Quotes Flashcards
“This ‘blue piano’ expresses the spirit of the life which goes on here”
Stage Directions
Scene 1
Plastic theatre
Reflects New Orleans
Blanche
“Catch!” “Meat!”
Stanley
Scene 1
Dominance
Animalistic
Lower class
“Her appearance is incongruous to this setting.” “that suggests a moth”
Blanche
Scene 1
Stands out
Doesn’t fit new society
Stuck in past
Fragility
Moth - attracted to light but Blanche needs to stay away from light
Destructive desire
“They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride so blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!”
Blanche
Scene 1
Ultimate destruction and death brought on by desire
“You never did give me a chance to say much, Blanche”
Stella
Scene 1
Her submissive nature
Blanche and Stanley’s dominance
“They’re something like Irish”
Blanche on Stanley’s polish descent
Scene 1
Shows both his and her class
Conflict
“A different species”
Stella
Scene 1
On Stanley
Otherworldly
Animalistic
“you left! I stayed and struggled”
Blanche on Stella leaving
Scene 1
Underlying bitterness
Leading cause of fragility
“I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it!”
Blanche on Belle Reve
‘Belle Reve’ - French - ‘beautiful dream/sweet dreams’ - illusion
Tragic/futile fight to keep Old South
“Why, the Grim Reaper had put up his tent on our doorstep!… Stella. Belle Reve was his headquarters!”
Blanche monologue
Scene 1
Blanche consumed by death
Metaphor for the death of the Old South
“Since earliest manhood the centre of his life has been pleasure with women… with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens”
Stage directions on Stanley
Scene 1
Animalistic imagery
Sexuality
Peacocky energy
“The boy - the boy died!”
Blanche on Allan Grey
Scene 1
End
Fragile
First mention of him
Youth
Death of youth
“From the land of the sky blue water,/They bought a captive maid!”
Blanche in bath
Scene 2
1909 song by Charles Wakefield Cadman
Mermaid trapped by sailors
Mermaid - siren
She is trapped by society, desire, past, kowalskis
“Poems a dead boy wrote” “I’m not young and vulnerable anymore”
Blanche to Stanley about letters
Scene 2
Poems - romantic
Dead boy - husband, death of youth, stuck in past
Vulnerable - lie - she is and Stanley proves it
“it’s wonderfully fitting that Belle Reve should finally be this bunch of old papers in your big, capable hands!”
Blanche to Stanley
Scene 2
Passing South from old to new
Condescending
“The blind are - leading the blind!”
Blanche to Stella
Scene 2
End
Bible
Lost
“men at the peak of their physical manhood, as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colours”
Stage directions
Scene 3
Peacock energy
New South
Gaudy
“I can’t stand a naked light-bulb”
Blanche to Mitch
Scene 3
Deception
“animal thing, you”, “Stanley charges after Stella”
Stella and stage directions
Scene 3
Animalistic imagery
Primitive
His dominance
“There’s so much - so much confusion in the world… Thank you for being so kind! I need kindness now”
Blanche to Mitch
End of Scene 3
She’s lost
Vulnerable
Dependent
“They come together with low, animal moans”
Stage directions
Scene 3
Stanley and Stella’s relationship
Physical
Passionate
“I was - sort of - thrilled by it”
Stella
Scene 4
Stanley’s aggressive nature
Passion of relationship
“What you are talking about is brutal desire - just - Desire!” “It brought me here”
Blanche
Scene 4
Plastic theatre
Destructive nature of desire
“he’s common”, “ordinary”, “bestial”, “He acts like an animal”, “sub-human”, “ape-like”, “survivor of the Stone Age”
Blanche
Scene 4
Stanley character
Animalistic
Primitive
“Virgo is the Virgin”
Blanche
Scene 5
Irony
“I was never hard or self sufficient enough”, “I’ve run for protection”, “I’m fading now”
Blanche
Scene 5
Honesty
Comments on patriarchy
Highlights her fragility
“Because of the hard knocks my vanity’s been given”
Blanche
Scene 5
Loss of beauty equals loss of power
“I want to rest… I want Mitch”
Blanche
Scene 5
He equals her security
“Hey! Sugar!”, “ma’am”, “I’ve got to be good and keep my hands off children”
Blanche and Negro Woman
Scene 5
Turns tables- 2 woman sexualise boy
He is nameless- sexual object
Predatory
“you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow”
Blanche
Scene 6
Light imagery
Discovery of love
“He was in the quicksands and clutching at me … I was slipping in with him”
Blanche
Scene 6
Allan Grey
Cause of her downfall
“two people in it”
Blanche
Scene 6
Accompanied by approaching locomotive
Desire
Destructive
“Dame Blanche”
Stanley
Scene 7
Class division
“tight, artificial smile”
Blanche
Scene 8
Her facade
“hurls a plate”, “seizes her arm”, “Pig - Polack - disgusting - vulgar - greasy”, “‘Every Man is a King!’ And I am the king around here”
Stanley
Scene 8
Power
Masculinity
Patriarchy
Insecurities
“But what I am is a one hundred per cent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth”
Stanley
