In Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire, the character of Blanche DuBois represents the failed American Dream of the old South. Blanche, a former schoolteacher, comes to New Orleans to live with her sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski after losing the family plantation, Belle Reeve. The loss of Belle Reeve symbolizes the decline of the traditional Southern way of life and the Old South's aristocracy.
Blanche is depicted as a fading relic of this way of life, clinging to her refined manners and culture as a means of preserving her identity. However, her attempts to maintain this façade only serve to alienate her from the harsh realities of the modern world and from Stanley, who represents the new, industrial America.
Throughout the play, Blanche is unable to come to terms with the changes that have occurred in the South and the loss of her privileged status. She is unable to adapt to Stanley's brash and unrefined behavior, and their relationship is marked by tension and conflict.
Blanche's inability to reconcile her past and her present ultimately leads to her downfall. Her inability to accept Stanley and the new South leads to her losing touch with reality and descending into madness.
Ultimately, Blanche's story is a cautionary tale about the dangers of clinging to the past and the importance of adapting to change. It serves as a reminder that the American Dream is not a static concept and that it is necessary to continually strive for self-improvement and progress.
The Great Gatsby And A Street Car Named Desire
The distance we have with this life, to use a Brechtian notion, helps us get a gestalt view of it. Literature is one fact among the many and it could have, in turn, many facts in itself. The modern world is the world of facts, not truths. Although a mansion could represent the American dream it is unable to represent any means of emotion. Stanley takes advantage of what he has, a wife and child on the way, and a stable job.
A Streetcar Named Desire American Dream
Part of Stanley's intense dislike of Blanche is because he sees her as "old world," and representing the forces of social stratification that would keep a person like Stanley at the lowest rung of society. On one hand, there is a definite notion of social and economic advancement in the new world that Williams depicts. Blanche feels disgusted by Stanley, yet she is hypnotically drawn to his physical prowess, like a moth to a flame. She also annoys him by calling him names and comparing him to animals such as an ape. Gatsby achieves his fortunes, but not without losing all…. He has a wife, Stella, and a job that supports his family. This life is interrupted when Blanche arrives and, in turn, Stanley feels like Stella does not respect him like she used to.
The American Dream
This is not exactly a parallel, but certainly Blanche is representative of the increasing irrelevance of old aristocrats in the New South. The decentralization process from Copernicus to Freud proved that no human knowledge could be relied on with definite certainty. In a sense, Blanche DuBois, with her dreams of the Belle Reve plantation, represents a European dream of a hereditary aristocracy with a role in life determined not by her abilities or efforts but one to which she is entitled by birth. I try to give that to people. STANLEY I am not a Polack.
Free Essay: The American Dream in A Streetcar Named Desire
Concisely, Williams presents an ideal which is hardly attainable, in the open hands of a man who seems in the outside like the epitome of the American Dream, but in the inside is the epitome of a nightmare. He feels he doesn't have the authority a man should over women because he hasn't become a 'king' through the American dream, and therefore feels like he has to make it clear - showing the audience that actually, he clearly doesn't. The mansion almost becomes like a barrier between Gatsby's dream world The American Dream and the real world outside. The American dream offers opportunity and freedom to people who work hard for It. The two plays expose the reality of the American Dream and its negative influence on the common man.
Theme Of Dreams In A Streetcar Named Desire
In The Great Gatsby, F. The wellness to reject an uncertain future will become far more prominent than for other people compared to an individual that hasn 't been faced with the same chances. Blanche was born and raised in the deep American South, into a world where her every need, wish and desire would be catered for. The first part of the paper discusses the production of the belle stereotype in the U. But she broke them, and eventually put herself in a state, where she had no job and no house.
A Streetcar Named Desire The American Dream Analysis
This lack of love and friendship from people around then lead to their downfall in reaching their dreams. Daisy can be portrayed as just another aspect of Gatsby's dream. In essence, the American Dream gives the chance to gain personal fulfillment, materially and spiritually. Scott Fitzgerald depicts that in his short story Winter Dreams. Yellow can also be the symbolic colour of hazards, this could mean that the "Yellow car" was discreetly warning or foreshadowing the death of a character.
Insecurity In A Streetcar Named Desire
The American dream is the idea that any man or woman, who works hard for a living, will have a good life. From the start Stanley is apprehensive of Blanche and her alleged past. He is also sexist in a way that he feels a man is the one that takes charge and is the owner of his significant other. In reality, she uses darkness to hide the true story of her past. People can sympathize with Blanche because of all the tragedy in her life.
