Quotes by theme

Question 1

Fantasy and delusion: difficulty to uphold delusion

Answer 1

‘A place like that must be awful hard to keep up.’

Question 2

Fantasy and delusion: delusion of avoiding the truth

Answer 2

‘I can’t stand a naked light-bulb’

Question 3

Fantasy and delusion: Blanche’s reliance on others to support her delusions

Answer 3

‘Say, it’s only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea - But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me!’

Question 4

Fantasy and delusion: Blanche acknowledges her fear of the truth

Answer 4

‘Candles burn out in little boys’ and girls’ eyes […], electric light-bulbs go on and you see too plainly…’

Question 5

Class and race: example of class divide between DuBois and Kowalskis

Answer 5

‘The Kowalskis and the DuBois have different notions’

Question 6

Class and race: example of Blanche’s xenophobia

Answer 6

‘Polack’

Question 7

Fantasy and delusion: delusion of the Old South’s superiority

Answer 7

‘Belle Reve’

Question 8

Desire: sex as a responsibility for women

Answer 8

‘that’s your job - not mine’

Question 9

Desire: Blanche’s hypocrisy

Answer 9

‘Haven’t you ever ridden on that streetcar?’

Question 10

Desire: the journey of the streetcar

Answer 10

‘They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!’

Question 11

Desire: as a negative force

Answer 11

‘It brought me here. - Where I’m not wanted an where I’m ashamed to be’

Question 12

Gender: Stanley’s introduction

Answer 12

‘roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes’, ‘red-stained package’, ‘heaves’

Question 13

3 quotes from the text about Blanche’s racism

Answer 13

• ‘like two blue candles in a white cake’
• ‘a woman of intelligence and breeding’
• ‘Polack’

Question 14

Gender: animalistic imagery (Stanley)

Answer 14

‘tiger - tiger’, ‘stalks fiercely’, ‘animal thing’,

Question 15

Gender: Stanley’s intro stage description

Answer 15

‘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. […] everything that is his, everything that bears his emblem as the gaudy seedbearer.’

Question 16

3 quotes from the text about masculinity

Answer 16

• ‘everything that is his, everything that bears his emblem as the gaudy seedbearer’
• ‘tiger - tiger’, ‘stalks fiercely’, ‘animal thing’
• ‘roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes’, ‘red-stained package’, ‘heaves’

Question 17

5 quotes from the text about fantasy and delusion

Answer 17

• ‘Belle Reve’, ‘A place like that must be awful hard to keep up’
• ‘Say it’s only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea but it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me’
• ‘I can’t stand a naked light-bulb’
• '’I think I will bathe’
• ‘a woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion’

Question 18

6 quotes from the text about desire

Answer 18

• ‘[The Streetcar] brought me here - where I’m not wanted and where I’m ashamed to be’
• ‘Haven’t you ever ridden on that streetcar?’
• ‘That’s your job - not mine’
• ‘They told me to take a streetcar named desire and then transfer to one called cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!’
• ‘makes[s] everything else seem unimportant’
• ‘slips down the rickety stairs’

Question 19

3 quotes from the text about class

Answer 19

• ‘The Kowalskis and the DuBois have different notions’
• ‘Casting my pearls before swine’
• ‘she is daintily dressed in a white suit’ / ‘roughly dressed in blue work clothes’

Question 20

Fate, Blanche (3 quotes)

Answer 20

• ‘Her future is mapped out for her’
• ‘incongruous to this setting’
• ‘we’ve had this date with each other from the beginning’