A streetcar named desire, by Tennessee Williams

“Many of the personages he (Tennessee) has created would seem to be projections of his
own disoriented personality, frightened, timid, groping, highly sensitive, somewhat neurotic
dreamers who, like their creator, are unable to adjust to the harsh realities of a world of crass
materialism and brute strength. Or, if they have been forced to make an adjustment, this
adjustment usually hardens and distorts them...”

He went on to tell his readers, “The new play is full-scale-throbbingly alive, compassionate,
heart-wrenchingly human. It has the tragic overtones of grand opera, and is, indeed, the
story of a New Orleans Camille—a wistful little trollop who shuns the reality of what she is
and takes gallant and desperate refuge in a magical life she has invented for herself”.

A new form of lyrical drama.

“There is a clear connection between the music and the characters. “The nightclub music
and the Varsouviana (a polka melody played when Blanche’s husband died that haunts her
at stressful times throughout the play) convey the emotional states of the characters at each
stage of the action”.

Characters

BLANCHE DUBOIS

A homeless woman in her thirties, Blanche arrives at her sister’s house at the beginning of
the play. Blanche had been a schoolteacher, married Allan, a man she later discovered to be
homosexual. Her reactions to his sexual orientation cause him to commit suicide. Lonely and
guilty, she becomes a prostitute, who loses her teaching position when her sexual
relationship with a teenager is discovered. After the family plantation Belle Reve is lost, she
turns to her sister Stella, who lives in with her husband Stanley in a poor area of New
Orleans. She hides her past and fragility behind her Southern aristocrat clothes and
manners and is critical of Stanley, calling him “bestial”. When her past is revealed, she loses
Mitch’s love and the potential of marriage. At the end of the play, she is raped by Stanley,
falls into insanity, and is taken to the state mental asylum.

STANLEY KOWALSKI

Stanley is a complicated mix of coarseness and sensitivity. He clearly loves his wife Stella,
as is shown when he fears that she has left him after he has thrown a radio through a
window and then attacked her. His famous cry, “Stella! My baby doll’s left me! A Teacher’s
Guide to the Signet Edition of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire . . . Stell-
ahhhhh!” (59), makes clear both his love for her and his violent nature. The very act of hitting
her shows his crude and violent side. Early in the play he says to Blanche, “I’m afraid I’ll
strike you as being the unrefined type” (31). When he hears her describe him as “an animal,”
“ape-like,” and “bestial” (71-72), she becomes his enemy. His intelligence is mostly animal
cunning and his power of speech limited to expressing basic desires.
STELLA KOWALSKI
Blanche’s sister and Stanley’s wife, Stella is happily married throughout the play, in spite of
incidents such as the argument resulting in Stanley hitting her. Even then, she is quickly
brought back to her happiness by Stanley’s crying out for her. She is a contented person,
adjusted to a life that is very different from her younger years on the plantation. She has
many friends, most of whom reflect the neighborhood in which she lives. The contrast
between the two sisters—Stella a normal, happy, and average woman and Blanche a
refined, hypersensitive, and decadent aristocrat—is soon obvious. Shortly after Blanche’s
arrival, Stella seems uneasy although she clearly wants to help her sister. She has to make
a choice between dedication to Blanche and commitment to Stanley. She chooses Stanley,
although painfully, and lets her sister walk out of her life.

HAROLD MITCHELL (MITCH)

Mitch, one of the poker players, is a young unmarried man who lives with his mother. During
the poker scene, he and Blanche are attracted to each other. He leaves the game to talk
with her. Blanche turns on a radio and they dance until Stanley in a rage throws the radio out
a window and hits Stella. Later Blanche and Mitch talk. She tells him of the death of her
husband, at first making it appear she was not critical or angry with him, then confessing the
truth. Mitch comforts her, then proposes: “You need somebody. And I need somebody, too.
Could it be—you and me, Blanche?” (96). Later Stanley tells Mitch the full story about
Blanche’s past. Mitch confronts Blanche and attempts to have sex with her, but she drives
him away. “Blanche knows that any hope now of establishing a saving relationship with
another human being is lost”.

EUNICE AND STEVE HUBBELL

The upstairs neighbors of the Kowalskis. Eunice is present when Blanche arrives. Steve is
one of the poker players.

