In nineteen century the very nature of reality was questioned and the artists tried to portray the reality in their own ways. Realism claimed that whatever they are showing is the pure reality. This claim was rejected by naturalism which claimed that reality should be illustrated through forces in the environment and heritance. After World War I, expressionism rejected both realism and naturalism. Expressionists were obsessed with the disasters of the war; that is the reason for leaving the outside world to show the reality; in fact they hated the destruction of humanity which was occurring in the world. They preferred to return to the inner world of ma, to the mind of man, in order to portray the reality. They left rationalism and instead used the emotions and feelings of the characters and claimed that the reality can be expressed through the eyes of characters. According to Paul P. Reuben:
In expressionistic plays, the playwright’s subjective sense of reality finds expression. The characters and the milieu may be realistic, but their presentation on stage is controlled by the writer’s personal biases and inclinations. No longer a camera photograph, the stage could be highly elaborate or bare; the accompanying lighting, costumes, music, and scenery could be similarly non-realistic. More like a dream, expressionistic writing has no recognizable plot, conflicts, and character developments. However, the threads are still audience friendly; expressionism is not absurdist or an exercise in obscurity. (1)
The Term Paper on Pimentel Teixeira Reality Virtual World
Virtual Reality Virtual reality is the concept of illusion. It is an artificial realm itself, a fresh experience that involves the use of high technology. It is to convince oneself the existence of a non-real world. It is also a method to communicate ideas, thoughts, and a tool to experience what one might not be able to achieve. The term virtual reality was coined by Jaron Lanier, founder of VPL ...
Luiz Manoel da Silva Oliveira believes that Williams is interested to show reality in an unconventional way and he reaches pure reality through breaking all conventions of realism. Williams in his “production notes” to the Glass Menageries says:
Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one valid aim, and that is a closer approach to truth, (…) a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are (qtd. in da Silva Oliveira 1).
In fact, T. Williams makes use of plenty of unconventional techniques, which gives the play an Expressionist touch.
Subjective feelings play an important role in expressionism, as the name suggests, in expressing inner feelings of the subject; critics believe that projecting the psychic forces was firstly done in Expressionism in order to reach to this aim. According to Hern, in Streetcar the audience can find out the “contradictory and guilt feelings” of Blanche which is projected indirectly:
The Aristotelian “terror” comes from the audience`s recognition that Blanche`s destruction is inevitable, that she cannot free herself from the contradictions of her own nature nor shake off the burden of guilt she has carried ever since her husband`s death. (xxxix)
The autobiographical implications are a common feature in Williams works as a whole, and Williams acknowledged that he never developed a character that did not contain some quality of his own personality – elaborated and developed for theatrical purposes.
Interestingly, Patricia Hern alleged:
Williams used his plays as a way of translating himself and creates the close connection between his writing and the surrounding of his life. The foundation of his work is laid down on earlier experiences of his childhood and adolescence. (xiv)
Camille Paglia emphasizes the similarity between Blanche and Williams, both are displaced from their Southern hometowns and they are forced to live in exile (3).
It is worth nothing that Williams like Blanche is suffering because of being trapped between his own pure feelings and desires and the role he should play in order to be accepted by the society. Gross says:
In an article entitled “On a Streetcar Named Success” which appeared in The New York Times a few days before Streetcar`s opening, Williams described his awkward assumption of a public identity, “an artifice of mirrors,” which alienated him from his private and relatively anonymous identity as a literary struggler “clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on with raw fingers.” (51)
The Essay on Illusion vs. Reality A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams uses the constant battle between illusion and reality as a theme throughout his play A Streetcar Named Desire. Many use illusion to escape the reality they are living in. This theme is present in all of his characters in different ways. Each character is shown to live their life in either the way of illusion or reality. Harold Mitchell, also known as Mitch buys into Blanches ...
