Summary A Streetcar Named Desire ESSAY PLANS A Level English Literature (Themes) (Edexcel)
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Course
Unit 2 - Prose
Institution
PEARSON (PEARSON)
4 ESSAY PLANS IN THIS BUNDLE
Essay plans summarising the key aspects of the many themes that appear in A Streetcar Named Desire. Includes the themes of illusion v reality, masculinity, sex and drugs.
These essay plans feature topic sentences, quotes, critical statements and context.These essa...
Explore Williams’s presentation of Illusion versus Reality in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. You must
relate your discussion to relevant contextual factors.
Introduction (Topic Sentences)
Biggest conflict that appears in Blanche’s life is illusion versus reality, she does not know how to
balance the two and seems comfortable living a complete illusion in order to live the life in which
she desires.
Illusion is shown through the symbols and the setting that Williams employs.
Reality catches up to Blanche far quicker than she thought, she is left to face to reality that she is a
mentally unstable, unwanted divorcee who has acted as a sexual predator but has also been sexually
abused.
Paragraph 1
Point: Biggest conflict that appears in Blanche’s life is illusion versus reality, she does not know how
to balance the two and seems comfortable living a complete illusion in order to live the life in which
she desires.
Quotes: Scene 9;Blanche: “I don’t want realism. I want magic!”, “After all, a woman’s charm is fifty
percent illusion.”, Blanche: “We are going to be very Bohemian. We are going to pretend that we are
sitting in a little artists’ café on the Left Bank in Paris!”, Blanche: “Please don’t get up. I’m only
passing through”, “A cruise of the Caribbean on a yacht!”
Context: An unhappy time followed, when his sister Rose became quite mentally unstable, and
accused her father of attacking her. The sexual element in her fancies spelt scandal and so alrmed
her mother that she agreed to a pre-frontal lobotomy to be performed on her daughter in 1937.
Williams was away at the State University of Iowa at this time, and he never ceased to reproach
himself for not having been there to prevent the operation. Nor could he ever forgive his mother for
her part in the business.
Paragraph 2
Point: Illusion is shown through the symbols and the setting that Williams employs.
Quotes: ‘The kitchen now suggests that sort of lurid nocturnal brilliance, the raw colors of
childhood’s spectrum.’, Blanche: ‘I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark
or a vulgar action’, “And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off
again and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this–kitchen–
candle...”
Stanley and Blanche’s conflict is the externalization of illusion and reality in the play- “He crosses to
dressing table and seizes the paper lantern tearing it off the light bulb, and extends it toward her.
She cries out as if the lantern was herself” . As an embodiment of reality, Stanley likes to obliterate
the trace of Blanche’s illusion symbolized by her paper lantern. He knows that the existence of her
paper at his home is a kind of challenge to his light-loving tendency. Thus, when Stanley rips her
favourite paper lantern with which she identifies herself, he in fact symbolically confronts her world
, of illusion which is incongruous with his reality. And the fact that she cries over her torn paper
lantern which neutralizes the cruel reality of her betraying past and passing beauty, is her last futile
attempt to revolt and resist against reality represented by Stanley.
Consequently, Williams conveys the theme of dilemma between reality and illusion by means of
Blanche’s paper lantern when Stanley tears it. The light of the lantern also brings to mind the moth
attracted to light, an image used of Blanche’s fragility.
Paragraph 3
Point: Reality catches up to Blanche far quicker than she thought, she is left to face to reality that
she is a mentally unstable, unwanted divorcee who has acted as a sexual predator but has also been
sexually abused.
Quotes: Scene 9;Blanche: “I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be
truth.”, Blanche: “Young man! Young, young, young man! Has anyone ever told you that you look
like a young Prince out of the Arabian Nights?”, “It’s only a paper moon, Just as phony as it can be–
But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me!”, Stella: “I couldn’t believe her story and go
on living with Stanley.”, Blanche: “Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of
strangers.”
Literary Context: Towards the end of the 19th century many playwrights wanted to write drama that
were more realistic, involving domestic storylines, everyday language and box-sets which resembled
real houses and followed the principles of acting suggested and formalised by Russian theatrical
theorist Konstantin Stanislavski.
Conventions of modern domestic tragedy: The central characters are anti-heroes or heroines, these
characters are ordinary people- not great men or women of earlier tragedies, although family life is
central, it is presented as somehow corrupt and diseased, this corruption undermines faith and
belief in the whole order of society. The world is seen as being full of deceit and prices or dreams
chased are illusory, often characters vie and manoeuvre for control, there is often an emphasis on
psychological elements, the disorder of the world sometimes matches the disorder of the mind.
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