MEXICAN WOMAN

A street vendor about whom Williams writes, “She is a blind Mexican woman in a dark shawl,
carrying bunches of those gaudy tin flowers that lower class Mexicans display at funerals
and other festive occasions” (119). She appears selling flowers near the end of the final
argument between Blanche and Mitch.

Synopsis of the play

SCENE ONE

Blanche expresses a concern that Stanley may not like her. Stella reassures her but also
tells her not to compare him to men they knew when they lived at Belle Reve. Blanche tells
her that Belle Reve has been lost and blames Stella for the loss because she left home.
They have an argument about who is to blame. Stella begins to cry and goes into the
bathroom.

Stanley, Steve, and Mitch return, and Blanche hides from Stanley. He enters the house,
sees Blanche, and they talk. Stanley asks her if she is “going to shack up here. Blanche
says she will if he approves. He tells her he does but asks if she was ever married. Blanche
says yes and tells him “the boy died” (31).

SCENE TWO

Stanley goes to Blanche’s trunk and pulls out her clothes and jewelry to prove that she has
money when they do not. Stella becomes angry, tells him, “You have no idea how stupid and
horrid you’re being” (36) and leaves.

Stanley’s comment—”If I didn’t know that you was my wife’s sister, I’d get ideas about you”
(41)—makes clear the underlying sex that is part of their new relationship. Stanley asks to
see papers related to the loss of Belle Reve. Blanche says that everything she owns is in her
trunk. While explaining the Napoleonic code, Stanley also mentions that Stella is pregnant.

After Blanche tells her that she treated Stanley’s comments as a joke, she admits to flirting
with him. The poker players arrive, and Blanche and Stella leave for dinner and a show.

SCENE THREE

The scene begins with Steve, Pablo, Mitch, and Stanley playing poker. Stella and Blanche
retreat to the bedroom and encounter Mitch leaving the bathroom, and she comments “That
one seems—superior to the others” (49). Stella agrees and answers Blanche’s questions
about him, including that he is not married.

He and Blanche talk. He places a Chinese lantern over a bare light at Blanche’s request,
because she fears that the bright light will reveal her age. They continue talking despite
Stanley’s shouting at him. Stella returns to the bedroom from the bathroom and turns on the
radio. Blanche and Mitch begin to dance. Stanley rushes in and throws the radio out the
window. Stella says, “Drunk—drunk—animal thing, you!”(57), and he rushes toward her.

The other men drag Stanley away. Blanche takes Stella upstairs as the men take Stanley
into the bathroom and, after a struggle, turn the shower on him. The men leave. Stanley
comes out of the bathroom, soaking wet, and calls for Stella. Getting no answer, he says,
“My baby doll’s left me!” (59). After trying to call upstairs, Stanley goes outside to the front of
the house and “throws back his head . . . and bellows his wife’s name, “STELLLAHHHHH!”
(60). Stella comes down the stairs, and “they come together with low, animal moans” and he
carries her into the house (60).

Blanche appears at the top of the stairs looking for Stella. Mitch enters, speaks with her,
offers her a cigarette, and they sit on the steps. Blanche closes the scene with a comment
that anticipates a famous line at the end of the play, “Thank you for being so kind! I need
kindness now” (61).

SCENE FOUR

The next morning Blanche finds Stella in bed alone and asks where Stanley is. Learning that
he is away briefly, she begins to express her disgust for Stanley, saying, “You’re married to a
madman” (64). Stella defends him, although she admits he can be violent.
SCENE FIVE

Stanley and Blanche exchange insults, and he brings up the hotel where she was a
prostitute. He exits. Blanche asks Stella if she has heard any rumors. When she says no,
Blanche begins to hint about what happened in the hotel. When Stella brings Blanche a
drink, Blanche becomes emotional about the support that Stella gives her and promises to
leave soon.

A young man arrives collecting for the newspaper, and Blanche flirts with him and kisses him
as he tries to leave. Mitch then arrives with roses.

SCENE SIX

At two o’clock the next morning, Blanche and Mitch return from “the amusement park on
Lake Pontchartrain” (85). She invites him in and, in the dark, serves drinks. They talk about
themselves.

