Action Left Blanche With A Bad Reputation example essay topic

A Streetcar Named Desire By: Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire takes place from spring through early fall in a two-story building on a street in New Orleans. The main character of this book is Blanche DuBois. Blanche is Stella's younger sister who has come to visit Stella and her husband Stanley in New Orleans. After their first meeting Stanley develops a strong dislike for Blanche and everything associated with her. Among the things Stanley dislikes about Blanche are her "spoiled-girl' manners and her indirect way of talking. Stanley also believes that Blanche has conned him and his wife out of the family mansion.

In his opinion, she is a good-for-nothing "leech' that has attached itself to his household, and is just living off him. Blanche's situation with her husband is the key to her later behavior. She married rather early at the age of sixteen to a boy she believed was a perfect gentleman. He was sensitive, understanding, and civilized much like herself coming from an rich background. She was truly in love with Allen whom she considered perfect in every way. Unfortunately for her he was a homosexual.

As she caught him one evening in their house with an older man, she said nothing, permitting her disbelief to build up inside her. Later that evening, while the two of them were dancing, she told him what she had seen and how he disgusted her. Immediately, he ran off the dance floor and shot himself. Blanche believed that she was really at fault for his suicide.

She started seeking a substitute man (especially young boys), for her dead husband. Her reputation declined and everyone in her hometown knew about her. This wasn't the only problem she had. Many of the aged family members died and the funeral costs had to be covered by Blanche's modest salary.

She was forced to mortgage the mansion, and soon the bank repossessed it. At school, where Blanche taught English, she was dismissed because of an incident she had with a seventeen-year-old student that reminded her of her late husband. Even the hotel where Blanche stayed in during her final days in Laurel, asked her to leave because of the all the different men that had been seeing there. All of this, cumulatively, weakened Blanche, turned her into an alcoholic, and lowered her mental stability bit-by-bit. Her husband's death affects her greatly and determines her behavior from then on. Having lost Allan, who meant so much to her, she is blinded by the light and from then on never lights anything stronger than a dim candle 1-Blanche took action by telling Allen that she knew of this homosexual behavior and that it disgusted her.

By doing this she was dealing with an external conflict which left her with a lifetime of internal conflicts. His reaction was suicide. If I was Blanche I would have waited for a better time to talk to Allen and ask him to seek counseling for his problem. 2-The second action is Blanche's sleeping around which is her internal conflict of trying to replace her late husband Allen.

A result of this action left Blanche with a bad reputation and losing her room at the hotel. If I was Blanche I would not have tried to replace him. 3-Another action that Blanche chose to take was to have a relationship with her seventeen year-old student. This is also an internal conflict for Blanche trying to replace Allen.

The result of this action led to Blanche losing her job and forcing her to leave town. If I was Blanche I would not have broken the rules that result in losing my job. 4- Blanche also chose the action of paying for family members funeral costs. This conflict was external because the cost has to come from her modest salary and mortgaging the mansion. The result of this action was lowering her standard of living and losing the mansion. I think that Blanche could have solved this problem by getting a part time job on the weekends to help pay for the funerals.

5- When Blanche lied to Stanley, it led to much conflict between them. This was an external conflict which weakened Blanche of which the outcome is Stanley completely broke down her mental stability. I think Blanche should have been honest. All of Blanche's troubles with Stanley that in the end left her in a mental institution could have been avoided by her. Stanley and she would have gotten along better if she would have been frank with him during their first encounter.

Blanche made a grave mistake by trying to act like a lady, or trying to be what she thought a lady ought to be. Stanley, being as primitive as he was, would have liked her better if she was honest. Stanley made her face reality, and in a way he exposed her to the bright luminous light she could not stand all her life.