Blog 3 Topic 4

The subject of Tennessee William’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” is particularly suited to drama due the development of both the characters and setting within the play. Drama is a type of theater which tends to convey its themes more through emotions and dialogue than anything else, and as such, unlike in an epic where the main characters are usually portrayed as heroic demigods whom the audience is always meant to root for, the characters in Streetcar are all deeply flawed people who constantly make morally questionable decisions as well as mistakes that seemingly could have been easily avoided. In other words they are human, and we, the audience, are meant to relate to their faults and struggles in some way or another. The purpose of the play seems to be to not only reveal some of the darker aspects of society, aspects which almost taboo in everyday conversation, but to also explore the effects those aspects can have on the people who live within it as well as the meaning that can be derived by observing them.

Denial is a theme present throughout most of the play’s narrative progression. Stella is in denial over Stanley’s true nature, brushing off most of his radical actions with a combination of a boys will be boys and true love conquers all attitude, while Blanche is in denial over her status in the world, clinging desperately to her upper southern class lineage and acting as if she is above everyone else, despite the fact that no one else sees her as such. Drama lends itself to this theme through the eventual repercussions the characters face due to their willful ignorance of these things such as when Stanley beats a pregnant Stella in a drunken rage, or when Mitch confronts Blanche over her less than stellar past for lying to him. The reason why the play puts such a focus on this theme is because denial itself is a concept that most people can understand in one capacity or another, whether or not they would like to admit to doing so, and by creating a believable set of circumstances around a characters reaction to a bad situation, the play manages to in one way or another endear the characters to us and cause us to reflect on our own actions and situations.

Another important aspect of drama in the play comes from the setting of the play itself. Instead of being set in a high-class mansion or on a beautiful and peaceful farm, the play is instead deliberately set in a dilapidated building in one of New Orleans lower class neighborhoods. It is place that leaves Blanche in “shocked disbelief” when she first arrives, it is a place where men get into violent fights with their wives, and it is a place where poor street venders push their carts around at all hours of the day, hoping to improve their lives. In some ways the setting is the catalyst of much of the conflict of the play, with Blanche believing that it is no good for Stella, subtly insulting Stanley by doing so and leading to his eventual dislike of her, and in others it seems to be a reflection of the characters lives. All of the characters have issues, whether it be Mitch’s sickly mother, Stella not realizing she is in an abusive marriage, or Blanche slowly losing her sanity, and rather than trying to mask or hide them like a bright and high-class setting would, the drab and rundown setting instead brings these issues to the forefront of the story allowing the drama to flourish as well as welcoming one to analyze and sympathize with the characters more readily.

Through the actions of the characters on a stage, from their dialogue to their subtle changes in expression, we are able to gain a better insight into the psyche of others as well as ourselves, perhaps learning that others have felt the way we’ve felt before and that maybe were actually not so alone in this big empty world. By observing the mistakes the characters in a play make, such as those the made by the characters in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” we learn from them and realize how not make the same mistakes on our own, or if we already have made them, instead realize them as being mistakes and begin to go out of our ways in order to rectify them. Such is the power of drama.