The conversation then turns to Mitch’s relationship with his mother, her sickness, and the
loneliness he will experience following her death. Blanche talks of her husband’s death in an
extended monologue. She lies to Mitch telling him that she accepted Allen’s older lover and
they went out together as friends. Later, she says that Allen shot himself because she had
told him, “‘I saw! I know! You disgust me...’” Mitch then puts his arms around her and says,
“You need somebody. I need somebody, too. Could it be—you and me, Blanche?” Blanche
replies, “Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly!” (96).

SCENE SEVEN

Several months later, Stella is setting the table for Blanche’s birthday dinner. Stanley tells
Stella that he has learned from someone at work that Blanche lived in a hotel where she had
prospective husbands, each of whom left her after two or three dates, was a prostitute with
soldiers from a nearby army base, was told by the hotel to leave and not come back, and
had an affair with a seventeen-year-old boy whose father discovered what happened and
told the superintendent of the school where she taught. As a result, Blanche was fired and
“practically told by the mayor to get out of town” (100). Stella denies the stories are true.

Stanley confesses that he has told Mitch about Blanche’s life and that Mitch won’t be
marrying her. He tells Stella that Blanche will be leaving in a few days and he has bought her
a bus ticket. They argue about forcing Blanche to leave.

After telling Stella how refreshed she feels after the long bath, Blanche notices Stella’s
expression and asks what is wrong. Stella denies that anything has gone wrong. Blanche
says, “You’re lying! Something has!” (105).

SCENE EIGHT

The birthday dinner is nearly over, and Mitch has not joined them. Stella criticizes Stanley for
his greasy hands and face. She tells him to wash his hands and help clear the table. He
smashes a plate on the floor, grabs her, and orders her not to call him “Pig— Polack—
disgusting—vulgar—greasy” (107).

The phone rings, and Stanley answers it. It is not Mitch. Stanley gives Blanche a birthday
present, the bus ticket back home. Blanche runs to the bathroom where she can be heard
vomiting. Stella criticizes him for having done that to Blanche. He changes into his bowling
shirt as he reflects on the happy lives they led together until Blanche arrived. As he talks,
Stella goes into labor. Stanley holds her as they leave for the hospital.

SCENE NINE

Later, Mitch rings the doorbell. After Blanche applies makeup and puts away the whisky she
has been drinking, she lets him in. Mitch comments that the room is dark. Blanche replies, “I
like the dark. The dark is comforting to me” (116). Mitch tells her that he hasn’t had a chance
to look at her in the light, as they never go out together during bright daylight. He tears the
shade off the lamp and turns it on. She covers her face, and he tells her he does not mind
her being older than she had looked in dim light but is angry about her lies and the pretense
of being refined and idealistic.

He confirms that Stanley told him the truth about her and that he has checked it out. She
blames her affairs, including the one with a seventeen-year-old boy, on her loneliness
following the death of her husband. She reminds Mitch that they both need someone. He
accuses her of lying to him. As the Mexican woman peddles flowers, Blanche opens the
door. When the woman offers to sell Blanche some flowers, she retreats, and closes the
door. The flower woman’s calls mix with Blanche’s incoherent talk. Mitch attempts to put his
arms around her. She asks what he wants, and he responds, “What I been missing all
summer.” Blanche cries, “Then marry me, Mitch” (120). Saying he doesn’t want to marry her,
he explains, “You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother (121). She
orders him to leave and screams “fire” out a window when he doesn’t. He exits and she
drops to the floor.

SCENE TEN

Later that night, Blanche is drinking heavily. Stanley arrives home and stands in the kitchen.
After asking how the baby is and learning it will not be born until morning, Blanche tells him
she has had a telegram from a former boyfriend inviting her on a cruise. He offers her a
beer, comments on this news, and takes off his shirt.

She tells him that she rejected Mitch but, in doing so, reveals that there was no telegram.
Stanley accuses her of “lies and conceits and tricks,” including the lie about Mitch’s return.
All she can say is “Oh!” after each criticism, including his negative comments on her dress.
Returning to the bedroom, she picks up the phone, asks for Western Union, and starts to
dictate a message as Stanley returns from the bathroom. He hangs up the phone and moves
to the front door. She tries to get by him, then breaks a bottle and threatens him. He grabs
her and she drops the bottle. He carries her to the bed and rapes her.
SCENE ELEVEN

A few weeks later, the men are playing poker again. Stella is putting Blanche’s things in the
trunk. Eunice arrives, tells Stella the baby is well, and asks about Blanche, who is in the
bathroom. Stella replies that they’ve “made arrangements for her to rest in the country” and
that Blanche thinks it means she will be with the man from whom she pretended to get the
telegram. Blanche asks Stella to take a message if there is a phone call, describes the
clothes and jewelry she wants to wear, and asks Stella to get them ready. When Blanche
returns to the bathroom, Stella tells Eunice, “I couldn’t believe her A Teacher’s Guide to the
Signet Edition of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire story [about the rape] and
go on living with Stanley” (133).

