streetcar quotes

Question 1

blanche arrival metaphor for everything

Answer 1

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 2

horniness runs in the family

Answer 2

our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications

Question 3

Blanche’s feels on Mitch

Answer 3

B: I want to deceive him enough to make him - want me…
S: Blanche, do you want him?
B: I want to rest!

Question 4

Blanche describes falling in love with Allan

Answer 4

It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that was how it struck the world for me.

Question 5

Allan’s suicide’s effect on Blanche

Answer 5

And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this - kitchen - candle…

Question 6

stanley pre-smashing plates at Blanche’s birthday tea

Answer 6

“Pig–Polack–disgusting–vulgar–greasy!”–them kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister’s too much around here! What do you two think you are? A pair of queens? Remember what Huey Long said–“Every Man is a King!” And I am the king around here, so don’t forget it!

Question 7

blanche’s feeling when mitch comes scene 9

Answer 7

she is so excited that her breath is audible as she dashes about

Question 8

why is blanche a ho

Answer 8

after the death of Allan - intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with.. I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection

Question 9

evidence Blanche told Stella about the rape

Answer 9

‘I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley’

Question 10

williams on heroes and villains

Answer 10

I don’t believe in ‘guilt.’ I don’t believe in villains or heroes—Blanche and Stanley are neither–I only believe in right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.

Question 11

blanche patronising stella behind her back

Answer 11

‘the poor thing was out there listening to us, and I have an idea she doesn’t understand you as well as I do’

Question 12

Blanche and stella’s relationship

Answer 12

‘you never did give me a chance to say much, Blanche. So I just got in the habit of being quiet around you.

Question 13

mitch could relieve Blanche’s trauma

Answer 13

I forgive you because it’s such a relief to see you. You’ve stopped that polka tune that I had caught in my head.
(the polka tune also ‘fades out’ when he embraces her after he opens up about Allan)

Question 14

stella infantilising stan

Answer 14

He was as good as a lamb when I came back and he’s really very, very ashamed of himself

Question 15

new orleans

Answer 15

a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races

Question 16

stan aint no polack

Answer 16

what I am is a one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack

Question 17

blnache qua being a fibber

Answer 17

I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought to be the truth.

Question 18

‘napoleonic code’ -> isn’t fussed that Stella has lost family home and may have been swindled, but

Answer 18

‘when you’re swindled under the napoleanic code I’m swindled too’

Question 19

characteristics associated with bold colours

Answer 19

(they are men at the peak of their physical manhood,) as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colours

Question 20

blue piano

Answer 20

This ‘blue piano’ expresses the spirit of the life which goes on there”

Question 21

polka

Answer 21

• when stan asks about her marriage
• when she’s talking to mitch about her marriage
• when stan gives her her ticket home
• first time stanley speaks to her after the rape and she runs from the doctor ‘the varsouviana is filtered into wierd distortion’

Question 22

why blanche drinks

Answer 22

he music is in her mind; she is drinking to escape it and the sense of disaster closing in on her

Question 23

only time blanche wears colour

Answer 23

scarlet satin robe scene 9 (mental breakdown after birthday, mitch comes round)

Question 24

the matron is scary

Answer 24

Divested of all the softer properties of womanhood, the matron is a peculiarly sinister figure in her severe dress

Question 25

williams view on mental hospitals sneaks in

Answer 25

the unmistakeable aura of the state institution with all its cynical detachment

Question 26

blanche’s take on why she’s where she is

Answer 26

I’ve run for protection, stella, from one leaky roof to another leaky roof - because it was storm - all storm, and I was caught in the centre…

Question 27

williams on expressionistic theatre

Answer 27

Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one valid aim, and that is a closer approach to truth. Everyone should know nowadays the unimportance of the photographic in art: that truth, life, or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest

Question 28

streetcar themes shocking

Answer 28

a Chicago judge called Streetcar “‘an immoral picture’ dealing with ‘sex, nymphomania, and liquor’

Question 29

Scene 10 the back wall becomes transparent so you can see the events in the street behind - what are they

Answer 29

• a ‘struggle’ between a prostitute and a drunkard

- negro woman rifling through prostitutes bag

Question 30

scene 2 relationship between stella and stanley

Answer 30

‘don’t be such an idiot stanley!’

(you come out with me while blanche is getting dressed) ‘since when do you give me orders?

Question 31

streetcar first production date

salesman first production date

Answer 31

1947

1949

Question 32

Harold Clurman’s criticism of the original broadway production of streetcar

Answer 32

criticized Mr. Brando making stanley too sympathetic - With the ‘‘collusion’’ of the audience, said Mr. Clurman, the play became ‘‘the triumph of Stanley Kowalski’’ rather than the tragedy of Blanche DuBois.