《欲望号街车》中幻想与现实的对立

河北工业大学毕业论文作者：苏丽丽学号：****** 系：外语系专业：商务英语题目：《欲望号街车》中幻想与现实的对立Illusion versus Reality in A StreetcarNamed Desire指导者：杨海丽副教授评阅者：陆洋讲师2011年6月12日毕业论文中文摘要毕业论文外文摘要Contents1 Introduction (1)2 The Shaping and Destruction of Reality (3)2.1 Blanche's Family Background (3)2.2 Blancche's Missing in the Illusion (4)3 Blanche's Personality (4)3.1 A Brave Coward (4)3.2 A Yield Rebel (5)3.3 A Desperate Fighter (6)4 Venting the Pain of Life (7)4.1 The Destructive Power (8)4.2 The Shelter of Illusion (8)5 Solutions to the Painful Opposition (9)5.1 The Characte rs’Solutions (9)5.2 The Ture Pleasure of Life (13)Conclusion (14)Bibliography (15)Acknowledgements (17)1IntroductionTennessee Williams (1911–1983) is one of the most famous contemporary playwrights in the United States, which is recognized as the best playwright since the World War II. His plays are not only extremely productive but also excellent. His dramatic career has been over fifty years from the mid 1930s until his death in 1983, and saw the creation of many plays that are regarded as classics of the American stage. His works are warmly praised, as well as hotly disputed in the critics several times.Tennessee Williams is born in a chaotic family. He doesn’t like to play with the boys, and they joke he like a sissy. His grandfather was a pastor who has a study which becomes Tennessee Williams’ shelter. His father is a shoe salesman, shuttling everywhere. When his children grow older, he gets more hurled insults at them; His mother is a southern high family seed, but she has a kind of a choking for Williams. Williams has a sister Rose, and they have a good relation. They both have a similar character: sensitive, neurotic, easy injury, and the same hobby- art. Rose let Williams to truly feel the love and the compassion and the care. But Rose's destiny is very miserable that she suffers from schizophrenia in her after twenty years old and Williams’ mother unexpectedly sends her to go to the hospital for the resection of the lobes of the brain. Rose never recovers to a normal but lives in a convalescent hospital over the long life. The failure of Rose’s operation to Williams is a great blow. He never forgives his parents agreed to the surgery. Many of the paranoid female characters appear in the plays of Williams, may be influenced by the Rose.A Streetcar Named Desire, one of his most famous plays, has awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In this piece of work, the heroine Blanchhas been nobly born as an educated young lady. She has married Allen at her age of 16, and they love each other. But shortly after the marriage Blanche finds that Alan is a gay. Since Blanche shouts out at a ball, Alan is so ashamed that he runs outside and kills himself. Blanche feels deeply guilty.After Alan’s suicide, she attributes Alan's death to her, and feels deeply sorry and ashamed. Meanwhile，her family members pass away with her family in decline. She becomes decadent, and has relations with many strange men getting a lustful reputation. To restart her life, she wants to take refuge in her sister Stella. But her brother-in-law named Stanley is very rough. Stanley's friend Mickey is after Blanche, but Stanley reveals her past. Then Blanche is abandoned. Under the action of alcohol Stanley has raped Blanche. Finally Blanch becomes mad and has been sent to a mental hospital.This piece of work creates complex characters. It not only tells a story, but also expresses a state of mind and an inner with suppressed roar like the crazy cries with pain and suffers. Blanch is a fragile woman. She escapes from her reality and indulges in fantasy. She constructs the fantasy world with an expensive cost. She endured all the pain to resist reality. How can you say such a traitor is not brave enough? Blanche are dressed up even if her heart. All her lies are in order to prove the existence of her fantasy world. In other words, she sincerely builds a mirage. But the flood of the reality washes it away eventually. Branch is a poor woman resisting the reality and flattering the reality and destroyed by the reality. This delicate and moving work makes people feel characters’ heart. The collision between delicate feelings and brutal reality means Blanche's tragic fate.This paper believes that each person's heart is lonely and fragile. Only turns to ourselves, builds a strong heart, and graces to others, canwe get the true pleasure of life.2 The Shaping and Destruction of RealityThe author thinks that the shaping and destruction from reality is important. Blanche should be placed in her living environment to cognize and to judge.2.1 Blanche’s Family BackgroundBranch is born in a declining noble family in South America. The Civil war unfortunately engulfs south land failure and shatters the old manor mode of life. Slave owners lost their heaven, and falls into a profound loneliness, only leaves a dignity and fragile. Also an effete feeling hangs over the southerners’ soul. But the slavery plantation economy system that their plantations of lands rely on is like the collapse of the ice gradually melted. Big industrial mountains of incomparable strength get the victory. The culture of old southern plantations and the “progress”industrial culture