Scene One Flashcards
New Orleans
Interracial, diverse society. Blanche struggles to adapt. Former French colony with an embedded French identity.
Elysian Fields and L and N tracks
Greek mythology- a resting place for soldiers.
Post WW2- loss of soldiers’ life, reduced to poverty.
Railways- working class, movement, industry.
‘Mostly white frame, weathered grey’
Decay, the failure of the American dream.
‘Bananas and coffee’
Slavery embedded into society, claustrophobic community.
Gritty reality of casual racism in society.
‘Always around the corner’
Instability and inevitability.
‘Above the music of the blue piano’
Fragmente, socialism realism feeling.
Musical motif, shapes the soundscape of the town.
Chaotic, busy dynamic with overlapping dialogue; drinking, music, freedom.
Stanley and mitches ‘blue denim work clothes’ and the ‘red-stained package from a butchers’
Symbolise working class men, Kowalski means ‘blacksmith/ commoner. Denim was invented for work.
Heteronormative bread- winner, Stone Age, gender roles.
Male dominated gambling.
‘And of a background obviously quite different from her husbands’
She has socially adapted, she is malleable.
Social Darwinism, Blanche and Stanley don’t adapt.
‘Get him a poor boy’s sandwich cause nothings left here’
Reversal of stereotypes, exploration of 2 different marriage dynamics.
About Blanche ‘her expression is one of shock and belief’. ‘Her appearance is incongruous to this setting’
Lack/ inability to adapt to her surroundings.
Blanche is an anomalie to the area, symbolism of white as pure which depicts her mental state before her decline.
Blanche as a ‘moth’
Fragile, self- destructive as moths fly to a flame (forebodes Blanche’s storyline), facade, negative in comparison to a butterfly, attracted to light despite Blanche’s ironic aversion to light.
Stage directions: faintly hysterical humour.
Hyperbolic/ oxymoronic. Connotations of ‘hysterical’ as lunatic.
Blanche “Cemeteries” “Elysian fields”
Cemeteries reflects her social death as she descends to a lower class, Blanche’s literal journey is symbolic of her mental journey.
Symbolic narrative.
Blanche “Stella DuBois… I mean- Mrs Stanley Kowalski”
Social etiquette.
Loss of stella’s identity, ‘Kowalski’ translates to common man, DuBois means woods. Social Darwinism depicted through the names.
Stage directions, “The surrounding areas dim out as the interior is lighted”
Architectural insecurity, the place closes in, depicted through the imagery. Creates a semantic field of suffocation, claustrophobia. The “dim” suggests she is shielded from the outside world. “Lighted”, light introduced as a motif.