Streetcar 9 Flashcards

Question

'If you don't...' 'Take your foot...'

Answer 1

'If you don't know, it must belong to Stan.' - M 'Take your foot off the bed. It has a light cover on it. Of course you boys don't notice things like that. I've done so much with the place since I've been here.' - Blanche - avoids Mitch's comment about the liquor not being hers - reemphasising how much she's changed the flat, we can see why Stanley gets annoyed

Answer 2

'You saw it before I came. Well, look at it now! This room is almost - dainty! I want to keep it that way.' - Blanche - implies she's staying even though we know that she was given a ticket to leave by Stanley earlier the same day

Answer 3

'It's terribly, terribly sweet! Why, it's a liqueur, I believe!' - Blanche

Answer 4

'I told you already I don't want none of his liquor and I mean it. You ought to lay off his liquor. He says you been lapping it up all summer like a wild-cat!' - Mitch - Stanley's words coming through Mitch

Answer 5

'What a fantastic statement! Fantastic of him to say it, fantastic of you to repeat it! I won't descend to the level of such cheap accusations to answer them, even!' - Blanche - manages to avoid the accusations by repeating 'fantastic' and confusing Mitch: 'Huh.'

Answer 6

- the persona she puts on (southern belle, her clothes case, the purity ideal, france) - the pretend 'artists' cafe' - france - hers and Mitch's entire relationship (staying out of the light, acting like he is like the gentlemen she used to date) - the singing and bathing (escapism) - poetic, romanticising, theatricalism, her idiolect - hiding from light

Answer 7

- reality has damaged her - she is detached from what is going on in the play - conflicts with realistic people like Stanley - plastic theatre: the trains (unnaturally timed), play becomes less and less realistic as it goes on

Answer 8

'I like it dark. The dark is comforting to me.' - Blanche - moth metaphor, avoiding realism - she can hide in the dark and maintain the persona she puts on more easily

Answer 9

'You never want to go out in the afternoon.' - Mitch, like he's putting the pieces together

Answer 10

'Not Sunday afternoon. I've asked you to go out with me sometimes on Sundays but you always make an excuse. You never want to go out till after six and then it's always some place that's not lighted much.' - Mitch - rare to see him talk this much (unbroken)

Answer 11

'There is some obscure meaning in this but I fail to catch it.' - Blanche - almost pretending not to know what he's talking about

Answer 12

'What it means is I've never had a real good look at you, Blanche.' - Mitch

Answer 13

'Let's turn the light on here.' - M '[fearfully]: Light? Which light? What for?' - B

Answer 14

'This one with the paper thing on it. [He tears the paper lantern off the light-bulb. She utters a frightened gasp.]' - Stanley - Mitch has the control (he put it up) - out of character for him, assertive

Answer 15

'So I can take a look at you good and plain!' - Mitch

Answer 16

'Of course you don't really mean to be insulting!' - B 'No, just realistic.' - M - trying to give him an out, reassuring herself they can still live the life she wants

Answer 17

'I don't want realism.' - B 'Naw, I guess not.' - M 'I'll tell you what I want. Magic!' - Blanche

Answer 18

'Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what /ought/ to be the truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! - /Don't turn the light on!/' - Blanche - she has convinced herself she's doing it for him, desperation to defend herself and prevent him from seeing her

Answer 19

'[Mitch crosses to the switch. He turns the light on and stares at her. She cries out and covers her face. He turns the light off again.]' - SD - light is presented as negative in this scene which is unlike normal symbolism of light and dark in wider theatre/literature

Answer 20

'[slowly and bitterly]: I don't mind you being older than what I thought. But all the rest of it - God! That pitch about your ideals being so old-fashioned and all the malarky that you've dished out all summer.' - Mitch - already knew this before the lantern (stanley possibly told him), but he wanted confirmation/to humilate her and make it clear that he knew - 'pitch' implies it is pre-meditated, almost like a "sales pitch" (selling herself)

Answer 21

'Oh, I knew you weren't sixteen any more. But I was a fool enough to believe you was straight.' - Mitch - she's not actually clean and traditional like she makers out to be