conflict between the overpowering. Blanche is an elegant noble lady, who accepts aristocratic education since her childhood. She has a success with the proud manner as a noble lady. That should be some missing glory. She regards it as a belief with never doubt, also she is unable to doubt. When the background suddenly goes down, she becomes devastating. As an idealist, she never gives up her faith, but she has to compromise in order to survive. “I have no way to support myself”, she confided to Stella. The reality shapes her defiance to the life of the bottom class, but the reality pushes her into a terrible world of the bottom class as throwing a lamb into the wolves. When Blanche first meets Stanley, she is jittered and careful. Behind of Blanche’s tragedy is the change of the reality, and Blanche is the funeral objects of the sorehead southern plantations culture.2.2 Blanche’s Missing in the IllusionIn A Streetcar Named Desire, there are many examples where the characters are using illusions in an attempt to escape reality. The best example is found by looking to the main character. Blanche Dubois was a troubled woman who throughout the play lives her life in illusions. What initially leads to her illusions is love. She met Allan Grey, as her sister says that she loves him completely. They get married and Blanche are falling more and more in love. Until the day she finds that Allan Grey is gay, but Allan believes that if there is anyone who would help him makes it through this whole ordeal, it would be Blanche. However Blanche couldn't really believe that he was with her and was for real. Blanche let it slip while they were dancing that “I saw! I know! You disgust me...”With this, Allan runs outside and kills himself. Because of all this, Blanche fell into another illusion. She figures that if she were loved again, then she could be happy again. She escapes from reality and resists the reality. She has been looking for her lost dream again and again. Her fantasy is her tool and refuge both for escaping and resisting the reality. However, the fantasy can’t redeem her, and she has been destroyed by the reality.3 Blanche's PersonalityWe can learn from the above that we are shaped by our environment. When an environment changes, how can we do? Shall we insist on our own beliefs or should we change ourselves? When the times change, there are always those sacrificial objects for culture, and those ones usually are destined. They insist on their faith to struggle with pain as Blanche would be ultimately destroyed.3.1 A Brave CowardSo many desires run into our lives for no reason. In many cases, thedesire is not an option, but the desire usually chooses us. Who makes the unfortunate dislocated in reality? We shall be tolerant and sympathy. Also, we should give more understandings, more warmth humanity and more flexible ethical standards to those seek self-salvation by evading. As for the desperation of Blanche, We should give the understanding and salvation, not destruction. Blanche's illusions are from her desire. It is that the desire can’t be satisfied extremely causes the opposite extremely between reality and illusion. There is nothing the opposition can produce but pain. Blanche cannot avoid suffering; she hugs her beliefs, sipping on the road in bitter life. She feels that the lonely is anywhere. She couldn't lose faith. When real society gave her up, she still loved life. To survive, she uses the fantasy to weave small shields again and again.God knows that she was innocent. She never hurt anyone .what’s more, her cowardly is shaped by the social condition. She wants herself is elegant princess forever. She could not survive in reality, and she wants her dream, so she needs magic. She shouted, “I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth and if that is sinful, then let m e be damned for it!”The voice is so tragically heroic, but the reality is filled with taunt. But she doesn’t care. What she believes has become the faith which is never betrayed.3.2 A Yield RebelShe has to be yield. Branch’s world only has her own self, and she only loves her own. The existence of each person means to enjoy her. When she has lost the all that the world appreciates, she needs to cover, needs to lie, needs to fantasy. Finally, there's nothing with her but a fantasy. Most of the comments regarded Blanche as a heroine critically ill women. But the author's intention is not so. In the eyes of Tennessee Williams,the heroine Blanche is not sick, but pure and innocent. Branch's full name, Blanche Dubois, is a French word meaning white forest, while “white” is the symbol of purity in the West. William Clay Bo points that the hero and heroine works by defining the “same” and the “other” status, and then analyzes the works of gender relations from the post-modern thinker Michel Foucault's theory. Gassner and Kutch says that Branch represents the civilization and art, and Stanley represents the rough and violent, and Stanley i s Branch’s destroyer.3.3 A Desperate FighterIn the real world, she can't find where the God is. Real happiness is something doomed for her. Her desire and fantasy attaches in her life until died with the life together. Mickey says his love to her, as if the God lights