A doctor and nurse arrive and ring the doorbell. Eunice answers the door and tells Blanche it
is for her. Eunice confirms Blanche’s guess that it is “the gentleman I was expecting from
Dallas” (137). When Blanche discovers that the man outside is not Huntleigh, she becomes
upset and returns through the kitchen to the bedroom.

Outside Stella hears Blanche’s cries and blames herself for what has happened to Blanche.
She tries to enter the house but is stopped by Eunice. Mitch heads for the bedroom but is
stopped by Stanley. The doctor enters the bedroom, calms Blanche, helps her up, and walks
with her into the kitchen. Blanche, speaking to the doctor, utters one of the most famous
lines from the play, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (142).

When Blanche, the doctor, and the nurse have turned the corner, Eunice brings the baby to
Stella. Stanley speaks to Stella, who is crying, saying “voluptuously, soothingly: ‘Now,
honey. Now, love. Now, now love.’” While speaking, “He kneels beside her and his fingers
find the opening of her blouse” (142). Steve utters the final words of the play, “This game is
seven-card stud” (142).

While reading

- The ‘’Blue Piano’’ expresses the spirit of life which goes on here.
- BLANCHE: You came to New Orleans and looked out for yourself. I stayed at Belle
Reve and tried to hold it together! (...) Where were you? In bed with your--Polack!
- STANLEY has an animal joy in his being, implicit in all his movements and attitudes.
He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications.
- STELLA (about Blanche): Admire her dress and tell her she’s looking wonderful.
That’s important with Blanche. Her little weakness!
- STANLEY (to Blanche): Since when you give me orders?
- BLANCHE: Oh, in mu youth I excited some admiration. But look at me now!

Facts

- Companionship: All the characters want love and companion.

- The ‘’Blue Piano’’ represents the sad/broken atmosphere of the play,
 - Blanche associates the ‘’Varsoviana’’ polka with her young husband’s suicide.
Blanche and her husband were dancing the polka when she lashed out at him for his
homosexual behaviour, and he left the dance floor and shot himself. The music plays
when is reminded of her husband in specific or when she is particularly disturbed by
the dramatic past in general. The polka continues until somen event in the real world
distracts herr or until a gunshot goes off in her memory.
- Blanche’s tragedy can be divided in PAST (flashbacks ‘’The Varsoviana’’) and
PRESENT. In past, we have her husband’s suicide (Allan’s death), loss of her Belle
Reve (of a property, a house), loss of job (she was fired from the school in which she
was teaching) and affairs with young men (she was dissatisfied with her sexual life
and with her life in general). In present, we have birthday party (loss of Mitch), rape
(by Stanley), Stella’s rejection (most important), and everything finishes in the
sanatorium (madness). She is depicted as a loser: she loses everything.
- Blanche wants to belong to somewhere, but she doesn’t.
- She is always worried about her appearance (‘’How do I look?’’) and, in order to feel
beautiful, to feel young and to feel desired by others, she has affairs with young men
(which may be also a way of remembering her dead husband, who was younger than
her).
- Before the rape: ‘’He doesn’t look at her but slams the bathroom door shut as he
goes in.’’ With that violence, we can perceive something bad is going to happen.
- Rape: She is living in a world of illusions, so she’s not really aware of the danger of
the situation (flirting with someone like Stanley). Besides, she’s not concern about
the inner side of the people because of her superficiality. In fact, she is a victim of her
own illusions and lies (like Gatsby).
- BLANCHE: ‘’Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think’’ ‘’The little there is belongs to people
who have experienced some sorrow’’ ‘’Show me a person who hasn’t know any
sorrow and I’ll show you a superficial’’. This dialogue with Mitch kind of shows how
she thinks of herself. She knows at heart that being broken makes her more sensitive
and complex that she may seem.
- The importance of possession in Stanley: ‘’Blanche! Oh, Blanche! Can I please get
my bathroom?’’ which could also be ‘’get out of my life.’’ After this, he gives her the
bus ticket as a birthday present.

