A Streetcar Named Desire - Symbols
Summary of the symbols in Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire.
- Created by: JasmineP46
- Created on: 01-07-20 17:50
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- Symbols
- The Streetcar
- Elysian Fields
- Last stop on the line, paradoxically going no where - dead end.
- Life lived in transit - no destination.
- Greek mythology = final resting place of the souls of the heroic.
- Far from being the resting place she is seeking, the neighborhood is densely populated, poor, hot and loud from the noise of jazz and streetcars and trains.
- Williams called the streetcar, the "ideal metaphor for the human condition."
- Power of desire.
- Desire is a controlling force.
- Elysian Fields
- Varsouviana Polka
- Associated with Blanche's young husband's suicide.
- Plays in Blanche's mind.
- Bathing
- Attempt for purification
- Ritual cleansing = Pontius Pilate.
- Reminiscent of Lady Macbeth's famous hand-washing in Macbeth - the queen tries and fails to wash blood from her guilty hands.
- Blanche seeks rejuvenation, as though the bathwater were a Fountain of Youth.
- Attempt for purification
- Paper lantern
- Blanche's attempt to mask her past and her present appearance.
- Only a temporary solution that can easily be ripped away.
- A paper world cloaking reality also appears in the song, "Paper Moon".
- Blanche's attempt to mask her past and her present appearance.
- Alcohol
- When Stanley gets drunk, his masculinity is exaggerated.
- Blanche uses drinking as an escape mechanism.
- Names
- Blanche means white and DuBois means woods in French.
- Blanche self-identifies with the woods - a dark, solitary confinement.
- Blanche as a blank white page waiting to be written on.
- "To blanch" means to turn pale through shock. It has other meanings involving unnatural, traumatic processes.
- Blanche means white and DuBois means woods in French.
- Mental illness
- Williams' sister Rose was given a lobotomy and institutionalised for much of her life.
- Rose is also depicted in The Glass Menagerie.
- Williams' sister Rose was given a lobotomy and institutionalised for much of her life.
- Repressed homosexuality
- = Otherness and oppression
- The Streetcar
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