A Street Car Named Desire

By Tennessee Williams

Blanche DuBois: a psychologically disturbed high school teacher in her 30s Stella : Blanches younger, loving sister Stanley Kowalski : Stellas husband, a crude, masculine factory worker, dislikes Blanche because she behaves superior Mitch : Stanleys co-worker, interested in Blanche

Blanche comes to live with her sister and her husband after losing her job, plantation, childhood home and suicide of her husband Blanche and Stanley develop a strong antagonism towards each other The tension proves too much for Blanche who loses her grip on sanity and in the end is transferred to a mental asylum

 A sensitive study of the breakdown of a character(Blanche) under social and psychological stress

Men and Masculinity: aggression , control, dominance even violence Class difference : Old social elites vs. the 2nd ,3rd generation immigrants Fantasys Inability to Overcome Reality The Relationship between Sex and Death Fantasys inability to overcome reality Dependence on men Marriage( stability + social acceptibility) Society & class

Drugs & alcohol Appearance Madness Mortality

of the times acted as a stimulus to freer social activities, and dancing, always the pace-setter of social relations, reflected this 'escapism)

Shadows and cries the Varsouviana polka (The general tenseness

Its Only a Paper Moon meat

Flowers Light & paper lantern Names Blanche DuBois: white wood Stella: Star Belle Reve: Beautiful dream Desire, Cemeteries and Elysian Fields

Light bathing drunkenness

Blanche portrayed as the last representative of a sensitive, gentle love whose defeat is to be lamented Stanley represents the pessimistic view of modern man destroying the tender aspects of love Stanleys spine is to keep things his way, that he must fight off the destructive intrusions of Blanche who would wreck his home, The character of Blanche is thought to be based on Williams' sister Rose Williams who struggled with her mental health and became incapacitated after a lobotomy Exaggerated sighs, unnecessary screams of distress, and fluttery hand gestures are all employed by Blanche throughout the play as a veil to her true personality Streetcar depicted not a melodramatic villainous Stanley Kowalski, but a defensive, flawed, and relatable Stanley There is a clear connection between the music and the characters. The nightclub music and the Varsouviana (a polka melody played when Blanches husband died that haunts her at stressful times throughout the play) convey the emotional states of the characters at each stage of the action

They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and

transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off atElysian Fields!
Oh, I guess hes just not the type that goes for jasmine

perfume, but maybe hes what we need to mix with our blood now that weve lost Belle Reve.
People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But 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 dont ever call me a Polack.
Whoever you areI have always depended on the

kindness of strangers.