Scene 8
Populist appeal
Scene gives him a voice after being a background character for the previous few scenes
Reminder of his control
“But people like you abused her, and forced her to change”
Stella
Scene 8
Rift between Stanley and Stella
Caused by Blanche
“Varsouviana’, is heard. The music is in her mind; she is drinking to escape it”
Stage directions
Scene 9
Escapism
Haunted by his death
“I don’t want realism”, “I’ll tell you what I want. Magic”, “don’t turn the light on”
Blanche
Scene 9
Fear
Illusions
Fragility
Deception
“The Tarantula Arms”, “That’s where I brought my victims”, “intimacies with strangers…to fill my empty heart”, “hunting for some protection”
Blanche
Scene 9
Animal imagery
Honesty
Villainised female sexuality
“gaudy tin flowers that lower-class Mexicans display at funerals and other festive occasions”, “Flores para los muertos”
Stage directions and Mexican woman
Scene 9
Repeated throughout Blanche and Mitch’s conversation
Downward spiral of play
Death
“You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother”
Mitch
Scene 9
Drops her after everything
Slut shaming
Villainised female sexuality
“a mood of hysterical exhilaration” “decked herself in… soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown”, “rhinestone tiara on her head”
Stage directions
Scene 10
Her deterioration
Ruined innocence and fake superiority
Parody of herself
Fantasy
An attempt to reclaim old self but unable to after everything
“Physical beauty is passing”, “beauty of the mind and richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart…grow”, “How strange that I should be called a destitute woman! When I have all of these treasures locked in my heart”
Blanche
Scene 10
Comment on patriarchy
Obsession with beauty
Resembles Old South
“worn-out Mardi Gras outfit”, “What queen do you think you are”
Stanley
Scene 10
Blanches deterioration
Charming decay
Reveals her facade and true lack of power
Mardi Gras - parade - show - not real and over dramatised
“Operator”, Wait!”, “Hold on, please”, “The night is filled with inhuman voices like cries in a jungle. The shadows and lurid reflections move sinuously as flames along the wall space”
Blanche and stage directions
Scene 10
Loss of humanity
Accompanied by image of prostitution, theft and a brawl
Panic
Fear
“The barely audible ‘blue piano’ begins to drum up louder. The sound of it turns into the roar of an approaching locomotive”
Stage directions
Scene 10
Plastic theatre
Stanley
Blanche is consumed
“The ‘blue piano’ goes softly…The inhuman jungle voices rise up”, “He springs towards her”, “Tiger”, “She moans”, “She sinks to her knees”, “the hot trumpet and drums from the Four Deuces sound loudly”
Stage directions and Stanley
Scene 10
The rape
Animalistic imagery
Primitive
Her loss of power - surrendering to him
Here he wins and destroys her
“We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning”
Stanley
Scene 10
Inevitable
Drawn to each other
The battle between New and Old South - one must win
Old South cannot last forever, her loss of power to Stanley has been inevitable
“The atmosphere of the kitchen is now the same raw, lurid one of the disastrous poker night”, “sky of turquoise”, “Stella has been crying as she arranges the flowery dresses in the open trunk”
Stage directions
Scene 11
Tone of overwrought emotion
Mirrors Mexican flowers for death
“I can smell the sea air”, “an ocean as blue as…my first lover’s eyes”
Blanche
Scene 11
Romantic
Hopeful
Fairy tale tone
“The ‘Varsouviana’ is playing distantly”, “Lurid reflections appear on the walls in odd, sinuous shapes. The ‘Varsouviana’ is filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle”
Stage directions
Scene 11
Plastic theatre
Animalistic
Fear
Past haunting
“What have I done to my sister”
Stella
Scene 11
Betrayal
Needs Stanley for protection
“I’ll kill you!”, “Mitch collapses at the table, sobbing”
Mitch and stage directions
Scene 11
Attempt to protect
Mirrors Stella
Guilt stricken
“Blanche turns wildly and scratches”, “He takes off his hat and now becomes personalised. The inhuman quality goes…her terror subsides a little. The lurid reflections fade from the walls, the inhuman cries and noises die out”
Stage directions
Scene 11
Captured animal
Taken Stanley’s characterisation
Her slow trust
“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”
Blanche
Scene 11
Dependence
Fragility
Weakness
Links to end of scene 3
What she has been searching for
“Stella?”, “She sobs with inhuman abandon”, “The luxurious sobbing, the sensual murmur fade away under the swelling music of the ‘blue piano’ and the muted trumpet”
Stanley and stage directions
Scene 11
Uncertainty
Guilt
Left broken
Plastic theatre - play begins and ends with blue piano - cyclical
“This game is seven-card stud”
Steve
Scene 11
Mirrors scene 3
Life is a game of chance
Destructive
Dangerous
Risky
