Key Literary Themes Flashcards
(2 cards)
Life force (ethos) and death drive force (thanatos)
Blanche operates between this liminality of the life force (sexuality) and death drive force. Freud’s psychoanalytic.
‘Funerals are quite, but deaths- not always. Sometimes their breathing is hoarse..‘presents death not as a static phenomenon but as an osmotic force compelling people to realise their own deaths. This is because bc Blanche wants to earn up to the ‘successor’ title after lost Belle reve, death of her husband and family members but failed,so she inherits the pattern of death and destruction to those who have been close to her.
Streetcar as Marxist irony
Class as only a cosmetic marker and becomes an empty rhetoric in a nation that is so desperate to break free from its past
Stanley scene 2 ‘the treasure chest of a pirate’ - which is characteristically Marxist in it pejorative caricature of the cap master as someone who acquires wealth through illegitimate means. Irony of Stanley as the proletariat property owner ‘napoleonic code’ - marital inheritance. In fact of all of blanche’s narcissism and myopia she’s not actually very materialistic and the fancy posturing is just a misguided means for her to seek emotional connection.
New Orleans = a confluence point for new and old America which meant an explosion of new economic activities for the rags to go rich- leads to reshuffling of social power and dynamics between the old money and emergent multicultural com. Exposes the glaringly hollow and useless nature of blanche’s so-called aristocratic credentials- doesn’t help her save belle reve from being seized by creditors, doesn’t gain respect or security. In short, her aristocratic southern charm no longer hold much purchase or prestige.
