Streetcar themes
- Created by: esmechallis
- Created on: 13-01-16 09:25
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- Key Themes in A Streetcar Named Desire
- Sex and Death
- Blanche and Allan
- Blanche falls in love with Allan
- Allan is gay
- Blanche's harsh reaction to his sexuality provokes his suicide
- 'I know! I know! You disgust me...'
- 'The boy I had married broke away from me and ran out of the casino'
- His death also comes about because of his internalised love for someone else
- Blanche and Mitch
- Blanche falls for Mitch in a forced manner
- When Mitch and Blanche are being affectionate
- We hear about a lost love
- 'Sick people have such deep, sincere attachments.'
- 'I loved someone too, and the person I loved I lost'
- 'I showed the inscription, didn't I?'
- Blanche and Allan
- Light and Darkness
- Light
- Blanche's fear of aging
- Reveals Blanche's true identity
- Lost love
- Illusions
- Sexual/ physical threat
- Past youthful sexual innocence
- 'I can't stand a naked light-bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.'
- 'Could you give me a light'
- 'And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again...'
- Darkness
- Descent in madeness
- Departure from reality
- The desire to regain youth
- 'I like the dark. The dark is comforting to me.'
- Light
- Water
- Bathing
- Purifying herself
- Unhappiness in herself
- Sings Paper Moon in the bath - suggests plotting
- 'Oh I feel so good after my long, hot bath'
- Stanley's shower
- 'I want water'
- Straightforward like his personality
- Water is used to stop violent behaviour
- Storm + rain
- Storms = Blanche's feeling of entrapment
- 'I've run for protection, Stella, from one leaky roof to another...'
- Rain = cleansing
- 'Don't you just love these long rainy afternoons'
- Old regrettable life = Belle Reve's hot weather
- New life = New Orleans' cleansing rain
- Sea
- 'And when I die I'm going to die on the sea'
- When she dies she'll be rid of sins
- '...sailing over a cardboard sea'
- Bathing
- Blood/ Redness/ Fire/ Heat
- Blood
- 'I fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it'
- She'd do anything to be a happy Southern Belle again.
- There is danger in her clothes - inpure and ominous
- 'Red stained robe'
- Redness
- 'Red letter night'
- Hawthorne's Scarlett Letter
- Fire and heat
- 'I'll burn them'
- Trying to un-tarnish the letters that Stanley has touched.
- Fire is purifying to some cultures
- 'Fire! Fire!'
- 'Red hots'
- Mexican man - idea of multiculturalism
- Blood
- Sex and Death
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