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Characters Symbols Themes Significant Quotes Plot

“ape-like”

Who is Stanley?

Liked being “pulled down off those pillars.”

Who is Stella?

Her name means “white woods”.

Who is Blanche?

His name is Harold.

Who is Mitch?

This is the landlord and landlady of Stella and Stanley.

Who are Steve and Eunice?

Represents the corruption and the death of the American Dream.

What is Belle Reve?

Represents truth and reality as well as culture and knowledge.

What is light?

Represents stained innocence.

What is Blanche’s stained white skirt?

Represent the modern world versus the old, cultured world.

Who are Stanley and Blanche?

Represents the illusion of grandeur, culture, and the

American Dream.

What is the rhinestone tiara?

When Blanche takes a streetcar named desire, transfers to one

called Cemeteries, and arrives at Elysian Fields, it illustrates this

theme..

What is “giving in to our desires results in death and destruction”?

The name of Blanche and Stella’s plantation reveals this theme.

What is “the American dream is just a beautiful dream”?

Stanley’s primitive, cruel, and uncultured ways coupled with his

symbolic significance suggests this theme..

What is “the modern world is cruel, primitive,and uncultured” ?

Blanche wanting magic and not reality illustrates this theme.

What is “sometimes the belief in magic and love gives people

hope when reality only promises hardship”?

Blanche living in a fantasy and Stella not believing her sister

illustrates this theme.

What is “when reality becomes too difficult to deal with people

often slip into a world of illusion or fantasy”?

The significance of -“Stanley’s always smashed things. Why, on our wedding night—soon as we came in here—he snatched off one of my slippers and rushed about the place smashing the

light bulbs with it.”

What is, “this reveals Stanley as a man who destroys the culture

and knowledge of the past or the theme of the uncultured and cruel

modern world”?

The context of “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes,

magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought to be the truth!. And

if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! --Don’t turn the

light on!”

What is “Blanche says this to Mitch after her birthday party and when he demands to know

her real age and to see her in the light?

Significance of “I am not a Polack. People from Poland are

Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is a one hundred percent

American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and

proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack.”

What is “this reveals Stanley as the new America, comprised of upwardly mobile immigrants

who are proud to be American”?

Context of “I have always depended on the kindness of

strangers.”

What is, “Blanche says this to the doctor as she leaves for the

insane asylum”?

Context of, “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.”

What is, “this is Blanche talking to Mitch about her husband Alan

committing suicide”?

Blanche kisses this person when she is waiting for Mitch to pick

her up for a date.

Who is the paperboy (the young man)?

Blanche thinks this person is coming to pick her up at the end

of the play.

Who is Shep Huntleigh?

Blanche says this to her husband just before he kills himself.

What is, “You disgust me”?

This is the reason Blanch lost Belle Reve..

What is her ancestor’s “epic fornications”?

This is Stanley’s birthday gift to Blanche.

What is a one way bus ticket back to Laurel?