Besides, Critics believe that what Williams and Blanche both desired is finding protection from a strange public self forced upon them and achieving re-establishment of a private natural one. Gross says: “Williams attempted to dramatize the rescue of a private self from a degraded collection of imposed public identities”(52).
Considering Blanche’s condition Gross believes leaving the family house in Mississippi, Belle Reve, resulted in losing her past reputation and status (54).
He continues:
This degradation pushed Blanche out of the home onto a series of conveyances, from Laurel to New Orleans, from the streetcar named Desire to the one called Cemeteries, and finally to Elysian Fields. Her search for companionship, in the person of the least sexually defined man in the play, Mitch, a level – headed fellow from a stable home, devoted to his mother, merges together all of the elements missing from her recent history, stability, and intersubjectivity. Seeking the protection of the family bond and its domestic walls. (54)
Another factor which plays an important role in Expressionistic plays is using dream – like scenes and fantasy. The characters’ view of reality is another device which is discussed in Williams plays as an expressionistic play. One should pay attention to the very idea that Blanche is always afraid of reality, which is the excuse to live in a dream – like world. In this play Blanche is escaping from reality through different ways such as covering the lantern, visiting Mitch in darkness,
All of Williams’ characters are crippled in one sense or another – emotionally, spiritually – and out of that imperfection there comes a need which generates the illusions with which they fill their world, the art which they set up against reality. (Bigsby 49)
Mordden alleges that the play is a “brutal reply to the illusion-loving theatre of the 1930s, for Williams speaks truth to someone whose whole life is a lie, the deluded Blanche Dubois” (qtd. in Welsch 24).
The Essay on Private Schools Vs Public Schools 2
Private Schools vs. Public Schools Many people in today's society believe it's wise to send their children to private schools. In making the decision on whether to put children in public or private schools, they look to four main factors: curriculum, class size, the graduation rate, and cost. When people have to pay for something, their first thought is, "Will I be getting what I'm paying for?" ...
Being afraid of reality is observed in refusing the “passage of time.” Critics clarified that Blanche wishes to deny the passage of time since it has destroyed her innocence. Interestingly Londre clarifies the same reason for this denial, Blanche wants to stay in the “golden age of innocence” which is in past (47).
The following dialogue represents that Williams’ characters are afraid of reality and the destructive power of time:
MITCH. (Coming. To R. of her) so I can take a look at you, good and plain!
BLANCHE. Of course you don’t really mean to be insulting!
MITCH. No, just realistic.
BLANCHE. I don’t want realism. I want – magic!
MITCH. (Laughing.) Magic!
BLANCHE. (Still on her knees.) Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent thing to them. I don’t tell them the truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that’s a sin, then let me be damned for it! Don’t turn the light on! (Act III, Scene 3, 84)
Blanche looks for protection against destruction and harshness of the outside world in her private fantasy. Paglia believes Blanche is a dreamer:
Blanche is a dreamer who lives by language, the medium of the playwright’s art. She creates poetry and illusion through her flights of rhetoric, which transform the harsh, bare environment. Blanche is literally a conduit of Romanticism: we hear that she taught Poe, Whitman, and Hawthorne to resistant high-school students in the country. It is through words alone that she re-creates the vanished world of Southern chivalry. She cries, “I don’t want realism. I want magic!” Blanche’s love of imagination and artifice clashes with the humdrum routine of the practical, utilitarian world, embodied in Stanley’s curt, deflating minimalism. (3)
Portraying distortion and violation as a post war school is common in Expressionism. Interestingly critics like Hern believe that Williams’ plays became more successful by depicting violence in American settings (xviii).
Paglia believes there are strange and energetic actions which are followed by violation and distortion. And Stanley is portrayed a violated man who has the nature of volcano (4).
One can find lots of examples in Streetcar in order to prove this idea; for instance in Act III, Scene 4 violent behavior of Stanley is portrayed. He kills sanity in Blanche by raping her. In other words he murders her soul: (STANLEY emerges from bathroom. He has put out bathroom light. He is dressed in red silk pajamas. He grins at BLANCHE, who raises, backs away from phone into living – room).
