A Streetcar Named Desire Essay Research Paper

A Streetcar Named Desire Essay, Research Paper

The Realistic View-Point of A Streetcar Named

Desire

Through out the twentieth century, many great writers have come along and

altered the public.s thoughts of normality, and in many cases shocked their audiences by

presenting them with the brutal truth. This is exactly what the drama A Streetcar Named

Desire accomplished. Whether, intentionally or unintentionally, Tennessee Williams

succeeded in illustrating the need to forget what was in the past and stressed the idea of

looking ahead to the future. The use of realistic drama at the time were almost unheard

of, and Williams succeeded in becoming an innovator by setting the foundation for the use

of plays with themes of realism in modern dramatic theater. .Williams synthesizes depth

characterization, typical of drama that strives to be an illusion of reality, with symbolic

theatrics… In short, realism and the theatricalism, often viewed as stage rivals,

complement each other in this play(Mary Ann Corrigan, 575)..

Thomas (Tennessee) Lanier Williams was born on March 26 1911, in Columbus,

Mississippi. His father, Cornelius Coffin Williams, was a shoe salesman who spent a good

deal of his time out on the road away from his family. Williams had two siblings, one

older sister and one younger brother. The children spent most of their childhood in the

home of their maternal grand father who was an Episcopal minister. In 1927, Williams

received his first taste of literary acclaim when he placed third in a national essay contest,

for his essay entitled .Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport... After high school Williams

studied for several years at the University of Missouri, but dropped out before he received

a degree. Williams then took a job in St. Louis at the International Shoe Company where

his father worked. Williams did eventually return to college and received a degree from

the University of Iowa in 1938. In 1939, Williams moved to New Orleans where he

formally adopted the name .Tennessee,. which was the state of his grandfather.s birth. In

1945 Williams had his first real big success as a writer, with his play .The Glass

Menagerie. making its introduction on Broadway. Williams went own to write

twenty-five full lengthier plays, including A Streetcar Named Desire, he produced dozens

of short plays and screen plays, two novels, sixty short stories, over one hundred poems,

and an auto biography. For these works Williams received many awards including two

Pulitzer Prizes, one for A Streetcar Named Desire, and four New York Drama Critic

Awards, one for A Streetcar Named Desire (Tom Sullivan, 1). When asked by a reporter

why he began writing, Williams replied by stating .Why did I write. Because I found life

Unsatisfactory(Steven Daniels,1)..

.Williams has written some of the most moving dramas of the modern theater

(John Whitty, 575).. The realistic concepts displayed in A Streetcar Named Desire are

best exemplified through the conflicting characters of Blanche DuBois, and Stanley

Kowalski. Blanch posses as an illusion established in an effort of sustaining her normality,

portraying herself as a Southern belle, a fine, cultured, radiant young woman. This false

sense of identity is put up as a front to conceal the reality of her identity as a lonely,

alcoholic, prostitutive hussy. This disillusionment is forced out of her by Stanley, the

barbaric womanizer, who possesses animalistic values. Stanley succeeds in stripping away

Blanche.s false egocentric illusions and forcing her to face his animalistic reality (Mary

Ann Corrigan, 575). This incident is symbolically represented in the drama when Stanley

forces Blanch into the direct light of the lamp, symbolically enlightening her on the

absurdity of her disillusionment . These two character serve as contrasting figures

representative of the everyday struggle of reality verses disillusionment, in which reality,

as it did in the play, usually comes out as the victor. The one key factor which makes this

play realistic is the fact that Williams gives the character both positive and negative

personality traits, which makes the play easier to relate to by the audience and makes the

plot seem like it really could have occurred.

In placing the characters of Blanche and Stanley against each other, Williams

depicts an image of the weak being defeated by the strong. Dispite this fact, Stanley

represents an ambiguous moral character. Even though he possess a rough exterior of

animalistic and savage values he genuinely loves and needs his wife (Mary Ann Corrigan,

575). Thus further increasing the overall believability of the drama and adding to the

credential evidence of its realistic content.

Blanche DuBois is the epitome of the tragic hero. She is a liberated woman who

stops at nothing to get what she wants. Her tragic flaw lies in her false pretensions, and

disillusioned views of w

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