Answer 22

'Who told you I wasn't - 'straight'? My loving brother-in-law. And you believed him.' - Blanche - trying to create doubt

Answer 23

'I called him a liar at first. And then I checked on the story. First I asked our supply-man who travels through Laurel. And then I talked directly over long-distance to this merchant.' - Mitch - he didn't want to believe it - 'long-distance' - would have cost him a large sum but he needed to be sure

Answer 24

'The merchant Kiefaber of Laurel! I know the man. He whistled at me. I put him in his place. So now for revenge he makes up stories about me.' - Blanche - trying to pass blame, introduce doubt in Stanley's story

Answer 25

'Three people, Kiefaber, Stanley, and Shaw, swore to them!' - Mitch 'Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub! And such a filthy tub!' - Blanche - infantilising the men (mocking them, she is angry)

Answer 26

'Flamingo? No! Tarantula was the name of it! I stayed at a hotel called The Tarantula Arms!' - Blanche - in trying to defend herself she has actually made it worse

Answer 27

'Yes, a big spider! That's where I brought my victims.' - Blanche - leans into the perceptions the male characters have of her - mocking? exaggerating to show its ridiculous? genuinely lost it? - 'let my best friend get caught'

Answer 28

'Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan - intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with...' - Blanche - trying to evoke sympathy, making herself the victim with no choice (juxtaposes with the 'tarantula' image she just introduced)

Answer 29

'I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection - here and there, in the most - unlikely places' - Blanche - juxtaposition of 'hunting' and 'protection' paints her as both the victim and perpetrator

Answer 30

'here and there, in the most - unlikely places - even, at last, in a seventeen-year-old boy but - somebody wrote the superintendent about it - 'This woman is morally unfit for her position!'' - Blanche

Answer 31

'[She throws back her head with convulsive, sobbing laughter. Then she repeats the statement, gasps, and drinks.]' - SD - mocking, angry (repeating 'This woman is morally unfit for her position!') - she doesn't seem ashamed but still tries to evoke pity and sympathy

Answer 32

'There was nowhere else I could go. I was played out. You know what played out it? My youth was suddenly gone up the water-spout' - Blanche

Answer 33

'My youth was suddenly gone up the water-spout, and - I met you. You said you needed somebody. Well, I needed somebody, too.' - Blanche - Mitch was like her last option

Answer 34

'You said you needed somebody. Well, I needed somebody, too. I thanked God for you, because you seemed to be gentle - a cleft in the rock of the world that I could hide in!' - Blanche

Answer 35

'The poor man's Paradise - is a little peace... But I guess I was asking, hoping - too much! Kiefaber, Stanley, and Shaw have tied an old tin can tot he tail of the kite.' - Blanche

Answer 36

'You lied to me, Blanche.' - M 'Don't say I lied to you.' - B 'Lies, lies, inside and out, all lies.' - M 'Never inside, I didn't lie in my heart...' - B - Mitch doesn't seem to connect with anything she said, other than the fact she lied (her self-victimisation does not work) - her only remaining defence is that she knew what reality was in her heart (kind of a bad defence)

Answer 37

'A vendor comes around the corner. She is a blind Mexican Woman in a dark shawl, carrying bunches of those gaudy tin flowers that lower-class Mexicans display at funerals and other festive occasions.' - SD - 'dark shawl' - represents death (she is presented as ghostly: 'barely audibly' 'only faintly visible') - 'Mexican' represents the loss of tradition as immigration creates a new America

Answer 38

'The blind Mexican Woman] is calling barely audibly. Her figure is only faintly visible outside the building.' - SD - ghostly/death-like: 'dark shawl' 'barely audibly' 'only faintly visible' 'Flores para los muertos' - Mitch also does not react to her - is she a figment of Blanche's imagination that we are more and more beginning to see

Answer 39

'Flores. Flores. Flores para los muertos. Flores. Flores.' - Mexican Woman - "flowers for the dead"

Answer 40

'What? Oh! Somebody outside... I - lived in a house where dying old women remembered their dead men...' - B 'Flores. Flores para los muertos...' - MW - jumps to talk about herself, and her past (the polka tune then 'fades in' once she thinks of her past)