Symbolism

- Poker game - Seven card stud: Stanley (the king) and Blanche (the queen/dame)
plays for a prize (Stella). But he plays from his male world, from his privileged
position, from the side of power and authority, meanwhile she plays from the sad
reality. ‘’Every Man is a King!’’ ‘’A pair of queens’’: Metaphor of Stella and Blanche
being together, united, and that’s why he’s losing his game, as a possessive man. A
‘’stud’’ is a horse (a stallion), so there’s a connection between the name of the game
and Stanley’s personality. There’s also a parallelism between the kind and the queen
in the rape scene: ‘’...and you are the Queen of the Nile! Sitting on your throne and
swiling down my liquor! I say--Ha!--Ha! Do you hear me? Ha-- ha--ha!’’.
- The streetcar that Blanche took at the beginning went from Desire to Cemetery could
be connected with her limits between Sanity and Madness.
 - The jungle: wild animals with basic instincts coming for Stanley (he’s depicted as an
animal, as a pig). ‘’Tiger--tiger! Drop the bottle top! Drop it! We’ve had this date with
each other from the beginning!’’ The tiger represents the inhumanity of Stanley, the
inhumanity of the male world.
- The Blanche’s insistence of cleaning herself is related to her idea of purification
because she feels guilty of her husband’s death.
- Blanche invents her own death: ‘’I’m going to die at the sea…’’. She wants her ache
to sink forever.

Topics

- Loneliness: Blanche feels alone, that’s why she wants the attention of people and
feel appreciated in order to feel important in a world of loneliness.
- The need to survive, although she loses everything.
- The world of desire.
- Violence (physical and emotional).
- The clash between reality (Stella) and illusion (Blanche).
- Getting mad to survive in a mad world.
- Emotional dependence: Blanche, a lonely woman, always depends on people (‘’I
have always depend on the kindness of strangers.’’)

The snows of Klimanjaro, by Ernest Hemingway

- Failure as an artist (by Harry, as a writer)

- Dialectical struggle.
- Psychological interpretation of masculinity.
- Inversion of stereotypes/gender roles (Helen is the one supporting Harry
economically).
- Sexual violence: prostitutes.
- War flashbacks.
- Deterioration: physical (leg’s gangrene), emotional (a life of pretending), professional
(failure as writer/artistic mediocrity).
- ‘’Love is a dunghil.’’ Not a balanced relationship between Harry and Helen: Harry
depicts the superiority (although she’s the one that has the economic power),
meanwhile Helen depicts submission.
- Approach to death: Resignation of Harry to death.

Animal imagery

- Leopard: a symbol of immortality, although it also represents strength and courage.

The leopard has attempted to overcome difficult situations to attain its goal, climbing
 to great elevations in frigid temperatures toward the mountaintop. Arriving near the
summit before succumbing to the lethal cold, the leopard achieves a form of
immortality as its frozen body is preserved for all time.

In his final moments, Harry believes that he is achieving the leopard's higher plane of
existence, or redemption, as Compton flies him toward the square top of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
However, the "unbelievable whiteness" Harry perceives isn't a doorway to heaven; it is
instead his moment of death. While the leopard remains unblemished for eternity, Harry's
corpse continues disintegrating on the plain below.

- Hyena: represents Harry's psychological or spiritual death and foreshadows his

physical demise. It also represents Harry's gradual dependence on the life provided
by Helen's money. "Scavenging" off her wealth has stifled any efforts to reenter his
former writing life.

When Harry dies, the hyena makes a "strange, human, almost crying sound," signaling the
final futility of Harry's dreams. The hyena's crying is another instance of mystery in nature.

- Vultures: symbolize Harry's impending death. Where the hyena that haunts Harry
and Helen's camp is at first seen only as darkness descends, the vultures are far
bolder. They arrive at the moment their truck breaks down, sensing perhaps that the
humans are now isolated and at risk.

When Harry and Helen quibble about whether or not he's dying, Harry even calls on the
vultures as witnesses to his imminent demise: "Ask those bastards," he quips. When night
falls, the birds roost in the tree that shades the camp, returning to their vigil in the morning.

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