the lamp of hope for her. She even tells him that “I thanked God for you, because you seemed to be gentle - a cleft in the rock of the world that I could hide in!”But Once again she fells into darkness. When Mickey says that he want her, but thinks she is “not clean”and refuses to marry her, she drives him, and shouts the hysterical roaring. She feels so painful but tries to hid pain. She burst it out at that time. She tries to release the pain and express the resistance through the fantasy as a weak person. Even standing for those hurt, she still would n’t completely yields. She fantasies that Mickey should be like a gentleman back and apologize to her, but she would refuse elegantly and decently.Fantasy is her way to compromise the pain as a cowardly, but also the way to divulge her own fulfilled desires. She couldn't be Don Quixote who uses action to finish the ideal in their heart. She has to rely on fantasy. But the reality was detested fantasy that make herself ruined her. The opposition between reality and illusion make her nervous always in taut state. She just walked into the sister Stella home. It showed hermental tension, “she shrank by shoulder sitting on the chair, looking around,” .Finally, her nerve was eventually collapsed by Stanley.She always fantasies a shelter, and seeks shelters. She could not accept reality, and then deny the reality. But Fantasy things won't survive. In the opposition of the reality and illusion, Blanche can’t find the balance. Her constant escape is order to find a place that can let her fantasy live. She believes strangers’ good will, because the familiar only abandon her. She fantasies new places to survive fantasy. She is always walking with a dream. Any a strange place or any a strange person, can be all lovely and good. Any place was her garden and anyone is her guest. But strange will also be filled with evil such as Stanley, as well as the asylum where she will spend the rest of her life. In patriarchal society, the Noble ladies have no survival ability, so they have to attach to the man. In such a reality, she refused to give up the faith and her fate would be doomed to tragedy.4 Venting the Pain of LifeThere is no conclusion that human nature is good or evil, but there is no doubt that the living environment has a great impact on humanity. Freud believes that the personality is made up of id, ego and superego. The id reflects human’s primitive. And what the id asks to do show human’s original desire. W e human are always with Sociality, so we have to be limited by the rules of society. It means that the human’s desire will never be fully satisfied. As a result, the human’s depression exists everywhere. No matter the brave or the cowardly, they have to outbreak their own depression to release their anger which is from that they can not meet their desires. The outbreak of depression is various. Some will not harm others, while some may be despicable and shameless.4.1 The Destructive PowerSartre, an American writer, has said that Hell is other people. Egoism is the starting point of human nature. People tend to gloss over their own to achieve the purposes which are both satisfying their desire and escaping accountability of their bad social behavior. That is the so-called “Kill two birds with one stone”.Stanley is full of brutal and violent. As a representative of the emerging industrial power, he brutally put an end to all the sensitive and delicate. He was like a wild beast, full of worldly pleasures doctrine. He is full of primitive instincts of human nature, which people hate but also denied of the temptation. Gesner and Kutch says that Branch represents the civilization and art, and Stanley represents the rough and violent, and Stanley i s Branch’s destroyer. Each person's heart is lonely and fragile, so it is Stanley .He turns to the outside world to gain strength. His heart is weak and horror, so he would utterly destroys Branch. He completely expresses cruelty of humanity by putting his own happiness in the suffering of other people.4.2 The Shelter of IllusionBranch is a brave coward and a yield rebel and a desperate fighter. It is the cowardice of Blanche’s subjective that leads to her dependence on the fantasy. She goes to the complete collapse in the opposition of reality and illusion.She can’t stand what the life brings to her, but the fate won’t give anyone the choice to flee. She has been a lovely girl. When her love tells the truth beyond her tours, she is filled with fear. She doesn’t know how to deal with it. As child she shouts out what she thinks .she is young at that time, but the change of life is too earlier to her. Her lover’s killing himself makes her first harm. She had to turn to her family for help; however her family has became helpless. Death of her mother hadhappened before her eyes, and then the death of Margaret. She can’t admit the falling of her social class, and can’t give up her believe as a noblewoman. To pay for her instant, she has to get what she wants by urging others. She goes to the stringers for love .she looks for God, although there is no use to do so. The cost is expensive that she gets a lustful reputation which ruins her life. She was excluded from the happiness.No matter how