A Streetcar Named Desire
AO3 Context
Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are
written and received.
AO1 = 30%
AO2 = 20%
AO3 = 30%
AO4 = 10%
AO5 = 10%
PLASTIC THEATRE
What is Plastic Theatre?
Plastic Theatre, is the use of props, noises and/or stage directions to convey a blatant parallel with the
characters states of mind on stage. Thus, the state of Blanche’s mind, emotions, and memories converted
into the stage setting. Plastic Theatre is hence symbolic, non-realist, metaphorical theatre that uses
objects, musical underscoring, costumes, props and theatrical space to create an experience for the
audience that suggests poetic truths. This was one of the earliest and most famous plays which
represented the Plastic Theatre genre.
This genre of theatre arose from Expressionism. Rather than attempting to create a vision of
‘reality’, Williams created a highly personalised vision of the world that included distorted
images symbolising inner psychological states (shadows on the wall, gunshot)
Significant Elements of Plastic Theatre in ‘A Streetcar Named Desired:
1. The Varsouviana Polka
This is the polka tune which often reminds Blanche of the last day she spent with her young husband –
Allen Grey. Earlier that day, she caught her husband’s adultery with another man, and yet pretended that
‘nothing had happened’. In the middle of the Varsouviana when Blanche told Allen of how he ‘disgusted’
her, he committed suicide.
The polka music often arouses a sense of loss and regret for Blanche. The music is first heard distantly in
Scene 1 (Pg 15), when Stanley questions Blanche about her husband. This reappears with the polka shifting
to a minor key when Blanche tells Mitch of the suicide of her husband (throughout Scene 6). This is
increasingly heard after then, as Blanche loses mental control. As the music plays when Stanley gives
Blanche the Greyhound ticket to return home in Scene 8, Williams depicts how the music foreshadows the
imminent disaster for her. When Blanche is discovered alone in Scene 9, the polka is rapid. The polka
draws upon the mental deterioration of Blanche, which was evoked by the suicide of her husband.
Williams thus uses the music to bring about Blanche’s loss of the grip of truth and reality.
2. Blue piano
The blues music enhances the dreamlike feeling in the play. The Blue piano represents ‘the spirit of life’ (Pg
3) in the setting. This is prominent in the first scene when Blanche recalls the unfortunate fate of Belle
Reve, and in the 5th scene when she kisses the Young Man. The blue piano is the loudest when Blanche is
sent away to the asylum in the last scene.
The blue piano shows the cyclical structure of the play, as the play starts and ends with the same
background music. This shows possibly that Blanche, just like in the begging of the play, is alone and
continues her unsettled journey of life. The Blue piano not only gives the readers a sense of setting, but
also shows Blanche’s need for companionship.
3. Locomotives
Stanley is associated with the power sounds of locomotives- modern, impressive, and raw. In Scene 4 (Pg
40), when he secretly overheard the conversation of the sisters’, there is a sound of the approaching train.
When Blanche tells Mitch of her marriage, she is harrowed by the memory of an oncoming locomotive (Pg
56). The start of the last phase of the movement towards the rape in Scene 10, the locomotive sound
grows louder.
The locomotives represent Stanley, who brings Blanche’s downfall by unmasking her truth. Hence, in every
scene where the truth of Blanche is revealed through Stanley, the locomotive sound is dominant. It sound
may also be seen as a symbol of Blanche’s desire to escape.
4. “It’s only paper moon!”
This song is prominent in the 7th scene, when Stanley learns of Blanche’s promiscuity. The louder Stanley
insists on the undeniable facts about Blanche, the louder she sings. The song’s lyrics describe the way love
turns the world into a “phony” fantasy. The song says that if both lovers believe in their imagined reality,
then it’s no longer “make-believe.” These lyrics sum up Blanche’s approach to life. She believes that her
lying is harmless, as she tries to weave harmony with her lies. However, Blanche is just a sham who
pretends sexual innocence.
5. Shadows
Light represents truth, which Stella wishes to avoid by putting an artificial lantern on the light bulb. Stella is
never in daylight, as she doesn’t wish her lies to be revealed. When Blanche and Stanley fight in Scene 10,
oddly shaped shadows appear on the walls. The jungle cries enhance the sense of madness of Blanche.
These effects combine to heighten Blanche’s final breakdown.
Other elements of the Plastic Theatre in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’:
6. Meat
7. Piano and clarinets
8. Oil painting in the Poker Night
Some extra Notes
Much of the pathos found in Williams’s drama was mined from the playwright’s own life. Alcoholism,
depression, thwarted desire, loneliness, and insanity were all part of Williams’s world. His experience as a
known homosexual in an era unfriendly to homosexuality also informed his work. Williams’s most
memorable characters, many of them female, contain recognizable elements of their author. His vulgar,
irresponsible male characters, such as Stanley Kowalski, were likely modelled on Williams’s own father and
other males who tormented Williams during his childhood.
Williams’s early plays also connected with the new American taste for realism that emerged following the
Depression and World War II. The characters in A Streetcar Named Desire are trying to rebuild their lives in
post-war America: Stanley and Mitch served in the military, while Blanche had affairs with young soldiers
based near her home.
Williams set his plays in the South, but the compelling manner in which he rendered his themes made
them universal, winning him an international audience and worldwide acclaim. However, most critics agree
that the quality of Williams’s work diminished as he grew older. He suffered a long period of depression
following the death of his longtime partner, Frank Merlo, in 1963. His popularity during these years also
declined due to changed interests in the theatre world. During the radical 1960s and 1970s, nostalgia no
longer drew crowds, and Williams’s explorations of sexual mores came across as tired and old-fashioned.
Williams died in 1983 when he choked on a medicine-bottle cap in an alcohol-related incident at the Elysée
Hotel in New York City. He was one month short of his seventy-second birthday. In his long career he wrote
twenty-five full-length plays (five made into movies), five screenplays, over seventy one-act plays,
hundreds of short stories, two novels, poetry, and a memoir. The mark he left on the tradition of realism in
American drama is indelible.
A Note on the Epigraph
The epigraph to A Streecar Named Desire is taken from a Hart Crane poem titled “The Broken Tower.”
Crane was one of Williams’s icons. Williams’s use of this quotation is apt, as Crane himself often employed
epigraphs from his own icons, including Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, and Blake. Williams felt a personal
affinity with Crane, who, like himself, had a bitter relationship with his parents and suffered from bouts of
violent alcoholism. Most important, Williams identified with Crane as a homosexual writer trying to find a
means of self-expression in a heterosexual world. Unlike Williams, Crane succumbed to his demons,
drowning himself in 1932 at the age of thirty-three.
Williams was influenced by Crane’s imagery and by his unusual attention to metaphor. The epigraph’s
description of love as only an “instant” and as a force that precipitates “each desperate choice” brings to
mind Williams’s character Blanche DuBois. Crane’s speaker’s line, “I know not whither [love’s voice is]
hurled,” also suggests Blanche. With increasing desperation, Blanche “hurls” her continually denied love
out into the world, only to have that love revisit her in the form of suffering.