A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene Analysis: Scenes 1 & 2 Amelia & Cate A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene Analysis: Scenes 1 & 2 Amelia & Cate.

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene Analysis: Scenes 1 & 2

Amelia & Cate

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene Analysis: Scenes 1 & 2

Amelia & Cate

Symbolism

• [(Stanley) heaves the package at her. She cries out in protest but manages to catch it: then she laughs breathlessly]. Symbolism

• Since early manhood the centre of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence but with the power and rpide of a richly featherd male bird among hens

• [(blanche) Is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, neckalce and earrings of pearl, white goves and hat, looking as if she were arrvied at a summer tea arty or cocktail party in the garden district. Symbolism

Symbolism: Names

• Blanche Dubois in French translates to white woods

• The etymology of her name is significant for two reasons; firstly because it is extremely French-sounding and reinforces the ‘status’ that comes with her heritage

• In addition, the ‘white’ imagery adds to her ‘pure’ outer image

• Stella Dubois (Stella for Star, as repeated by Blanche)

• Stanley Kowalski (Polish surname, enforces the tension between Blanche and Stanley about Stanley’s heritage

• The couple’s names are first said in the same sentence by Blanche, to reinforce their differences

Dramatic Conventions: Setting• The exterior of a two-story corner building on a street in the New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs

between the L & N tracks and the river. The section is poor but unlike corresponding sections in other American cities, it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly white frame, weathered grey, with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables. The building contains two flats, upstairs and down. Faded white stairs ascned to the entrances of both. It is first dark of an evening early in May. The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay. You can almost feel the warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses with their faint redolences of bananas and coffee. A corresponding air is evoked by the music of Negro entertainers at a bar-room around the corner. In this part of New Orleans you are practically always just around the corner, or a few doors down the street, from a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers. This 'blue piano' expresses the spirit of the light which goes on here.

Dramatic Conventions: Stage Directions

• Stage directions are used to communicate information about characters which they perhaps are not willing to share about themselves.

[She rushes to the closet and removes the bottle; she is shaking all over and panting for breath as she tries to laugh. The bottle slips from her grasp.]

[Looking down at her glass, which shakes in her hand]

[She drinks quickly]

Blanche: No - I rarely touch it.

• Alternatively, it is used to introduce musical or visual components into the scene to give more depth to what is occuring onstage.

[two women, one white and one coloured, are taking the air on the steps of the building. The white woman is eunice, who occupies the upstairs flat, the coloured woman a neighbour, for New Orleans is a cosmopolitan city where there is relatively warm and easy intermingling of races in the old part of town. Above the music of the 'blue piano' the voices of people on the street can be heard overlapping.]

Dramatic Conventions: repeated motifs

Blanche:.. And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won't be looked at in this merciless glare!

Vendor: red hot! Red hots!

• Scene One introduces dramatic motifs that reoccur throughout the entire play, for example the vendor selling tamales (which representing when things are metaphorically ‘heating up’ between characters onstage) and Blanche’s aversion to direct light (representing her insecurity about her age and her status as a ‘fading Southern belle’.)

Use of Language• Blanche's

confidence wavers as the scene progresses and as Stella asks her questions about her life and Belle Reve.

Blanche: 'only Poe! Only Mr. Edgar Allan Poe! - could do it justice! Out there I suppose is the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir! [laughs](diachronic language)

• the overlapping dialogue in Scene One is used to set the scene and add background noise, painting New Orleans as a busy and exciting city

Above the music of the 'blue piano' the voices of people on the street can be heard overlapping.(contrapuntal language)

• Allusions to elements of the New Orleans culture are frequent in Scene One; they with creating the mood for the city in which the play is set

Negro Woman: don't let them sell you a Blue Moon cocktail or you won't go out on your feet! (A Blue Moon cocktail is a gin-based cocktail which is sweet and purple- coloured, but deceptively very strong due to the crème de violette liqueur. It was a ‘mid-century standard.’

Other Languages

SPANISHEunice: Por nada, as the mexicans say, por nada• Eunice’s casual use of

Spanish is used to communicate the multicultural, ‘melting pot’ quality of New Orleans

FRENCHBlanche and Stella’s namesBelle Reve • The meaning of Belle

Reve as Blanche’s ‘beautiful dream’, and loss of Belle Reve represents this as such

Scene 2

Stanley- Greater insight into personality and morals- “how about my supper, huh? I’m not going to no Galatoire’s for supper!” - “yeah?” (one word responses continue)- “Sister Blanche cannot be annoyed with business details right now!”- “Have you ever heard of the Napoleonic code?”- “let me enlighten you on a point or two, baby”- “and what have we here? The treasure chest of a pirate!”- “What’s rhinestone?”- “since when do you give me orders?”- “I have a lawyer acquaintance who will study these out.”- “you see, under the Napoleonic code, a man has to take an interest in his

wife’s affairs – especially now that she’s going to have a baby.”

Stanley

• “he snatches them up”• “Shoves it roughly open”• “he seizes the atomizer and slams it down on the dresser”• “he rips off the ribbon”• “he stalks into the bedroom:• “jerks out an armful of dresses”• “he kicks the trunk partly closed”• “he hurls the furs to the daybed”• “he jerks open a small drawer and pulls up a fistful of

costume jewellery”

Stella

• “The Kowalskis and the Dubois have different notions”• “Yes” (lemon –coke)• “next door to glass”• “You have no idea how stupid and horrid you’re

being!”• “Don’t be such an idiot, Stanley!”• “..but you don’t know how ridiculous you are being..”• “and admire her dress and tell her she’s looking

wonderful. “

Blanche• “Hello, Stanley! Here I am, all freshly bathed and scented, and feeling like a brand new

human being!”• “You men with your big clumsy fingers. May I have a drag on your cig?”• “Oh, in my youth I excited some admiration. But look at me now! Would you think it

possible that I was once considered to be – attractive?”• “you’re simple, straightforward and honest, a little bit on the primitive side I should think. “• “I’m through dressing, honey.”• “Honey, do me a favor. Run to the drugstore and get me a lemon-coke with plenty of

chipped ice in it! – Will you do that for me, Sweetie?”• “My, but you have an impressive judicial air!”• “After all, a woman’s charm is fifty per cent illusion”• “[Singing in the bathroom]” from the land of the sky blue water, they brought a captive

maid!...” • “I called him a little boy and laughed and flirted. Yes, I was flirting with your husband!

(Steve, Pablo, men start appearing)• “Street Vendor: R-e-e-d H-o-o-t