Foreshadowed In A Streetcar Named Desire
Blanche’s Identity and How It Was Foreshadowed In Blanch’s First Lines Of The Play
In Tennesse Williams’ A Street Car Named Desire, Williams sets up the character of Blanche as soon as she is introduced in the play. Her desire, her heartbreak, her downfall, and her extremely complex past are all foreshadowed in Blanch’s first lines of the play, “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!” (Blanche Du Bois, 6). The street-cars, desire and cemeteries, are symbolic to Blanche’s character, even the town’s name, Elysian Fields, has a symbolic meaning that is essential to the development and foreshadowing of further things to come in the play. The, …show more content…
Later in the scene, we find out that Blanche had lost hers and Stella’s plantation. There were an abundance of other deaths in the family that Blanche had to deal with and pay for. “Death is expensive!” (22), Blanche says to Stella explaining herself. “That long parade to the Graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, That dreadful way! So big with it,…(scene 1, pg 21)” Blanche obviously couldn’t afford all these funerals on a teaching salary. Stanley implies that Blanche had been prostituting in Laurel at The Flamingo, “The Flamingo is used to all kinds of goings-on. But even the management of the Flamingo was impressed by Dame Blanche!” (120). Ultimately Blanche was trying to restore her life after the copious amounts of deaths that she witnessed. Blanche is convinced she caused her young husbands suicide by telling him “You disgust me…” (115). Blanche claims that her husband, Allan, was the only person she ever loved. After that happened she must have been left with a huge hole inside her and just looking for someone to fill it. Her job was lost because of a 17 year old who, “she’d gotten mixed up with! (Stanley, 122) which gives reason to suggest she was trying to relive the best days of her life. It seems like she is trying to doing the same thing in scene 5 with the young man she encounters who makes her “mouth water.
In Tennesse Williams’ A Street Car Named Desire, Williams sets up the character of Blanche as soon as she is introduced in the play. Her desire, her heartbreak, her downfall, and her extremely complex past are all foreshadowed in Blanch’s first lines of the play, “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!” (Blanche Du Bois, 6). The street-cars, desire and cemeteries, are symbolic to Blanche’s character, even the town’s name, Elysian Fields, has a symbolic meaning that is essential to the development and foreshadowing of further things to come in the play. The, …show more content…
Later in the scene, we find out that Blanche had lost hers and Stella’s plantation. There were an abundance of other deaths in the family that Blanche had to deal with and pay for. “Death is expensive!” (22), Blanche says to Stella explaining herself. “That long parade to the Graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, That dreadful way! So big with it,…(scene 1, pg 21)” Blanche obviously couldn’t afford all these funerals on a teaching salary. Stanley implies that Blanche had been prostituting in Laurel at The Flamingo, “The Flamingo is used to all kinds of goings-on. But even the management of the Flamingo was impressed by Dame Blanche!” (120). Ultimately Blanche was trying to restore her life after the copious amounts of deaths that she witnessed. Blanche is convinced she caused her young husbands suicide by telling him “You disgust me…” (115). Blanche claims that her husband, Allan, was the only person she ever loved. After that happened she must have been left with a huge hole inside her and just looking for someone to fill it. Her job was lost because of a 17 year old who, “she’d gotten mixed up with! (Stanley, 122) which gives reason to suggest she was trying to relive the best days of her life. It seems like she is trying to doing the same thing in scene 5 with the young man she encounters who makes her “mouth water.