Streetcar Named Desire Flashcards
Context behind Elysian Fields:
- According to Roman Mythology Elysian Fields was a part of the underworld and a place of reward for the ‘dead’ therefore, Elysian fields was a place where souls went in their joinery back to life
Character: Blanche
About: Streetcar
Themes: Interior + exterior appearance, Sexual desire, Fantasy, Delusion
“They told me to take a street-car named desire… and get off at - Elysian Fields”
“they told me”
- Blanche is no longer in control of the direction that her life is going in almost as if it is destined to happen
“elysian fields”
- In greek mythology Elysian fields are the final resting place of heroic and virtuous souls
- Blanches pursuit of her taboo desires has led her through a kind of death, that is, her expulsion from her hometown
Character: Blanche
Themes: Fantasy+delusion, interior+exterior appearance, femininity + dependence
“Oh, my baby! Stella! Stella for star!”
- Blanches greeting for her sister shows her love for her, but also demonstrates her depression
- She is calling attention to the name’s allegorical meaning and in doing so emphasizes how she prefers to live in the beauty and fantasy that she constructs about herself, not in gritty reality
Character: Blanche
“You left! I stayed and struggled”
- Implies the isolation and disconnect that Blanche feels between her and Stella
- Blanche felt abandoned about her own sister
Character: Stanley Kowalski
Stage direction
Themes: Interior+exterior appearance, Sexual desire, Masculinity
“Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, but with the power of pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens”
- The animalistic metaphor is frequently used to signify lust and this symbolic dimension highlights the tense, sexually charged current between Stanley and Blanche
- This animalistic description of Stanley ultimately draws Blanche and him together. As blanche is described as a ‘moth’ as much as Blanche sees Stanley as a beast, she also recognizes that he is a magnet for women, and she is hardly immune
Scene 1 - Atmosphere (New Orleans portrayal)
- Cosmopolitan city, which does not suffer from racial discrimination
- However, there is an underlying feeling of decay. The houses are ‘weathered grey’ with ‘rickety stairs’.
- ‘decay’ implies that there is rot beneath the surface
Key context point: Williams own life
- The play was influenced on Williams’s life his mum was a ‘Southern Belle’ and his father was a alcoholic traveling salesman. His sister became increasingly unstable mentally and was eventually lobotomized. So she spent the rest of her life in a mental institution. William’s felt guilty about his sister. But he was also interested in death like Blanche who is haunted by the suicide of her husband
How is Vanity one of Blanches weaknesses:
- In scene 1 a weakness of Blanches is reveled of which is her vanity and her need for flattery. There is pathos in this as Blanche is afraid of growing old and loosing her looks, and needs flattery to banish her terrors
The use of the ‘blue piano’:
- An audience will hear the blue piano and the polka throughout scene one.
- The blue piano symbolizes New Orleans
What does the polka music symbolise:
- The motif of the Polka music of which only Blanche and the audience can hear has considerable dramatic weight; it recalls the last time Blanche danced with her husband Allen moments before his suicide.
- It is used to only created an atmosphere but also to stress an important aspect of the plot and of Blanche’s character
Character: Blanche
Themes: Femininity + independence, sexual desire, fantasy + delusion
“After all, a woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion”
Character: Blanche
Themes: Fantasy + delusion, sexual desire, interior+ exterior
“I can’t stand a naked light bulb, anymore than I can a rude remark of a vulgar action”
Character: Stella Kowalski
Themes: masculinity + physicality, interior + Exterior appearance
Shadows
“There are thing that happen between a man and a woman in the dark-that sort of make everything else seem - unimportant”
Character: Blanche DuBois
Themes: Interior + exterior appearance, Fantasy + Delusion
“It’s only a paper moon, just as Tony as it can be - But it wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me!”
Character: Blanche
Themes: sexual desire, Fantasy + delusion, Interior + exterior appearance
” I don’t want realism. I want magic!”
