A Street Car Names Desire Essay

A Street Car Named Desire deals with a culture clash surrounded by the Old Souths plantation mentality (priding itself on false pretenses) and the New Souths relatively uncivilized, yet real, grip on ingenuousness. The two characters who come to represent this tension are Blanche and Stanley Kowalski. Blanche advertises herself as a champion of Southern Honor. This entails an unfaltering dedication to virtue and culture. These are not, however, driving factors in her demeanor but only mask her alcoholism and delusions of grandeur.By contrast, Stanley is an industrial worker who acts on habit and structure. Tennessee Williams juxtaposes semblance and reality by depicting the antagonistic relationship between the two by consistently employing symbolic representation. Blanche is continuously escaping the realities of life by retreating into her own fabrications. Her plummet into a delusional world begins when her beloved husband break downs himself to be gay and, soon after, sho ots himself. She falls into a spiral of affairs after this event in a search to find emotional satisfaction and to reaffirm her womanhood.She ignores the obvious detrimental effect of her intimacies because all she wants is to be happy again to be loved. Blanche physically escapes the reality of her life by leaving Belle Reve and Laurel to go to her sisters home in New Orleans. Here, she misrepresents who she is and enters another relationship where she recreates her identity. When confronted or so her lies, Blanche explains that she lies because she refuses to accept the present fate has dealt her I dont want realism. I want magic Yes, yes, magic I try to give that to people.I misrepresent things to them. I dont give tongue to truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it (Williams, 34) Lying to herself and to others allows her to make life appear as she thinks it should be rather than as it is. Her final, d outwitd happiness (as her s ister and Stanley commit her to an insane asylum) shows her acceptance that illusion is an qualified reality, but it also shows realitys inevit adequate to(p) triumph. The driving force of reality, embodied by Stanley Kowalski, readily dismantles all the falsities Blanche comes to represent.He is a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world who disdains fabrications. He finds meaning only in the primitive and straightforward Theres something downright bestial about him He acts like an animal, has animals habits Yes, something ape-like about him (71). An animal would not create an alternate reality for a situation but would act according to the real, harshness of life in order to match its own survival. Stanleys animal habits can be minded at as an appreciation only for tactual truths. In the end, Stanley succeeds in debunking all the false images Blanche created about herself.He goes out of his way to reveal Blanches past and then flaunts it in a crude, insensitive w ay Take a look at yourself here in a worn-out Mardi Gras outfit, rented for 50 cents from some rag-picker Do you know that Ive been on to you from the start, and not once did you pull the wool over this boys eyes? Ha ha Do you hear me? Ha ha ha (67). Stanley again asserts his bestial tendency, but this succession to show his dominance. When he proceeds to physically rape her, he metaphorically strips her of the false reality she created.Williams uses symbolism to show that Blanche is trapped in a life of delusion. The Varsouviana Polka and the use of light are reoccurring symbols that elude to her disconnect with reality. The Polka is the music that played the night her husband committed suicide. Blanche says that it ends only after she hears the upright of a gunshot in her head. It plays at various points in the play, symbolising this event that triggered her mental decline. Whenever a situation gets too real, Blanche firmly believes she hears the Varsouviana, panics, and looses her grip on reality.Also, throughout the play, Blanche avoids appearing in direct, bright light, specially in front of Mitch And turn that over-light off Turn that off I wont be looked at in this merciless glare(45). It is clear she avoids the lights in efforts to conceal the reality of her age and attenuation beauty. Symbolically, Blanche avoids light in order to prevent Mitch from seeing her for who she is. She, once again, retreats into her own world of illusion. Blanche is never able to be looked at in the light and exposed.She never faces reality. Both Stanley and Blanche have a hard cadence relating to the other gender without sexual implications. The difference is that Stanley is upfront about this animalistic behavior towards women, while Blanche tries to key herself as above the primitive nature of her sexual impulses. We can call one approach down-to-earth and the other delusional, but it doesnt change the fact that both characters approach interactions in a sexual wa y. What does this say about the nature of what is real and what isnt? Williams seems to draw an ambiguous line. This implies that reality and illusions coexist in our lives, and what we choose to label our views and actions is just a matter of perspective.