The Essay on Private Vs Public
In todays world people have many different views on which would be better for their children. Would the public school environment help broaden my childs social skills and give him a better view on the real world? Is the education as good as it is at private schools and will my child excel more in the sports programs? Do I have the money to send my child to a private school? These are a few ...
(Act III, Scene 4, 93)
In most Expressionistic works of art moving from hope towards disturbance, destruction and desolation is portrayed as a way of depicting modern man’s situation in this violent and merciless world. Welsch specifies that at the first time that Blanche visits her sister`s apartment, she is shocked and she behaves like an “outsider”: “Never, never, never in my worst dreams could I picture—Only Poe! Only Mr. Edgar Allan Poe!—could do it justice!” Everything is against her expectations. She never imagined (27).
Note worthily, Gross expresses the same idea:
Compromised language, no longer capable of manifesting the intersubjective bond that Blanche desires becomes in Streetcar as menacing and disorienting as the alien environment in which she wanders. A literary figure (she was an English teacher) set loose in a brutal and instrumental world, Blanche bears witness to a trail of broken meanings which intensify her fragmentation. She stands bewildered that the reality of her destination, Elysian Field, contradicts the literary image of paradise that she had heretofore accepted; she uncomprehendingly mutters to the stranger Eunice that “[t]hey mustn’t have – understood – what number I wanted. (246)
One of the common themes in modern era is the loss of individuality; Expressionism depicts this idea by violating the relationships and blurring the distinction between private and public. Emphasizing this idea Gross states:
Streetcar embraces the metaphor of movement, or more specifically, public transit, in a world in which private relations have become problematic. The companionship which Blanche seeks must find a means of expression and enactment in a stage environment which has shaken the home’s foundation and thereby blurred distinctions between private and public. (54)
Interestingly, Gross introduces the Kowalski apartment as a device which destroys the distinction between private and public:
Although the home in Streetcar –the Kowalski apartment – still stands, it does so largely in the character of an environmental antagonist to Blanche. Her chief problem in the dirty, crowded, and oppressive apartment is that she is subject to too many personal disclosures at the hands of too many strangers, and on terms not her own. The apartment crowds a number of people into a very small space, and is itself surrounded by other spaces of intrusive activity which condition. (54)
The Essay on Blanche and Stanley in a Streetcar Named Desire
Blanche and Stanley, two characters of Tenessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, represent two very conflicting personalities. Stanley, Blanche’s sister Stella’s aggressive husband, portrays strong tones of anger, rage, and frustration. However, although his behavior is without a doubt over-bearing and rough, in a way he displays realism and truth as well. On the other hand, the play’s ...
Gross specifies that Sounds and voices from outside are other intruders which blur the distinction between private and public :
Voices and sounds from the outside keep intruding on attempted “private” dialogues: Blanche asks Stella if she may “speak – plainly” her opinion of Stanley’s brutishness, at which point the loud sound of a train approaching temporarily makes hearing her impossible. (55)
Another factor is related to the physical condition of the apartment. Gross mentions that there are just two rooms without any doors in the apartment. Family members have to do their private activities like getting dressed and getting undressed in front of others. There is no safe place for private activities or personal things:
There is literally no place for Blanche’s trunk to be stored. The Blanche`s bed is in the most public place of all serves of her present lack of privacy. To lack privacy is to be exposed to multiple and often conflicting outside influerences. To be public is to be impure, and every space in this setting is impure. (Gross 55)
Critics allege Napoleonic Code is another element which mingles the distinction between private and public. Considering this fact, Gross affirms that:
William’s world reinforces the value system of its paterfamilias. Stanley’s explanation of the Napoleonic code suggests that everything in the apartment bears his mark. By this principle alone he appears far better accommodated to living in crowded conditions which blur the distinction between private and public. He is a man of the present, well – adjusted to an instrumental world which has no time for Blanche’s ornate literary discourse, but insists on laying his cards on the table. (279)
But it should be noted that while the apartment and Stanley are considered as antagonist of Blanche, F. Gross believes that Blanche herself is the antagonist of Stanley because he feels that his sister – in – law is an intruder who has violated his private life (279).
