Streetcar Named Desire (Show and Tell )

Streetcar was written by Tennessee Williams, also known as Thomas Lanier Williams. This play was first opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949. The script itself won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948, and has since been made into several movie versions, and re-enacted by many throughout the days following its release.

 

 

In this script, an older Blanche visits her sister in NOLA due to circumstances that aren't truly revealed until the latter end of the story. While Blanche is staying in small quarters with her sister, Stella, and her husband, Stanley, she soon begins to woo Mitch, one of Stanley’s friends. After a good deal of time where Blanche does nothing but bathe, and have Stella wait on her, the truth comes out about why she's really in New Orleans. Stanley reveals that Blanche was all but run out of town after she was caught having intimate relations with one of the English students. In the end of the story after Blanche is raped by Stanley, and ultimately sent over the edge due to this trauma combined with her first young husband killing himself because she fount he was gay, Blanche is believed to have gone completely bonkers, and whisked away by the doctor leaving Stella, her new born, and Stanley all alone, and Stella unaware that Stanley actually raped Blanche.

 

 

Two choices that stood out to me was, the fact that Stella called the Looney-doctor when Blanche tried to tell her about what happened between her and Stanley, and the fact that the writer choose to show how attracted Blanche is to the younger men by her kissing the boy who was collecting the newspaper bill. In the beginning of the play, it was set to where Stella believe everything her older sister Blanche had to say, yet when Blanche says something that would affect the household of Stella, Stella quickly loses trust in Blanche's words. I was confused as to why Stella would be the one to call the hospital instead of Stanley since he despises her character so much. I think the fact that the writer included the part where Blanche kissed the newspaper boy really helped to show how Blanche is still devastated over losing her young husband, and how she feels as though she’s stuck in that same age and period in time.