Streetcar - Motifs and Symbols Flashcards
What do Night, Day and Dusk symbolise? (Aka light and dark).
Death and Life, as well as the liminal space between these (a purgatory?)
- Could also be truth and fantasy.
What does Stanley symbolise?
He is the epitome of toxic masculinity, also symbolising the American Dream.
- New America.
What does Bathing symbolise?
A biblical allusion to baptism, but also symbolic of rebirth and cleaning away sins.
What does Poker symbolise?
Poker symbolises the game of life: using bluffing, deception and strategic thinking to win - Blanche is driven by emotion so she fails.
What does the Varsouvonia Polka Music symbolise?
Blanche’s deteriorating mental state, as well as a loss of innocence.
What do Steve and Eunice represent?
The foils of Stanley and Stella.
What does the young man represent?
Blanche’s desire to return to her youth; to feel youthful.
What does Mitch represent?
Mitch represents sanctuary for Blanche as he opens the gate to marriage and a nuclear family: can finally become the ‘Madonna’ she’s always dreamed of.
What does the Paper Moon song symbolise?
Imminent disaster and a tragic turn of events.
What does the Blue Piano symbolise?
Stanley’s music: the threat of him but also of New America.
- The invasion of Stanley.
Stella’s Labour:
Symbolic of the couple’s unbreakable connection; just as Stella is more angry with Stanley than ever, the baby literally stops her anger. A
Use of Expressionism and Plastic Theatre:
The outside and the inside world blending together for Blanche, demonstrating how she feels as if she has no safe space; the danger is now inside.
She cannot differentiate between illusion and reality.
‘poetic realism’ of New Orleans.
What does Elysian Fields symbolise?
The Greek Afterlife = the whole of the play is Blanche’s purgatory (has to face the consequences of her actions).
What does Blanche symbolise?
The Old South / Southern Belle.
What does the Streetcar symbolise?
The power of desire as the driving force behind the characters’ actions.
Modernity.
What does Stella symbolise?
The bridge between the Old South and New America.
What does Blanche’s trunk symbolise?
Her past, emotional ‘baggage’.
What does the Locomotive symbolise?
The personification of society’s harsh glare.
