A Street Car named Desire
This play is about New
Orleans and several characters. Stella and her husband Stanley, several of
Stanley’s friends, Blanche (Stella’s sister) and the upstairs neighbor, Eunice.
From the beginning, one could see that this place, New Orleans was not
paradise. Blanche comes to “visit” her sister and brother-in-law and ends up
staying for almost the entire time. The sisters are from Oriole, somewhere
South. It would seem as if they had a pretty posh life until recently. Blanche
is homeless and later we find out all kinds of juicy details about her. Blanche
tries to talk sense into Stella p. 1140 “In my opinion? You’re married to a
madman!” Stella doesn’t want to hear it, despite Blanche being correct. We find
out later, Stanley is a manipulative evil man.
The theme I chose is
women’s rights for this project. From the start, one could tell that women were
not respected in this area or the time period. Women were good for several
reasons: cook, sex and have babies. There is no strong woman figure in this
story and they were all manipulated by men. Women in this story had no back
bone to the rough men and kept going back to them after horrible things
happened.
I think that Stanley was
grossly misunderstood by Blanche. Yes, on the surface he seemed harmless and
simple minded but we find out that what he spun was a terrible scheme including
both sisters. A madman was simply a deeply troubled drunk man who, under
unknown circumstances ended up in Louisiana in The French Quarter. He seemed to
recover quickly enough when he seemed so drunk he lost his temper.
I see Stanley as an
opportunist, that is he saw dollar signs in Stella and she was easily
manipulated by his good looks. I believe he cheated on Stella and he even raped
her sister. What kind of man does that? A madman? I do not believe so, I think
he had the misfortune of living in a rough neighborhood, did time in WWII and
was an alcoholic. When he was younger, perhaps he tortured animals too. This
play was almost entirely dialogue, very descriptive dialogue.
I like how you give the Stanley two possible side, a mean, evil man, and the possibility that he was this way because he was a tortured soul. This gives me a deeper understanding of Stanley as a character.
ReplyDeleteYou offer an interesting interpretation of Stalnely as someone who is either mentally ill himself, or so impacted by his past experiences that he takes things out on others. What examples from the text help support these interpretations?
ReplyDeleteStanley was a soldier in War II with Mitch. They seem to excuse his behavior and I think he had ptsd which is considered a mental illness. The fact that he was so inclined to use alcohol to cover up this fact was reason enough. He had hidden agendas and people with PTSD tend to do this also.
DeleteYour post brings up many points that I hadn't considered before. It seems ironic how Blanche would tell Stella she's married to a madman when her mental stability doesn't deem her anymore sane. Because of the mental instability they both seem to possess, I felt that Blanche and Stanley had a sort of understanding between one another. One that translated into a love-hate relationship, because they could truly see each other for who they really were in reality.
ReplyDeleteYes, they were haunted by demons were enough to understand each other on a dark level.
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