The Essay on Blanche And Stanley Williams Reader Interests
In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee Williams, the two main characters Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski are strongly portrayed as polar opposites when they are first introduced in the play. The two characters' differences are seen through their appearances, since Blanche is portrayed as a delicate moth while Stanley is portrayed as anomalistic. They are different by ...
Stanley expresses his unhappiness:
God, honey, it’s gonna be sweet when we can make the noise in the night the way that we used to and get the colored lights going with nobody`s sister the curtains to hear us! (373)
Hern specifies two features for William’s characters; being “highly individual” and portraying some features of “American life and tradition.” (xviii) Moreover, he believes “a nostalgic interest in America’s past, particularly in the romance of the years before and during the Civil war.” (xix) Paglia specifies that the decadence of organic past and rise of industrialism is shown in Blanche’s character (3).
Gross says:
I soon found myself becoming indifferent to people. A well of cynicism rose in me. Conversations all sounded like they had been recorded years ago and were being played back on a turntable. Sincerity and kindliness seemed to have gone out of my friends` voices. I suspected them of hypocrisy. (3)
As Expressionists delve into the mind of characters to express their genuine feelings; they also use a language which shows the pure and general truth rather than specific one through using a lot of symbols and poetic dialogues. According to Hern the language used by Blanche is both naturalistic and symbolic; however symbolic language is the more “conscious” and more outstanding part. Blanche’s conversations are full of allusions to Shakespeare, Hawthorn, Whitman and Poe (xlvii).
One of the recurring symbols in this drama is taking Shower:
STANLEY. “How long she been in there?
STELLA. “All afternoon”
STANLEY. “Soaking in a hot tub”…
STELLA. “She says it cools her off for the evening” (Act III, Scene 1, 69)
Considering this idea Paul Tosio specifies:
The fact that she feels dirty is apparent throughout the play. Blanche bathes repeatedly, as shown in the play. Her neurotic bathing suggests she is trying to rid herself of personal dirt. Blanche seems to want to heal herself by ridding the dirt that afflicts her following Alan’s death. (52)
Technically speaking, expressionists transmit characters basic emotions through sounds, music and light. Music is one of the important features which play an important role in William’s dramas. In his production notes for the Glass Menageries he says:
Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one valid aim, and that is a closer approach to truth. When a play employs unconventional techniques, it is not, or certainly shouldn’t be, trying to escape the responsibility of dealing with reality, or interpreting experience, but is expression of things as they are. . . . Everyone should know nowadays the unimportance of the photographic in art: that truth, life, or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest, in essence, only through transformation, through changing into other forms than those which was merely present in appearance. (qtd. in Welsch 30)
Welsch alleged Williams breaks realistic conventions by showing “inexpressible” through music, not using “Photographic” techniques:
The music then becomes a way to enter the character’s unstable mind without having to take the viewer out of the fabric of the play. The plastic theater and its expressionistic elements gave Williams greater freedom to express what had formerly seemed inexpressible without breaking the fourth wall. This connection with the interior of the characters, with their individual conflicts, marked a turning point for the theater. “Photographic” representations no longer had the same verisimilitude as the constructions of expressionism. Williams chased an emotional truth rather than a concrete fact. His interest in the interior mirrored the new introspection within the country. (31)
The usage of music occurs in A Streetcar Named Desire whenever there is the necessity to give emotional emphasis. Mostly the music which is the result of Blanche`s frightening dreams focuses upon her mind. Through this music which is heard by the audience, Blanche’s images and visions are believable for them (Hern xiv).
