Quotes Flashcards
(15 cards)
‘They told me to take a streetcar named Desire… ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!’
- Allegorical journey Blanche has taken to get to this spot
- Greek mythology = Elysian Fields = final resting place of heroic & virtuous souls
- Blanche’s pursuit of taboo desires lead to death of hometown
- Landed in afterlife = misfortune, delusion & new home
‘I let the place go? Where were you! In bed with your - Polack!’
- Judging Stella for choosing lower class lifestyle over Belle Reve
- Blanche jealous of relationship with husband = stability & freedom while Blanche burdened with ghosts of past
- Stella feels guilty for leaving, casting herself as a martyr rather than admitting mistakes
‘Since earliest manhood the centre of (Stanley’s) life has been pleasure with women, the giving & taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power & pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens’
- Zoomorphorism = shows animalistic nature, innate sexual desires, raw physicality & brute force
- Animal metaphors = lust & tense sexually charged current between Stanley & Blanche
- Blanche throughout attempts to draw contrast with him by emphasising her delicate aristocratic nature
After all, a woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion’ - Blanche
- Illusion vs reality = Blanche
- Light, baths & alcohol used as symbols
- Hides reality from others & herself
- Unanswered statements = other 50%
‘The kitchen now suggests that sort of lurid nocturnal brilliance, the raw colours of childhood’s spectrum’
- Vibrant nature of New Orleans vs dark of South
- Kitchen garish to Blanche & aristocratic upbringing
- Blanche = white & clothing to suggest purity & innocence
- Loudly coloured kitchen shows Stanley’s domain = operates on primarily physical level
I cant stand a narked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action’
- Extended metaphor & motif = paper lantern covering harsh light
- Wants to literally appear more beautiful, symbolically take control over reality
- Portraying herself as smart mannered aristocratic woman
- Fear of the truth, wants to live in fantasy rather than youth haunting her
‘There are things that happen between a man & a woman in the dark-that sort of make everything else seem-unimportant’
- Stella’s vagueness of sexual relations = euphemism & language of shadows around Blanche
- Ironic = expelled from Laurel in Mississippi for promiscuity
- Pretends to be innocent & naive about carnal desire
‘What you are talking about is brutal desire-just-Desire!’
- Metaphor for powerful & dangerous emotion that propels characters into play
- Desire is engine that powers New Orleans in play = plastic theatre
- Reminded of constant, inescapable presence throughout = force that governs everyone
- Blanche fears it = shows raw, animal energy
‘Dont- dont hang back with the brutes’
- Blanche’s characterisation of Stanley = prejudice overtones
- Derogatory
‘I dont want realism. I want magic!’
- Mitch rips paper lantern off lightbulb
- Blanche wants to be concealed from Mitch
- Blanche terrified of facing truth, around sordid past & future prospects
- Mitch lives in real world, firmly grounded in light of day to by taken in by her magic forever
’ You left nothing here but spilt talcum & old empty perfume bottles - unless it’s the paper lantern you want to take with you. You want the lantern’
- Blanche attempts to stall her trip to asylum = signifies forced acceptance of reality
- Lantern shows how far Blanche has fallen = gone from wealthy cultured upbringing to owning nothing but piece of paper
- Paper lantern signified Blanche’s mania for hiding reality in illusion & cloaking hash truth with fanciful stories
- Talcum bottles & lantern = show false effects of theatre itself
- When Blanche exits, play ends = glue that holds illusion of the play itself together
‘Whoever you are - I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’
- Blanche’s final line = demonstrates her full descent into madness
- Lost grip on reality
- Southern belle = doctor approaches her gently, relaxing back into delusion
- Shows apparent innocence
- Doesn’t need psychiatric help, cant differentiate own delusions between dream & reality
‘Turn that over-light off! Turn that off ! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare’
- Introduces motif = symbols of reality & fantasy
- Blanche doesn’t want to be revealed in the light of truth, prefers mysterious shadows of her own delusions
- Works hard to avoid merciless glare of reality by drinking alcohol amongst bawdy realities of Kowalski household
‘Say its only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea - But it wouldn’t be make believe If you believed me!’
- Blanche in bathroom taking bath in scene 7 popular song from 1933
- Lyrics refer to fantasies becoming reality if they believe fantasies are true
‘She’s soaking in a hot tub to quiet her nerves’
Uses baths as a motive to clean herself emotionally, mentally & physically
