Sound

Question 1

Diegetic Sound to provide atmosphere

Answer 1

• firmly root the play in a gritty, realistic world
• the Blue Piano: ‘expresses the spirit of life which goes on here’ - symbolising the cultural disparity between Blanche and New Orleans, further emphasised by the ‘relatively warm and easy intermingling of races’
• it continuously overlaps with and runs alongside dialogue
• ‘REEEEEED HOTS’ sounds from outside the apartment further emphasise the cultural diversity

Question 2

Blue piano

Answer 2

• a diegetic sound used to emphasise the unstoppable new American future
• ‘I let the place go? Where were you? in bed, with your - Polack’ as they fight about losing belle Reve, the music represents her melancholy loneliness (blues and sadness) but also Stella’s new future
• ‘the music of the blue piano and trumpet and drums is heard’ - when Stan;ley hears Blanche saying ‘don’t hang back with the brutes’ and she welcomes him with ‘embraces him with both arms’ the ‘blue piano and trumpet and drums emphasises his victory as she fully embraces the new American future
• Williams also uses it to convey the moral decay of the new American future - associating it during the moments after Stanley’s violence toward Stella, emphasising violence as an inescapable quality of the new American future
• ‘luxurious sobbing, the sensual murmur fades away under the swelling music of the blue piano and the muted trumpet’ - this is the final stage direction - melancholy, pathos, but also victory of new american working class

Question 3

Varsouviana polka

Answer 3

• it sets the tone for blanche;’s metal state
• we only eventually realise it is on-diegetic and in her head only.
• it is associated with Alan’s suicide, her reaction is crucial as it reveals the intrusive nature of her thoughts, establishing the polka as a physiological trigger
• the ‘revolver’ silences it - visceral reality of death
• reflects her inner desire to escape the past, return to fantasy
• ‘rising with sinister rapidity’
• as the line between fantasy and reality is increasingly blurred, the polka becomes ‘feverish’ and rapid’ ‘she is drinking to escape it and the disaster closing in’

Question 4

The song of the paper moon

Answer 4

• this is diegetic
• ‘oh its only a a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea’ - as her fragile fantasy is unpicked the song is particularly tragic

Question 5

the rape scene

Answer 5

‘the hot trumpet and drums from the four deuces sound loudly’
- a brothel - foreshadowing rape
- ‘the varsouviana polka is filtered into a weird distortion, accompanied by cries and noises of the Jung;’e - filtered and distoreted with integration of noises form the jungle -a sense of insanity, generating pathos