Characters and Theme Analysis of A Streetcar Named Desire Plays By Tennessee Williams

In a creation, especially a story, whether a novel or a drama certainly has intrinsic elements, some of the important advantages in the story are the character and the theme of the story. Where the character has characterization characteristics. Williams's plays, A Streetcar Named Desire, also has several characters that can be classified into their role in the story and the theme shows in the plays. This article focuses on character characterization and the theme appears in the story.

Playwright Biography

Tennessee Williams, original name Thomas Lanier Williams, (born March 26, 1911, Columbus, Miss., U.S.—died Feb. 25, 1983, New York City), was an American dramatist whose plays reveal a world of human frustration in which sex and violence underlie an atmosphere of romantic gentility. Williams became interested in playwriting while at the University of Missouri (Columbia) and Washington University (St. Louis) and worked at it even during the Depression while employed in a St. Louis shoe factory.

Williams was in ill health frequently during the 1960s, compounded by years of addiction to sleeping pills and liquor, problems that he struggled to overcome after a severe mental and physical breakdown in 1969. However, his works won four Drama Critics awards and were widely translated and performed around the world.

Characters Analysis

In this article, the author will identify several characters in the plays based on their role in the story.

Main Character

Blanche DuBois. Blanche DuBois is Stella's elder sister. She came from Mississippi to live in the apartment of her sister and brother-in-law in New Orleans. Blanche is a sensitive woman who wants to be protected. "Blanche: I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can't be alone!" (p. 23). Blanche shows her dependency on people. She has no self-sufficiency but instead seeks people to protect her from reality. She realized that she was older and preferred her beauty. “Blanche: You haven’t said a word about my appearance” (p.122), “Blanche: I was fishing for a compliment, Stanley.” (p. 136). To ease her anxiety, she sought praise for her appearance.

When the drama develops, it is revealed that she has a very questionable history. Blanche is like a ship without a rudder. "Blanche:..And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths – not always.” (p. 127). She has been through a lot in her past who has driven her to become the person she is today and she is the one who ended up alone as opposed to Stella. She hopes to find a safe harbor with Mitch, but her romance fails. Her mental decline gradually culminated in the final scene where she asked for a campaign. She was lost in a fantasy world where she didn’t know the difference between illusion and reality. “Blanche: I’ll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell them the truth. I tell them what ought to be the truth. And if that is singful, then let me be damned for it!” (p. 201).

Blanche clearly said, "I don't want realism." She prefers her view of the world to be like a constant dream which also represents her reason for continuing to maintain the façade. She only said what must be refuted to refute her own dream by challenging. She felt like she had never been captured (‘Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart…)  because what she said was the way she saw things.

Major Character

Stella Kowalski. Stella Kowalski is Blanche's younger sister, who is married to Stanley. She is a character who strives to be a strong, independent, and self-sufficient person. "Stella: You never did give me a chance to say much, Blanche. So I just got into the habit of being quiet around you." (Pg. 20). The quote exemplifies Stella's naturally obedient behavior and how she let others control it. Stella loved her husband even though Stanley was rude and aggressive. She has adapted well to their different social backgrounds and seems happy with her fate, in spite of Stanley's violent outburst. "Stella: He didn't know what he was doing.... He was as good as a lamb when I came back and he's really very, very ashamed of himself." (Pg. 63). The quote shows that Stella deeply forgives Stanley's rude and painful behavior. She refused to believe Blanche's story that she was raped by Stanley, and arranged for Blanche to commit to an institution. However, she felt guilty for her actions. ”Stella: What have I done to my sister? Oh, God, what have I done to my sister?” (p.141).

Stanley Kowalski. Stanley Kowalski is Stella's husband. Stanley is a strong and rude person. Blanche called him an animal or a caveman. “Blanche: He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There's even something -sub-human -something not quite to the stage of humanity yet!” (p. 72).

The pleasure of Stanley has always been a woman and the sexual pleasure that he can give and receive. He likes to drink, and he is also quick to anger and reacts harshly. He believes that the man must be the master of his own home. "Stanley: We have the Napoleonic code ... what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband." (p. 34). During one explosion, he attacked Stella but then was very sorry and wanted her back. "Stanley: Stella! My baby doll's left me!... I'll keep on ringin' until I talk with my baby!" (p. 59).