innocent she is, no matter how much she endured the pain, she would stick to her belief. The cost of her insisting on the faith is being expelled by happiness. She stubbornly believes that her life is something which should be obtained as what she wants, rather than a rough life that she has to accept. She wants to choose the life she want, rather than be chosen by life. But for a sorehead noble lady, the distance between reality and dream is too far away. Who doesn’t have a beautiful dream for the life? Romance is something with born for every woman, but the cruel life often buries our beautiful dreams before our eyes. Branch just chooses to live with the beautiful dream. However, her own life has even been buried for this purpose. Her cost is tragic, but the life is so cruel. We can not help her apart from tears. Even in a lunatic asylum, she still lives with her beautiful dream although her heart is bleeding.5 Solutions to the Painful OppositionWe must find the balance on the opposition of reality and illusion. Fantasy is something that we have to remain because of wanting a happy life. If the reality is mostly satisfied, the fantasy is just a compensation for pleasure. So the fact is we often need a mixture of both the reality and illusion.5.1 Characters’ SolutionsTennessee Williams once said: “my work only has one subject that is how society forcing to destruction for sensitive ones which don't wantto order the society.” So, the sex in A Streetcar Named Desire, which is full of irony, plays, or even destroys, expresses the violent and the vulgar. It also reflects the inner pain and frustration of those “sensitive ones which don't want to order the society”.5.1.1 Branch’s IndulgenceWe all want to justify our existence. When we stand pains, we want the pleasure. The depth of human nature wants unlimited indulgence. Branch uses indulgence to release her repression. Sex is one of mankind's most primitive desires. As long as the desire is satisfied, the human can feel pleasure, or they can forget the pain of life for a moment. The pleasure of sex can heal wounds of Life. However it can not save the desperate soul.“After the death of Allan -intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with...”The illus ion was that out of all these men she would be with, one of them will be the right one for her and will take care of her. Her desires are to be happy again and to be loved again. But soon her intimacies get out of control and she once made the mistake of trying to seduce a 17 - year old student of hers. Because of this, she has no place to stand.Blanche like a moth, however she not brave enough. Her heart was filled with fear, but she refuse to return. She is a paranoid person, the paranoid with a dream. Desire is the humanity's call, and everyone's heart has the depressive mood. Those sensitive ones feel the pain more deeply. When the opposition breaks through the bottom line of heart, spiritual world will collapse. The tragedy of Blanche is the product of the objective environment, also relates to her own reasons. Stella will fall in love with Stanley, who is lower than their classes, and feel happiness. That won't happen on Blanche. She always puts herself in the manor of noble. She refuses reality and fears reality.The more pure spirit is, the more painful it is. We all have life onlyonce, but Blanche choice belief between life and belief. It is the lack of rational that caused her to drown desire and finally in the collapse in reality.5.2.2 Stanley's RapeStanley belong the class of his living environment, and he loves his class. His life is satisfied by the material and the physical enjoyment, which seems to be called a rich and happy life. Before the arrival of the Branch, all things have been peaceful under Stanley’s spiritual leadership. In fact, he is as selfish as Blanche. Branch is just an inadvertent intruder, but Stanley is a deliberate murder and the attacker. Pettiness is a kind of narrow self-protection, but also the largest invisible killer. It is the Opposing class culture that makes their hearts, unable to understand completely and communicate fully. And for psychological self-defense from human nature, the culture arises with exclusion and conflict inevitably. Thus, those who like Blanche as cowardly rebels only failed to withstand the harsh reality.Stanley destroyed Branch completely and violently. It expresses what a cruel and brutal reality. Stanley’s rape is a thorough expose at the original dirty face of life. Branch has been beautifying the world, and believe that imaging world and love her beautify world. In fact, she has relationships with many strangers. But those men confuse them temporarily in her poem, or just to play with her. In her fantasy world, every man who has relation with her is her prince who loves her, and they are in the noble love. However, what’s she calls the noble love is only the hypocrisy, the affectation, and the satisfaction of body in the eyes of Stanley. Blanche's fantasy is just a game, which she plays with her own by her life. As the robber, Stanley destructs everything. Stanley raped Blanche and drives her to completely crazy, which reveals that the Stanley is the real crime, but also expresses that the reality