Blanche's Past example essay topic

Tennesse Williams classic play "A Streetcar Named Desire" is the story of a gentle soul caught between 2 different worlds. Blanche DuBois is caught between the past and the present. She wishes to relive her comfortable past but is forced to endure the terrible present. Blanche cannot bear the reality of the present and so creates a fantasy world to live in.

Eventually this frail world collapses around her due to all the tragedy she suffers - loneliness, rape, death, loss - and she is pushed over the brink of insanity. This insanity is a form of "death", which is a prominent theme in the play. Blanche's past is one of comfort and tradition. It is symbolized by Belle Reve, the opulent plantation that both Blanche and Stella lived on.

The environment they grew up in was cultured, traditional and aristocratic. Traditional values such as courtesy, politeness and impeccable manners were intrinsically inherent in this way of life. This is the past that Blanche so desparetly tried to re-create and hold on to. However, not all aspects of Blanche's past were as refined as Belle Reve.

When she was 16, Blanche met and married a young man whom she worshipped. She gave everything to him emotionally, but discovered that he was bi-sexual. Blanche voiced her disgust to him about it, "I know! I know! You disgust me... ".

The betrayal caused him to commit suicide and Blanche never forgave herself for it. It tore her up inside and even years onwards haunted her. Not long afterwards Blanche was forced to start selling off parts of Belle Reve to pay for the funerals of her relatives. All alone she faced the misery of loosing the home of her ancestors and mourning the dead.

Finally, Belle Reve lost, Blanche moved into the seedy Hotel Flamingo and gave her body to strangers in meaningless relationships to try and fill the hole left by her young husband. Her lonely heart finds no peace and her involvement with a young student ends her teaching career. In desperation Blanche takes a streetcar named desire to Elesian Fields, the home of her sister and brother in law. The transition from past to present occurs as Blanche takes the streetcar to Elysian Fields.

It drives past a cemetary on the way. This cemetary represents the death in her life - the death of her relatives, her past and also a part of herself. A part of her dies when she wraps her life in layers of fantasy and illusion. It is ironic to note that Elesian Fields is a Greek synonym for paradise. While it is certainly a paradise for Stella and Stanley, it is a veritable hell for Blanche. Her arrival upsets this paradise for Stately and Stella, suggesting that paradise is meant for 2.

So it is by way of Desire (the streetcar, and also of the desire to keep living and find something beautiful in the world) that she travels to reach paradise, Elysian Fields. However, she must get past her fixation of the past, represented by the cemetary, if she is ever to truely reach paradise. Her not-so-wonderful present begins at Elysian Fields. We are introduced to a moth like, uncertain character who obviously does not belong among the rough decay of New Orleans. She is shocked at the lack of opulence when she views her new home, "What? Two rooms did you say?" .

In addition to the culture shock, she comes under the scruitny of Stella's beastly husband Stanley, who is suspicious of Blanche's luxurious accessories, "Open your eyes to this stuff! You think she got them out of a teachers pay?" He takes an immediate dislike to her and proceeds to beat her down at every possible moment. Things only go from bad to worse as the play progresses. Blanche clearly does not enjoy the present, and so creates a fantasy world to live in.

She hangs a paper lanturn over the lightbulb, a metaphor for how she covers the truth with a thin layer of illusion. She hides from bright lights, just as she hides from the truth. She takes frequent baths as if to try and cleanse herself of her past mistakes and horrors. She convinces herself that she is pure and virtuous because "inside, [she] never lied".

This fantasy world is one of pastels and greys, the light in her life had departed along with her young lover and she now prefers darkness and dim candlelight. The candle's flame and life, like Blanche, flickers dangerously. This lack of light also hides her advancing years from view, and provides the perfect ambience for her make-believe world be refit of both pain and memories. Her delicate, fragile nature cannot bear the reality of present-day existence.

Much of Blanche's misery in the play comes from the isolation and loneliness she feels. Although she has had many relationships after the death of her husband, they are all unforfilling and she continues to search for a substitute. Again, she is tied down to her past, and it is this fixation that destroys her final prospect for marriage. Throughout her courtship with Mitch, she plays the part of innocent, pure southern belle to perfection, "I guess it is that I have - old-fashioned ideals!" . She encourages Mitch to use the correct manners in her presence, "Bow to me first! Now present them".

