Review William Tennessees A Streetcar Named Desire

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Fantasy and Illusion
William Tennessee's "A Streetcar Named Desire" explores various important themes and issues. The main theme the Williams tend to explore is illusion and fantasy with each character in the book contributing to the creation and destruction of illusions and fantasies. This construction and destruction of these illusions and fantasies make the theme to be important as it is a representation and symbol of the various issues that Williams explores. The theme is prominent throughout the play, and it manifests deeply in one character, Blanche DuBois. Throughout the play, Blanche is trapped in a continuous struggle with illusions vs. reality where she has difficulties in accepting her real life. However, her fantasy and illusion struggle is attributed to the role she played in the tragic suicide of her first love. She claims responsibility for her lover's suicide by revealing that she was aware of the affair that her husband had with another woman. Blanche unveils the comment that sparked a sense of suicide when she states "it was because on the dance-floor-unable to stop myself – I had suddenly said- ‘I saw! I know! You disgust me…'". As a result, Blanche sought to invent a different altered path that is full of franticness and lies as an attempt of concealing the heartbreaking scenario in her life as well as her guiltiness. Within a short period, her life's accurate details became blurred became concealed not only from family and friends but also to herself; reality appears to be painful for her to accept. Throughout the play, Blanche DuBois lived in illusion with the help of fantasy as her primary means of self-defense.
The story begins with Blanche traveling from her hometown to New Orleans where her sister Stella lives. The trip provides Blanche with an opportunity of recreating herself by inscribing a new life and the continuous support she gained from her sister Stella. With the help of her frantic and neurotic lies, it is in her new environment, New Orleans that she did not only alter her past but also her personality. Blanche succeeded in hiding her real life by acting as a kind, beautiful and caring person rather than a drunkard and sexually motivated woman that resulted from her former husband's suicide. Throughout the play, she consistently pretended of having a habit of drinking a good wine when in the real sense she is a factual drunkard. This is evident during her first meeting with Stanley. Immediately Stanley tries to offer her a shot; she responds "No, I rarely touch it," (Williams 30). Blanche maintained her lie of being someone who uphold good morals. However, despite the fact that Blanches' life throughout the play is full of fantasies and illusions, three instances exemplified her fantasy and illusions and her consistent struggle with reality. These three instances present the three stages of her path of her pretend faced that she struggled so hard to portray.
The first instance occurred in scene seven when Blanche was taking a bath in Kowalski tub while Stanley and Stella were in their room talking. Stanly was trying to tell Stella the truth about Blanche's past real-life story that he had learned from a reliable source. Stanley could see ...