Theme: Interior and Exterior Appearance

Question 1

What does the physical attention to the exterior and interior symbolise?

Answer 1

• Symbolises the complicated relationship between what goes on in the mind versus what occurs in real life.
• Points out the social and class distinctions

Question 2

How are the social and class distinctions pointed out using the exterior and interior of the play?

Answer 2

• Blanche is trying to keep up her outward appearance. She surrounds herself in her silks and rhinestones and fantasies of Shep’s yacht to maintain the appearance of being an upper class ingenue.
• Blanche calls Stanley a Polack and makes snide remarks about the state of the Kowalski apartment in order to maintain her own sense of external socials superiority

Question 3

How is music used to play with the boundary between the interior and the exterior?

Answer 3

Music allows the audience to enter Blanche’s head. When she hears the Polka music, the audience hears the polka, even though its only playing in her mind.