He doesn't like to be challenged. Whatever his mistakes, Stanley was full of limitless masculine energy that Stella found charming, and that was why she loved him. "Stella: It isn't on his forehead and it isn't genius." (p. 50). Stella stressed that Stanley's strength did not come from his intelligence, but from his sexual urge, which attracted him to him. But Stanley behaved cruelly towards Blanche.

Harold “Mitch” Mitchell. Mitch is a close friend of Stanley. They are in the army together and they work for the same company. Mitch is a member of the group playing poker. "Mitch: Poker should not be played in a house with women" (p. 63 & 65). Mitch commented twice that women and poker are a bad mix. This characterizes Mitch as someone who believes women are gentle and soft and must be protected from the rudeness of poker. Mitch is a shy man, less rude than others, and still very attached to his mother.

"Mitch: I like you just like you, because in all of my experiences - I've never known anyone like you.” (p. 87) Mitch expressed his honest feelings, to himself, to Blanche. Sad for him, Blanche's reaction was a burst of laughter. He falls in love with Blanche, but then refuses when he discovers her bad past. "Mitch: No, I don't think I want to marry you anymore... No, you're not clean enough to bring into the house with my mother." (p. 120)

Minor Character

Eunice Hubbell. Eunice is Steve's wife and the owner of the apartment building. They live in an apartment above Kowalski. She always helps and offers shelter to Stella and Blanche because of Stanley's rude actions. In the story, she tells Stella that despite Blanche's tragedy, life must go on. “Eunice: Don’t ever believe it. Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep on going.” (p. 133) At the end of the tragic drama, all characters, except Eunice, have lost track of what is right, what is true. It seems that Eunice's role is to remind other characters that they must each do what they have to do to survive and live life.

Steve Hubbell. Steve is one of Stanley's poker friends. He is married to Eunice. They have a rather chaotic relationship like Stella and Stanley. As a poker player, Steve has the final line of the game. It appeared when Blanche was taken to a mental hospital and Steve coldly provided assistance to others.

Theme Analysis

Loneliness. The loneliness theme here is illustrated by the character of Blanche. Since the death of her husband, the world has no love for her. She longs for a deep relationship with other humans. "Blanche: I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can't be alone!" (p. 23) Aside from connecting with her younger sister, Stella, she is truly alone in this world. She tried to find love through sexual relations with people she didn't know and this only made the situation worse. The more desperate Blanche was in her loneliness, the deeper she dug herself.

Illusion and Reality. Blanche is self-conscious enough to know that she cannot survive in the world as it is. Reality is too hard, so she must somehow create an illusion that allows her to maintain the fragile clutches of her life. “Blanche: A woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion” (p. 41)  which she confessed to Stanley. And then when Mitch wants to turn on the lights so she can get a realistic view of him, she tells him that she doesn't want realism, she wants magic. This means that she is trying to manipulate reality to what it seems should be. She wants to live her life in a permanent romantic light, like the light that illuminated the whole world when she first fell in love. But in this game, reality dominates, shows that Blanche's illusions will not be enough. Finally, her thin grip on reality disappears altogether and she takes refuge in an imaginary world where she will travel with her rich, imaginary lover.

Sex and Death. The theme of sex and death can be seen in scene 1 when Blanche described the direction she gave to reach her sister's home. "Blanche: They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!" (p. 15). Blanche's fear of death was manifested in her fear of aging and lost beauty. She seems to believe that by continually expressing her sexuality, especially towards men who are younger than her, she will be able to avoid death and return to the teenage world that she experienced before her husband's died. This is just an attempt to keep her life going, to stop her from wilting inside, and to try to rekindle the love and desire of transformation that she feels for her husband. But Blanche, on the other hand, found that her desire was constantly frustrated and driven out of the wider community. Sex causes death for others, Blanche also knows.

Conclusion

So, this drama tells the story of a young family from Stanley Kowalski and Stella Kowalski-DuBois who live happily in lower-class house in Orleans. One day the family was visited by Stella's sister, Blanche DuBois. Blanche's figure in the aristocratic style greatly undermines Stanley, who is of Polish descent and a manual laborer. Blanche's presence immediately disrupted the Kowalski family household.