is too cruel tostand. Meanwhile, Blanche, who struggles in the oppression of reality, wants to avoid pain from illusion, and finally comes to desperation.5.3.3 Stella’s LoveLove means tolerance and acceptance. Happiness comes from the fitness of the environment. She is as brave as Branch, but she gets her happiness. Stella is the real beautiful wife. She loves her sister, loves her husband, and loves her home. She is also a noble lady, however, as she said, “I have always been silent.” In other words, she did not fully appreciate and satisfy the glory of a noble lady. She loved Stanley, and lives with him together and enjoys the happiness of life. The final perception of life has always been silent. Even the pursuit of the spirit as Blanche says, it should be enjoyable, not a fantasy for refuge.Before the Branch’s arrival, the whole thing is harmonious. The tragedy would become inevitable for their misunderstanding on culture. The outbreak of the side of Stanley’s evil is because of his meeting with Branch. In the early part of Scene 4, after Stanley and Stella have made up about the beating, Blanche comes to see if Stella is okay. Blanche tries to convince her that staying with Stanley is the wrong thing to do. But Stella wouldn’t leave her husband. Even when she knows that Stanley raped Blanche. Stella tells Eunice, “I couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley,” who replies, “Don't ever believe it. Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you've got to keep going.”There is no way for life as pure as poetry. Treating the reality too penetrating, then fantasy will have nowhere to go, and the pain will always haunt your heart. That is the reality. The reality can not be created, but an objective form, and everyone has his own “reality”. However, happiness can be created. For the cruelty and suffering of reality, the way of escaping through the fantasy is impossible to avoid pain. Those who have tolerance and love can create happiness.5.2 The True Pleasure of LifeBlanche is a woman who is long for beauty but is rolled back eventually to earth by reality. Such women appeared again and again in Tennessee Williams’ works, because he's such a sensitive and vulnerable pe rson. Tennessee Williams’ works are performance victim of American era is known - the escape. His dramas are realism with inheriting American theatre. And meanwhile as the different level of artistic innovation, he makes American drama “really get rid of the influence of European drama, started his own tradition.” The writer LiLi writes Women's Growth Course: Tennessee Williams Works Feminist Unscramble. The book from the perspective of feminism Tennessee Williams is six masterpiece the female images were analyzed. In addition to Tennessee Williams works abroad have studied the gay, says “Blanche is draped in women's wear gay men.”Tennessee Williams’ Work s displays all the repressive and pain, he enjoys the gay meanwhile suffers a lot which is described in one of his poem.In people's living condition, the desire will not satisfy life exists eternally, so the pain will exist forever. Life is always painful, though not all pain. A Streetcar Named Desire gives the feeling sufficient displaying. In fantasy Stella gets to continue to live, and Blanche is death because of fantasy.Life is so full of illusion and hypocritical, tolerance and love is the only way out of this predicament. Only has the independent life ability, can we be a brave dream-seeker. Those who have the pursuit of happiness, strong heart, not thirst for others, can enjoy the pleasure of life.ConclusionIn reading the work or seeing the film named A Streetcar Named Desire, repressing atmosphere rushes to audiences. As a gay, Tennessee Williams is animosity and tortured, his works are to express his guilty in his heart.Any beginning searches for life is painful, and then goes for a ride.A Streetcar Named Desire expresses the cruelty of reality, but also shouts the hope for the return of human nature. Branch said, “The intentional harm can not be forgiven.”B ut Stanley brutally has destroyed the Branch which makes the readers sympathy Blanche and disgust Stanley. Meanwhile it expresses the author’s appeal for the kindness and tolerance. In The Lizard of the Night, the heroine- Hannah, she could face all the life for her to survive tenaciously. She is full of selfless love for her dying grandfather, and she has a deep understanding and sympathy for all things and people. Through Hannah, Williams is to tell people how we live in a desecrating life with the strong optimism. Only has a strong heart and abandons the fantasy, can we create the real happiness and enjoy the pleasure of life.Tennessee Williams is an important figure in the history of American drama, even affects the world literature. His works are both for artistic expression and exploration of human’s inner existing, which are worth studying and learning.Bibliography1. Emily Bront. Wuthering Heights. New York: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 19922. Harold Bloom. Tennessee Wil liams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: Chelsea House Place of Publication, 19883. Tennessee Williams. 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