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Title: A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams ISBN: 0-451-16778-3 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: August, 1989 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (71 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Character Complexity in Streetcar
Comment: Tennessee Williams creates a strong sense of reality in A Streetcar Named Desire through the complexity of his characters; none emerge as truly good or truly bad, leaving only the contrast of strong and weak. For example, Blanche, the closest character to a heroine, literally falls apart through the course of the play, her weaknesses intensified by desire and exploited by Stanley. Although one may feel moved to pity Blanche, her collapse counters a basic character flaw of not being able to cope with reality, of preferring "a moonlight swim at the old rock quarry" to the dark house on Elysian Fields where all her problems dwell. Thus it is inevitable that Blanche should meet with tragedy. For some, it is also a just end: Blanche has led a life not deserving of much admiration, tempting young and sexually inexperienced boys, conducting notorious affairs ("everybody else in the town of Laurel knows all about her"), and at the same time still maintaining her pretensions and self-superiority. Equally complex and opposing Blanche on all fronts is Stanley, who represents the raw, survivalist animal Williams saw in people. The honest man Stanley, a poor Pole simply trying to make ends meet to support his wife and new family, senses the weakness and dependence in Blanche and recognizes it as a force completely in contrast with his own brute strength. Stanley scorns her frailties and simultaneously scorns her claims that she has been "the strong one," upholding her duty to the family by caring for her dying relatives, whereas her sister Stella fled to New Orleans with her husband. The honest man Stanley, who beats his wife almost recreationally and brings about the final destruction of Blanche, represents, then, not a true villain, but an archetype: Stanley is the survivor, the top dog in a dog-eat-dog world, stopping at nothing to preserve his own interests. His tremendous strength both complements and counters his brutality as he maneuvers (to his liking) the streetcar named Desire, whose course, for all but the uncannily strong, ends in ultimate destruction. Lastly, one must consider Stella, somewhat of a foil to Blanche, and also the least clear-cut of the main characters. For the most part, the audience knows little of Stella; most of what one can say about her is deduced. She is the closest to virtuous out of the three; she accepts her duty first as wife, hoping that her duty as sister will not interfere. Until around scene eight, she always gives those she loves the benefit of the doubt. Thus a conflict exists within her, a conflict unlike that within Stanley and Blanche. Rather than the desire versus destruction dichotomy, Stella suffers from being torn between her husband and her sister. And there is such a thing as being too trusting. In the end, Stella makes her decision not so much based on her sense of morality or even ethics, but instead on the blind faith she instills in the person closest her. Stella's greatest fault lies in her inability to trust herself and in her complete willingness to submit to those forces greater than her without the slightest hint of a fight. The final image of the play, in fact, leaves Stella weeping in her brutal husband's arms, "in [a] complete surrender to crying." Stella gives up. Her strength, though somewhat greater than Blanche's, fails her in Stanley's shadow, and certainly does not serve as a particular virtue. Rather, it keeps her going just long enough to thrust her little world into an inescapable mess. Had she been as weak as Blanche, the conflict between the doomed Blanche and the destructive Stanley would have been resolved much sooner, and with less incident. Had she been as strong as Stanley, the conflict may not have existed on such a level. Thus Stella represents a final human pattern: the regret for what might have been. Williams's characters simply reflect the different types of people he observed in what he believed was a grim life. In writing so much of these universal paradigms into his work, he lends to it a sense of reality unmatched by those seeking to portray the melodramatic conflict of good versus evil.
Rating: 4
Summary: Williams's Intense Desire
Comment: Tennessee Williams's masterfully written drama explores the extremes of fantasy versus reality, the Old South versus the New South, and primitive desire versus civilized restraint. Its meager 142 page spine is no indication of the complexity and significance that Williams achieves in his remarkable work. A strong aspect of the play is Williams's amazingly vivid portrayal of desperate and forsaken characters who symbolize and presumably resolve his battles between extremes. He created and immortal woman in the character of Blanche DuBois, the haggard and fragile southern beauty whose pathetic last grasp at happiness is cruelly destroyed. She represents fantasy for her many outrageous attempts to elude herself, and she likewise represents the Old South with only her manners and pretentions remaining after the foreclosure of her family's estate. The movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire shot Marlon Brando to fame as Stanley Kowalski, a sweat-shirted barbarian and crudely sensual brother-in-law who precipitated Blanche's tragedy. He symbolizes unrestrained desire with the recurring animal motif that follows him throughout the play. A third major character, Stella Kowalski, acts as mediator between her constantly conflicting husband and older sister. She magnifies the New South in her renounce of the Old pretentions by marrying a blue collar immigrant. Conflicts between these and other vividly colorful characters always in light of the cultural New Orleans backdrop provide a reader with a lasting impression and an awe for Williams's impeccable style and intense dialogue.
Rating: 5
Summary: Poignant.
Comment: "A Streetcar Named Desire" is such a raw and captivating play. With luxurious characters full of rage, lust, and refutation, you'll be transported into the realm of Stanley, Stella, and Blanche, and you'll never look back. It's interesting to see Tennessee Williams' writing in this play and "The Glass Menagerie." I recommend.
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Title: Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller ISBN: 0140481346 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 06 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams ISBN: 0451171128 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: September, 1989 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee ISBN: 0451158717 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: August, 1988 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Glass Menagerie. by Tennessee Williams ISBN: 0822204509 Publisher: Dramatist's Play Service Pub. Date: January, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ISBN: 0684801523 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 June, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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