Through music, Stanley is introduced to the audience, too. Hern believes that:
It is not only Blanche’s passions and qualities that are expressed through emotive sounds. Stanley is associated with powerful note of a locomotive engine, modern, brutally impressive machine – muscle. In scene four, his invasion of the sisters’ conspiracy is covered by the sound of the approaching train. (xiv)
Usage of light is another meaningful device to establish the fear of reality in Blanche. According to Hern Blanche is comparable to a moth as she loves darkness and “shrinks” from strong lightness (xlvii).
Blanche and Stanley are considered as foil characters. Hern specifies that Stanley gains joy in lights which are strongly colored but Blanche is afraid of strong lights (xlvii).
This imagery is clear in the following dialogues:
STANLEY. (Crossing below strange woman to R. of dressing table.) Now, Blanche – you left nothing here but split talcum and old empty perfume bottles, unless it`s the paper lantern you want to take with you. (Reaches up for lantern.) You want the lantern? (Tears lantern off the light bulb, and throws it down on dressing table. Blanche cries out.) (Act III, Scene 5, 101)
Using indirect characterization is another common feature. The characters and scenes are presented in a distorted manner in order to produce emotional shock (Britannica).
Characterization through sentences with specific features is very noticeable by critics. Hern clarifies that short sentences with simple grammar is used in the case of Stanley but symbolic words and literary language is used by Blanche (xlvi) in order to portray Stanley as a character interested in everyday and down – to – earth activities and Blanche as a literate and romantic character.
As distortion is the key concept in Expressionism; artists attempted to violate everything in their works such as the subject matter. Depicting sex and rape openly on the stage and presenting homosexuality are considered as new distortions in the subject of theater in the United States. Paglia clarifies that Williams’ frankness in showing homosexuality at a time that these kinds of subject matters were forbidden was noticeable. He calls Williams as “pioneer for sexual condor,” too. Moreover, he states that the outrageous openness presentation of sex on the stage was a revolutionary act at the postwar period (4).
Interestingly Critic C.W. E. Bigsby notes:
The shock of Streetcar when it was first staged lay in the fact that, outside of O’Neill’s work, this was the first American play in which sexuality was patently at the core of the lives of all its principal characters, a sexuality with the power to redeem or destroy, to compound or negate the forces which bore on those caught in a moment of social change. (qtd. in Welsch 24)
Londre labels A Streetcar Named Desire as an “adult drama” because of speaking about forbidden subject matters like homosexuality, rape and sex on the stage (45).
He mentions “sexuality was patently at the core of the lives of its principal characters, sexuality with the power to redeem or destroy” (45).
Works Cited
Bigsby, C. W.E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989.
Britannica Encyclopedia.
da Silva Oliveira, Luiz Manoel. “Reality and Illusions Leading to Deeper Meanings of Life in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.” Revista Eletrônica do Instituto de Humanidades. Vol. IV, No. XIV, June – August 2005.(1-9).
Gross, Robert F. Tennessee Williams: A Casebook. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Hern, Patricia. Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire. London: Methuen Publishing Limited, 2005.
Londre, Felicia Hardison. “A Streetcar Running Fifty Years”, The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. (45-63.)
Paglia,Camille.“TennesseeWilliams.”AnewLiteraryHistoryofAmerica.
Reuben, Paul P. “Chapter 8: American Drama – An Introduction. “PAL: Perspectives in AmericanLiteratureAResearchandReferenceGuide.
Roudané, Matthew C., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997.
Tosio, Paul. “An Object Relational Psychoanalysis of Selected Tennessee Williams Play Texts.” Thesis of Master of Arts. Rhodes University, 2003.
Welsch, Camille-Yvette. “World War II, Sex, and Displacement in A Streetcar Named Desire” Critical Insights. . (23-40).
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. Karaj: Daha, 2002.
