Street Car Named Desire

Blanche creates a world of illusion because the real world is too painful. Do you agree?
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams depicts the life of the main protagonist, Blanche Dubois and her decline into insanity through a series of events. This is first portrayed when We are introduced to Blanche when she shows up to her sister Stella’s house where she lives with her husband, Stanley Kowalski. From then on, Blanche invents a world of her own fantasies as she wants to cover up the harsh truths of reality. She is too frail to deal with what has become of her life and she relies on illusion to break away from it.
Blanche has an attachment to her past life. Her life is an example of how one tragic event can damage the future. Her refusal to let go of the past and embrace the real world makes her undependable. When Blanche was sixteen, she fell in love with a sensitive, young boy, Allan who filled her life with happiness and delight, ‘When I was sixteen, I made the discovery – love’. Her happiness soon turned to sadness when Blanche uncovers the truth about her 'young boy' was a homosexual. Blanche’s shocked and cruel words to him ‘You disgust me!’ resulted in his suicide. She forced herself to believe that she was responsible for his death. Followed by her love's death, were the deaths of her relatives. This forced her to sell the family mansion, ‘Belle Reeve’ in Laurel.   To assist her in breaking away from the despair in her life, Blanche turns to alcohol and meaningless affairs with men at the Hotel Flamingo. She does this to herself to avoid the truth in her life. An affair with a seventeen year old boy and a bad reputation ended her teaching career. This demonstrates Blanche's concept of what she believes is the real world.
As an escapist, Blanche, states, ‘I don’t want realism, I want magic’.   She runs away from the truth in the same way she hides from lights. Her fragile and weak nature cannot tolerate the reality of her life as she finds it...