woods and Blanche means white,
so the two together means white woods. Like an
orchard in spring!”
• Blanche’s name is symbolic.
• It symbolises the struggle faced by the
Bourgeoisie as they lose their land and their
entitlement…
{Displacement}
• Blanche’s physical displacement from Laurel to New
Orleans makes her an outsider in Stanley’s and Stella’s
world
• Blanche: symbol of the plantation era which must
inevitably bow to industrialization and newly confident
“ethnic” adversaries – embodied in the Polish Kowalski
• Additionally, Williams exposes a patriarchal society in
which women ceased to be valued once they lost their
physical attractiveness or failed to conform to social and
generally sexist mores
{Displacement/Alienation/Desire and Death}
LAUREL
Belle Reve
NEW ORLEANS
French Quarter
• Laurel is a real town in
southeastern Mississippi
• Had a genteel,
aristocratic Old South
culture that was fast
disappearing in the face
of industrialisation
•
•
•
Industrialised and urban
A shabby part of the
neighbourhood situated near
railway tracks – evidence of
rapid industrialisation and
expansion of cities
A conglomeration of cultures
and migrants
{Contrast in Setting}
LAUREL
Belle Reve
NEW ORLEANS
French Quarter
{Blanche DuBois}
- Scene 1: development of Blanche’s
character
- Blanche:
- Aware of social distinctions [note
interaction with Eunice and neighbour’s
acts]
- Vanity, need of flattery
- Pathos: fear of ageing, vulnerability
{Blanche DuBois}
Awareness of social distinctions:
-Monosyllybalic responses to Eunice and the Negro
woman
Blanche [wanting to get rid of her]
Awareness of Stella’s apparent social
regression:
Eunice [defensively, noticing Blanche’s look]: It’s sort of
messed up right now but when it’s clean it’s real sweet.
Blanche: Is it?
{Blanche DuBois}
Awareness of social distinctions:
-Monosyllybalic responses to Eunice and the Negro
woman
Blanche [wanting to get rid of her]
Awareness of Stella’s apparent social
regression:
Eunice [defensively, noticing Blanche’s look]: It’s sort of
messed up right now but when it’s clean it’s real sweet.
Blanche: Is it?
{Stanley + Blanche}
Scene 1:
• Two individuals from different societies and cultures who are
set in sharp contrast
• Blanche: a refined woman from an southern aristocratic
background,
• Stanley: a down-to-earth working man with crude manners,
animal-like qualities
• Inability to empathise with each other set from the start
{Stanley + Blanche}
Scene 1:
•Blanche: represents the dying aristocratic culture, an
upper class that threatens Stanley’s role as patriarchal
head
•Stanley: embodies a crude, lower class which threatens
her class superiority
•Essentially, in conflict with each other on almost every
level
•Yet, there is a certain baser, animal attraction between
each other
•Predator/Prey model would work, but is also complex
{Scene 1}
• Scene introduces two of the prominent themes of the
play, sex and death.
• Stella and Stanley – basis of love is sexual passion.
• Stanley - “male chauvinist” ? BUT they are happy in
their own way, bound together by physical love.
• Blanche’s longest speech in this scene – death; note of
morbidity continues throughout the play; excessive use
of imagery of death in her speech
{Scene 1}
• Important symbolic and visual elements in the opening
scenes
• Stanley – undressing: signifying his elemental, animallike strength and virility
• Blanche - bathing: a symbol of her attempts to wash
away her past and project image of being beautiful
and refined [in scene 2]
• Appearance/Reality; Illusion/Truth
NOTE: However, she is associated with the sound of cats,
undermining her attempts to present herself in this
way
{Stanley+ Blanche}
Stanley
•
•
•
•
Aristocratic Old South
White, Light, Purity
Airy
Feminine
Blanche
•
•
•
•
New Industrial Age
Dark (but realistic)
Masculine
Solid