A Streetcar Named Desire Essay -- A Streetcar Named Desire Essays

Though the primitive, rituals described in Schechners article go away from the realism found in Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire, the same reactualization serve well exists in his work. Williams Streetcar focuses on the mock battle or fuck contest between the generational cultures symbolized by Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalskis characters. Blanche, representative of the travel southern aristocracy, searches for sensitivity and kindness in the new world of Stanley Kowalski, the in advance(p) labor class. In Blanches search for safety, the semiotic theatrical qualities of the athletics become a ritualistic clash of the titans as both Blanche and Stanley bid for domination and control over the future generations realized in Stellas womb. Yet the tragic dethronement of previous generations - represented by Blanches exile from the community and her subsequent departure for the asylum leaves the audience without an Aristotlean catharsis. Rather, the classically r egenerative sacrifice of the herois gone what we have instead is a fortitude to general guilt, (Vlasopolos, 323), as Williams titanic unmasking dies away rather than closure the conflict. With such little hope offered in Williams dnouement audience members much query Streetcars resolution, finding no reactualizing forces in the death characters masks. However, the answer to this question lies in the mythological characterizations Williams creates in the battle between Stanley and Blanche. By examining the elemental semiotic properties Williams foregrounds in both Blanche and Stanleys titanic characters the audience may understand the moral force actualized in A Streetcar Named Desires as mythic ritual. Tennesse Williams ... ...colors of men have already been established in foregoing instances in the play. When Stanley first meets Blanche, he is returning from the roll alley. Though the horizontal surface directions do not explicitly state whether or not Stanley wea rs his bowling shirt in this scene, the bowling alley evokes the images of Stanleys bowling shirt, his immature and scarlet bowling shirt, (717). In this case, Stanleys appearance not that demonstrates his generations definition of masculinity, as an aggressive, indulgent, powerful, and proud expression of sex, (Falk, 95), but also as a bright splotch of color in the otherwise sensible grubbiness, (Brown, 41) of his home. Thus, Stanleys character, through both his physical gestus and colorful costumes, becomes symbolic of his generations manlike dominance, overwhelming and controlling the environment in which Blanche arrives.