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Streetcar Named Desire: Imagery, props, music, scene analysis
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Analysis of: all scenes, music, bath motif, light motif, animal imagery, games, colors, irony.
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A Note on the EpigraphThe epigraph to A Streecar Named Desire is taken from a Hart Crane poem titled
“The Broken Tower.” Crane was one of Williams’s icons. Williams’s use of this
quotation is apt, as Crane himself often employed epigraphs from his own icons,
including Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, and Blake. Williams felt a personal affinity
with Crane, who, like himself, had a bitter relationship with his parents and suffered
from bouts of violent alcoholism. Most important, Williams identified with Crane as
a homosexual writer trying to find a means of self-expression in a heterosexual
world. Unlike Williams, Crane succumbed to his demons, drowning himself in 1932
at the age of thirty-three.
Williams was influenced by Crane’s imagery and by his unusual attention to
metaphor. The epigraph’s description of love as only an “instant” and as a force that
precipitates “each desperate choice” brings to mind Williams’s character Blanche
DuBois. Crane’s speaker’s line, “I know not whither [love’s voice is] hurled,” also
suggests Blanche. With increasing desperation, Blanche “hurls” her continually
denied love out into the world, only to have that love revisit her in the form of
suffering
PREFACE
A Streetcar Named Desire, published in 1947, is one of the better known and much
staged plays of Tennessee Williams. Williams turned to his personal life for Themes and
subject matter for his plays, and yet there is certain universality about them, for his own
life aptly depicted the shattering of the American Dream and its effect on the American
people. These domestic dramas, therefore, depict the tragedy and despair of almost every
household. This is what makes Williams' plays relevant to the reader. Studying them will,
therefore, help the reader to learn more about himself and about the playwright.
THE TITLE OF THE PLAY
The reference to the streetcar or tram called Desire is highly ironic. Blanche has to travel
on it to reach Elysian Fields, her sister's home. It also means that she has already
indulged in Desire before reaching here. But this place will not bring her the rest and
security which the name 'Elysian Fields' indicates; instead, Blanche will experience
violence and brutality. In fact, she calls her sister's love for Stanley "brutal desire" and
likens it to the streetcar that she snobbishly dubs as a "rattle-trap". Ironically, desire does
become her trap. To escape her horrifying near-encounters with death through family
members, she sought Desire. Her sorrow is that the pleasure brought from Desire was
fleeting, just like the tram journey was short-lived. It could not give her security and
stability, the things she wants from life. Yet, she cannot return on the Streetcar named
Desire, because it is only a one way ticket; she has already ridden on Desire, and it has
brought her nothing but sorrow and loneliness. Ironically, the Streetcar named Desire
leads to the Streetcar named Cemetery. Blanche appropriately rides them both.
, SETTING
A Streetcar Named Desire is set in the residence of the Kowalskis located in a poor, yet
charming neighborhood of the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the
Kowalskis, the reader is introduced to the characters that are of varied origins in their
nationalities, in their backgrounds, and in their beliefs. Through the play, therefore, the
reader is given a glimpse of the world in coexistence. A Streetcar Named Desire is set in
the war-torn years of the forties.
Scene 1 - Notes
Tennessee Williams is a master of contrasts, and this opening scene of the play is filled
with them. The protagonist, Blanche Dubois, is described as white, light, and airy with an
aristocratic Old South heritage; in complete contrast to her, Stanley Kowalski, her
antagonist, is dark, masculine, and solid with an unrefined Polish heritage. Blanche is
shocked at the neighborhood where her sister Stella lives with her husband Stanley. Their
apartment is in an old, cramped, and decaying section of the New Orleans French
Quarter. It is a total contrast to the lovely and aristocratic neighborhood where Stella and
Blanche were raised in the Old South.
Stanley Kowalski is introduced as a man who is strikingly coarse and loud. He enters
wearing a loud-colored bowling jacket, shouts at the top of his voice to Stella, and
crudely throws a packet of bloody meat at her. He is a man who is impressed with
himself, demanding of others, and possessive of everything around him. (In fact, what
bothers him most about Blanche is that he cannot possess her, even though many other
men have.) In short, Stanley prepares the reader for the uncouth and brutal environment
into which Blanche is about to enter. When Blanche arrives, she states that she first took
a streetcar named Desire (hence the title of the play), then another one called Cemetery.
Through the names of streetcars, the dramatist indicates that "desire" leads to "death".
And in fact, the play will develop this theme. For the moment, however, the streetcars
lead Blanche to the French Quarter and the apartment of her younger sister Stella.
Ironically, Blanche enters, wearing white, the symbol of purity. She is described as moth-
like and afraid of light; in reality, she does live in a world of darkness and sin that she
cannot acknowledge. Although she drinks heavily, she tells Stanley she rarely touches
liquor; although she is fired from her job, she tells her sister she has taken a leave of
absence due to her nerves.
Tennessee Williams, in this opening scene, clearly shows his protagonist to be a liar -
both to herself and to those around her. He also successfully captures her state of
desperation; she takes refuge with her sister despite the shabby conditions. With her
heavy drinking, shattered nerves, fear of being alone, and pitiful financial status, it is no
small wonder, and an appropriate foreshadowing of things to come, that Blanche literally
feels sick after her first encounter with Stanley, who crudely questions her about her
marriage and offends her genteel sensibilities.
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