Answer 41

'[as if to herself]: Crumble and fade and - regrets - recriminations... 'If you'd done this, it wouldn't've cost me that!'' - Blanche - idea of decay, slight poetic tone - the abbreviation of 'wouldn't've' shows she is repeating something someone said to her (idiolect)

Answer 42

'And other things such as blood-stained pillow-slips' - Blanche - clearly has vivid and traumatising memories of her past in belle reve

Answer 43

''Her linen needs changing' - 'Yes, Mother. But couldn't we get a coloured girl to do it?' No, we couldn't of course. Everything gone but the -' - B 'Flores.' - MW - the interruption of 'Flores' seems to fit what Blanche was saying, remember when she said Stella only turned up for the pretty funeral flowers part - 'No, we couldn't' shows they were running out of money at this point, we feel sympathy for Blanche and what she went through here

Answer 44

'Death - I used to sit her and she used to sit over there and death was as close as you are... We didn't dare even admit we had ever heard of it!' - Blanche - her and her mother/the family were haunted by death, slowly taking them all (death of old america and the real Blanche)

Answer 45

'The opposite [of death] is desire. So do you wonder? How could you possibly wonder?' - Blanche - she slept with men because desire was as for away from death as she could get

Answer 46

'-and on the way back [from town drunk the 'young soldiers'] would stagger on to my lawn and call - Blanche! Blanche! - The deaf old lady remaining suspected nothing. But sometimes I slipped outside to answer their calls...' - Blanche - where her sleeping with men began, a respite from the care, the death, the trauma

Answer 47

'Later the paddy-wagon would gather [the soldiers] up like daises... the long way home...'

Answer 48

'The Mexican Woman turns slowly and drifts back off with her sad mournful cries.' - SD - just like with the music, when Blanche returns to the present, to mitch, the WM fades away

Answer 49

'After a moment, Mitch rises and follows her purposefully. The polka music fades away. He places his hands on her waist and tries to turn her about.' - SD - tries to have sex with her because he believes she will (because she had sex with other men as she has just confessed), he no longer respects her in the same "wait-until-marriage" way (not trying to protect her purity)

Answer 50

'[fumbling to embrace her]: What I been missing all summer.' - Mitch - some interpretations suggest that Mitch intended to rape Blanche here - others argue that he simply expected her to want to have sex with him given she was not the pure person he had believed her to be - when she says 'Then marry me' he realises that she won't and drops 'his hands from her waist'

Answer 51

'What I been missing all smmer.' - M 'Then marry me, Mitch!' - B 'I don't think I want to marry you any more.' - M

Answer 52

'[dropping his hands from her waist]: You're not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.' - Mitch - realisation? or cruelty? - especially harsh judgement given her obsession with being clean (the bathing)

Answer 53

'Go away, then. [He stares at her.] Get out of here quick before I start screaming fire! [Her throat is tightening with hysteria.] Get out of here quick before I start screaming fire.' - Blanche when Mitch calls her unclean - his insult has really impacted her, she's lost him for good now and she knows it - he doesn't actually leave straight away perhaps not realising how he has hurt her, she seems to perceive it as a threat and threatens to scream 'fire', he doesn't leave until she actually does scream 'Fire! Fire! Fire!'

Answer 54

'[He still remains staring. She suddenly rushed to the big window with its pale blue square of the soft summer light and cries wildly.] Fire! Fire! Fire!' - Blanche - Blanche clearly feels she is in danger and her reaction is what leads people to believe he tries to rape her - the way he 'remains staring' could be threatening or simple confusion - it takes her cries of 'Fire!' for him to finally leave, no one would have come given the area though so this is not out of fear

Answer 55

'With a startled gasp, Mitch turns and goes out of the outer door, clatters awkwardly down the steps and around the corner of the building.' - SD

Answer 56

'Blanche staggers back from the window and falls to her knees. The distant piano is slow and blue.' - SD - tragic image, she seems submissive, broken, and desperate - she has lost everything, everyone, and the last remnants of hope in the form of Mitch