Esej na téma Streetcar named Desire/Tramvaj do stanice touha
Mimochodem, pokud budete počítat i čas, který jsem strávila hledáním a čtením citovaných recenzí, zabralo mi přesně 12 hodin to napsat. 12 hodin vkuse! :D
Drama of struggles
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by Tennessee
Williams. It tells a story of Blanche DuBois coming to New Orleans to live with
her married sister Stella and her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski due to the
recent loss of her home in Laurel, Mississippi. Blanche is a very fragile woman
and mentally suffers from Stanley’s hot-tempered ruthless nature. For their
differences they seem to be unable to get along and when Stanley thwarts
Blanche’s marriage with Mitch, her only chance to escape from the house of
violence, and sexually assaults her, she loses her mind completely and is taken
to a mental hospital.
The
scholars across the years have not managed to agree whether Streetcar is a social or psychological
drama (Bak, 18). Both theses are supported by many theories out of which I am
choosing only two for further analysis.
Elia Kazan,
Streetcar’s first director, had a
great influence on the naturalistic theory about the play and on the question
of victimization, both being objects of sociodramatic studies (Bak, 6). His
book, Kazan on directing, makes perfectly
clear where the author’s sympathies lay:
One of the important things about Stanley is
that Blanche would wreck his home. Blanche is dangerous. She is destructive. Soon
she would have him and Stella fighting. He’s got the things the way he wants
them around there and he does not want them upset by a phony, corrupt, sick, destructive
woman. This makes Stanley right!
(Kazan, 56)
The
psychological side can be observed in Blanche’s inner struggle with herself
which graduates within the play and is finally lost. Jeanne M. McGlinn, a professor
of Education at the University of North Carolina, specifies it as a clash of
illusion and reality:
McGlinn points out that, like all the women in
Williams’s plays between 1940 and 1950, Blanche refuses to accept the reality
of her life and attempts to live under illusion. (Bak, 14)
To
establish a true martyr in this play is not as easy as it may at first seem to
be. Some might have difficulties seeing Stanley, the strong muscular man, as
Blanche’s victim but Kazan certainly has a point: Stanley’s life is being
shaken by Blanche, she is the intruder, she is the one insulting him,
disrespecting him and begging his wife to leave him. Stanley is in right to
feel threatened and to do his best to get Blanche out of his house. It is also
understandable – one might even say it is considerate of him – that he tells
Mitch everything about Blanche’s past. After all, he is his friend and he would
not want to see him get hurt. Knowing all of this, we cannot blame him for taking
a hostile attitude towards her.
On the
other hand, as Blanche says in the tenth scene, some things are not forgivable.
Stanley’s cruelty is inadequate to Blanche’s behavior, the way he is offending
her is inexcusable and he truly appears to be less than human, an animal, an
ape. He disregards completely her state of mind and sensitivity. He seems to be
rather trying to destroy her than to get her out of his way. We may not
sympathize with Blanche, who is self-observed and promiscuous, but we have to
feel for her. She is not only victimized by Stanley but also by herself, being
unable to free herself from the guilt of losing Belle Reve and her late husband,
being unable to make peace with reality.
Stella,
although she appears in every scene, is somehow overshadowed by Stanley and
Blanche and often omitted from reviews; but she could be a victim, too. She has
no intentions of leaving her husband and she claims to be happy, but is she
really? Living in poor conditions, being married to a brute and surrounded by
drunks, Stella’s life seems to be rather far from being happy. Her destiny is
not as tragic as her sister’s, but many could see her as the saddest case of the
play, not realizing that she is a victim as well.
Blanche is
a very complex character with obvious mental issues which she conceals with
overtalking and making jokes. She is
afflicted by the amount of her relatives’ deaths, she is all alone in the world
having only her sister left; but Stanley is standing in the way representing an
insurmountable obstacle. Soothing herself with hot tubs and alcohol, still she
cannot come to terms with her life and lies and denial seem to be the only
solution. That concerns mainly her dark past no one would understand and she is
so desperately trying to forget. Finally she becomes lost, no more capable of
distinguishing the truth from her imagination. With no strength left, she is
giving up and leaves everything behind, clinging devotedly to a doctor’s hand. Her
story is touching and dreadful at the same time and it might be the main
message of the play: how a fragile mind can be affected by misfortune, incomprehension
and cruelty.
Williams’s
play is soaked with roughness which is getting under your skin in the course of
time. It is visible in every move Stanley makes and in every word he says. His
outbursts of rage are truly horrifying but not as much as the ease they are
accepted with. The whole neighborhood is filled with brutes and no one seems to
care; it has become their way of life and everyone laughs about it. We rarely
see the quarter in daylight but, on the other hand, very often messy. Blanche
is trying to bring some light to this place but like all of her attempts this
one fails as well. The atmosphere is tinged with piano music and noises from
streets which make the scenery even more intense.
A Streetcar Named Desire is very simply a tragic play of
struggles. There is the conflict between Blanche and Stanley, their fight for
domination, the clash of their different cultures and origins; Blanche herself
is caught between reality and fiction, past and present, promiscuity and
loneliness, death and desire. Each fight is desperate with no chance of winning.
And that’s probably the most fascinating aspect of the play.
Bibliography:
Bak, S. John. Criticism on A Streetcar Named Desire: A Bibliographic Survey,
1947-2003. Cercles 10 (2004), 3-32.
Kazan, Elia. Kazan on Directing. 1st ed. Vol. 1. New York: Knopf Doubleday
Group, 2009. 368. Print.
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