However, when Mitch finally learns of Blanche's true promiscuous past, he is horrified, .".. I was a fool enough to believe you was straight". He confronts her and in the argument rips the paper lanturn off of the lightbulb. By forcing Blanche to view the naked lightbulb, he in effect forces her to confront the truth. The truth however is what Blanche has been working so hard to ignore and cover up in her fantasy world. Her inability to face the present and tell Mitch the truth kills the last chance she may of had to save herself, all because she is trapped between her past and the present.

Perhaps the single biggest reason why Blanche finds the present completely unbearable is Stanley Kowalski. It is her own brother in law that orchestrates Blanche's downfall with a complete lack of remorse. He digs up the buried ghosts of Blanches past, such as her stay at the Hotel Flamingo, her bed romping and her job termination. He alludes to wicked stories about her in her previous town and makes her feel insecure. After checking out these stories, he then goes on to inform Mitch and Stella, no less than the two closest people to Blanche, of her past misdoings. By telling Mitch her terrible past, he destroys the one chance that these two people may have had to finally save each other.

On Blanche's birthday Stranley surprises Blanche with a bus ticket back to Laurel, a heartless present that was designed to make her feel as if she had worn out her welcome. He plays along with her story of Shep Hunt leigh, allowing her to build up her self confidence, then cruelly tears the illusions apart with a few well placed questions. He then proc dss to humiliate her, "And look at you self! Take a look at yourself in your worn out Marti-Gras outfit rented for fifty cents from some rag picker!" He attacks the one thing he knows is her worse weakness, her vanity.

Emotionally and mentally battered, still facing her past demons, her fantasy world crumbling around her, Stanley delivers the final, atrocious insult - he brutal rape. Blanche is sent spinning over the edge of insanity, finally killed by her entrapment between the past and the present. The theme of death is also strong in Blanche's life, due to her past and her present. While Blanche herself never actually dies physically, she dies emotionally and mentally. When her young husband dies, Blanche says, "And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again", meaning that the beauty she found in the world had died along with Allan. Not only does a human die, but a part of Blanche dies along with him - forever, .".. and never for one moment since has there been any light".

The deaths of her relatives occur next, and the bedside vigils that Blanche held caused her immense pain, "I, I, I took the blows in my face and my body!" She sells Belle Reve off to pay for the funerals, further killing an ancestral part of herself. In her many nights afterwards in strangers beds, she slowly kills her emotional wel being in her search for a cure to her loneliness. Her sanity finally snaps and dies after having to endure the psychologically harmful Stanley, culminating in insanity after she is raped by him. In that particular scene, we see Blanche fighting Stanley. Her fierce spirit fights Stranley's anomalistic lust, but finally beaten, she collapses to the floor. She dies.

By the end of the play, Blanche is a hollow shell of herself. Her gentle, fragile personality has been stripped and killed piece by piece throughout her life. However, it is due to her inability to leave the past and continue with the future that ultimately causes her "death" - by clinging to the past she can't cope with the present. Every part of her that "dies" could have been saved had she been able to escape her entrapment between the two worlds of past and present. Blanche Dubois, fragile moth, tragic belle of "A Streetcar Named Desire", is an individual trapped between her past and present. She dwells on the past, on the culture and comfort of her ancestral home, the ideals of a gentle, aristocratic world.

When she is forced to sell it off and move to Elysian Fields, she no longer has any of this, and is forced to create a fantasy world in order to experience them. Because she can't let go of the past, and can't live in the present, she is trapped. Her "death" is a direct result of this entrapment because she is so fragile in her fantasy realm - when the paper lanturn is ripped from the lightbulb she screams. When she is raped, it is the proverbial straw that breaks the horses back - the sum of all the previous tragedies (All ans death, Mitch's departure, the loss of Belle Reve, Stanley's harping and the loss of her protective illusions) plus the rape push her into insanity, and Blanche "dies.".