姓名：鄢子雅班级：英语师范101学号：**********Analysis of symbolism in A Streetcar Named Desire关于《欲望号街车》中象征主义的分析Abstract：A Streetcar Named Desire is one of Tennessee Williams’s most popular plays and he is famous for this masterpiece. He uses a lot of symbolism to express the theme in the play. The purpose of this paper is to explore the specific symbolism in the play and to remind readers that although human’s life has become abundant, people need to prevent spiritual and moral decaying. The author probes into the research from three aspects: the Overall use of symbolism in the play, main symbols in the play and effects of symbolism on the theme of the play. During the research, the author mainly uses the methods of description and illustrating with examples.Key words: symbolism gender conflict flower water theme摘要：田纳西·威廉斯是美国当代最著名的剧作家之一，被公认为是第二次世界大战以来美国最优秀的戏剧大师。
Themes in A Streetcar Named DesireTennessee Williams is regarded as a leading American dramatist since O’Neill. His reputation was established once and for all after his “A Street Car Named Desire”was per formed in 1947. The first playing of this drama in New York in 1947 created a sensation immediately, and then it set up a record for giving 855 performances in succession. What’s more, A Streetcar Named Desire copped two important awards in the American theater world—Drama Critics’s Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize.Although Williams’protagonist in “A Street Car Named Desire” is the romantic Blanche Dubois, the play is a work of social realism. Realistic drama is a most powerful form in literature. This play tells a story in New Orleans, but its themes are universally acknowledged.The complexity of A Streetcar Named Desire is not the plot of its story, but its social background and the creating motive of the auther Tennessee Williams who puts his own personal experiences into this drama. These two points lead to reveal the essential elements of the drama and reflect a variety of themes in it. There will be different themes when we read it from slightly different angles.First of all, the most obvious and remarkable theme of this drama is that fantasy is unable to overcome reality. The characteristic of indulging in fantasies is embodied in many characters in this play. Of course, Blanche is the much more typical one. She avoids reality by indulging in fantasies which is reflected through the whole story line.At the very beginning of the play, when Blanche arrives in the Kowalski household, she pretends to be a woman who has never known indignity. But here rather than pretending, Blanche simply indulges in her own fantasies. As an aging southern belle, she lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty. Throughout the play, Blanche avoids appearing in direct, bright light, especially in front of her suitor, Mitch. She also refuses to reveal her age, and it is clear that she avoids light in order to prevent him from seeing the reality of her fading beauty. Blanche covers the exposed lightbulb in the Kowalski apartment with a Chinese paper lantern, and she refuses to go on dates with Mitch during the daytime or well-lit places. In scene nine, Mitch points out Blanche’s avoidance of light when he confronts her with the stories that Stanley has told him of her past. Mitch then forces Blanche to stand under the direct light. This act means Blanche is finally brought back to reality. Blanche emphasizes repeatedly that she belives magic rather than reality. Blanche’s inability to tolerate light means that her grasp on reality is also nearing its end. However, fantasies still can’t cover the truth.In the middle of the play, Blanche keeps trying to convince Stella to leave Stanley for a better man whose social status equals Stella’s. Blanche suggests that she and Stella contact a millionaire named Shep Huntleigh for help escaping from New Orleans. Nevertheless, all these are Blanche’s reveries. She considers Shep Huntleigh as a chivalrous southern gentleman who can rescue and protect her from poverty and the bad reputation that haunts her. In fact, this kind of southern gentlemen no longer exist in reality. Although Blanche has seen that Mitch is far from her ideal, she dates with him to satisfy her fantasy for an ideal lover. The breaking of their ambiguous relationship at last reflectes again that fantasy is unable to overcome reality.In the last scene of this play, Blanche speaks to the doctor who comes to take her to an insane asylum and these words are her final statement: Whoever you are — I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. Blanche indulges her fantasies even when she loses her mind, which is even more serious than before. She regards the doctor as the gentleman who comes to rescure her and whom she has been waiting since arriving in New Orleans. Blanche’s final words indicate that she has totally detached from reality and she sees life only according her own wishes. Actually, it also indicates that Blanche will never makes her fantasies to be true. This point once again proves the theme that fantasy is unable to overcome reality.The second theme is about guilty feeling will leads to self-destruction which is also epitomized in Blanche. Her guilty feelings come from three aspects of her past experiences: her husband shoots himself because of her contempt upon his homosexual status; the manor which is inherited from age to age is lost in the hand of Blanche; she demages the image of lady and destroys the traditional ethics of southern nobles. Blanche is filled with self-accusation, guilt and regret. Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche bathes herself repeatly, which as she says it can calm her nerves. She tries to remove her disgraceful past in the new place and these baths represent her efforts to clean her impure, sordid past and reputation. Besides, Blanche always drinks alone and tries to keep it a secret. Only when she is drunk, she can forget her guilts. However, Blanche doesn’t realize that her bathing can never wash off her past and alcohol will lead herself further to the verge of breaking down. To some extent, we can say Blanche brings miserable fate by herself. Concealment of herself brings more clear memories of her negative part of life. With an ending of out of her sense at last, it is rather caused by her self-destruction than Stanley’s rude behavior.The third theme is about women’s tragedy. According to the Victorian social codes, women are completely submissive to men, and they do not have their independent identities. Both Stella and Blanche think that woman cannot lead a respectable life without depending on a man. As for the heroine Blanche, she firstly depends on her father who makes her early life carefree, and then when her father leaves her, she begins to rely on her husband. However, after the suicide of her husband, she loses her spiritual support and lives a dissipated life. Then Blanche builds a relationship with Mitch when she lives with her sister in New Orleans, and Mitch becomes another support for her to renew her life. When Mitch rejects her based on Stanley’s words about her past, Blanche immediatelythinks of another man — the millionaire Shep Huntleigh — who might rescue her. In the end, Blanche depends on “ the kindness of strangers”— the doctor of the insane asylum. Blanche does not realize that her dependence on men will lead to her downfall rather than her salvation. As for Stella, she always depends on her husband Stanley. Although she suffers a lot from her husband and believes what her husband dose on Blanche, Stella still chooses to keep her marriage and family. Resisting her husband means that it will interfere her life and her survival. When Stella chooses to remain with Stanley, she chooses to rely on and belive in a man instead of her sister. Both Blanche and Stella see men as their only means to achieve happiness. However, just by relying on men, they put their fates in the hand of others and their lives are doomed to be miserable.“ 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!” ( 英国文学选读, p224 ), these words are Blanche speaks to others when she arrives at Kowalski apartment at the beginning of scene one. The journey that Blanche describes from the train station to the Kowalski apartment represents her life journey. A work is regarded as an excellent one because of its thoughts and value under a plain and limpid story. For Blanche’s complicated personality and bitter experiences, Tennessee Williams describes her inner heart richly and draw out the themes behind its story: fantasy’s inability to overcome reality, guilty feeling for self-destruction and women’s dependence on men. Tennessee Williams never forces his ideas on readers, so people will see different things from their own views.NOTEFangfang Wang, and Feifei Wang. “Desire, an Everlasting Topic in Life.”Literature 2 (2009): 72-74Xiaoyu Xing. “Desire with no ‘Desire’.”Journal of Inner Mongolia University for Nationalities 13 (2007): 13-15Jie Tao. Selected Reading in American Literature. Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2000Yan Zhu. Themes of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Contemporary Foreign Literature 3 (2004): 97-102Yun Zhang. Tennessee Williams and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Foreign Literature 6 (1993): 23-26知识改变命运。
The appreciation of A Street Car Named DesireA Street Car Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams, is a play about the story of Blanche DuBois, a southern gentlewoman in her late twenties, who, having lost her youth, husband, employment and nearly all the other reliance, turns to her younger sister Stella and her husband Stanley. Her family plantation Belle Reve (beautiful dream) is lost as a result of the indulgence of the male members of the family. Both sisters marry young, or rather, rush into marriage. Stella chooses passion and sexuality incarnated in the person of Stanley. And Blanche prefers delicacy and refinement in the form of the young poet—Allan Grey, whom she takes as the light of her life. However, the light turns out to be nothing other than a disguise of his homosexuality. Shocked by this disgusting exposure, Blanche is at a loss. Not knowing how to cope with it, she publicly degrades her husband when he expects comfort and help more desperately than she does, which precipitates his suic ide. Left alone, Blanche begins to involve herself in a succession of sexual promiscuity . Of late she taught English in Laurel. Accused of having an affair with one of her students, she is evicted from school and town. Blanche, desperate, wretched and alo ne, then arrives in New Orleans to find her refuge in Stella’s home. However, she is disconcerted to find that Stella is married to an uncouth salesman of Polish origin living in a small and dingy apartment. During her stay with the Stanleys, she might have secured one hope of escape—a possible marriage with Mitch, but Stanley ruthlessly destroys the relationship by exposing her past to Mitch who leaves Blanche in the lurch. At the end of the play, raped by Stanley, Blanche is unhinged and is committed for an indeterminate period to an asylum.'A Streetcar Named Desire' is a very socially challenging play in the way in which Tennessee Williams depicts how brutal and deceiving human nature can be. He takes the point of view that no matter how structured or 'civilized' society is all people will rely on their natural animal instincts, such as dominance and deception, to get themselves out of trouble at some stage in life, even if they don't realize it. William's has created three main characters of society, they are, Blanche Dubiou, Stella and Stanley Kowalski. Each of these characters is equally as civilized as one another, yet their acts of savagery are all on different levels. Throughout the play Williams symbolically relates these three characters to animals, 'savages,' by the use of their attitudes, beliefs, appearances and desires.The most obvious example of a savage in the play is Stanley Kowalski. He is a large well-toned, territorial male with simple beliefs and a short temper. He does not have many manners and does not care what people think of him. He seems very simple but there I much more to him. He feels threatened by Blanche because she moves in on his territory and wants Stella to leave him. At first, Stanley acts physically dominant over both Blanche and Stella; by rifling through Blanches possessions, quoting to Stella and Blanche that every man is a king, throwing the radio out the window in a drunken frenzy and actually striking his pregnant wife (Stella). However, towards the end of the play, Stanley realizes his power over Blanche and he acts a lot wiser, but still with the same intentions. He dresses smarter, talks to her nicely, but mockingly, and finally rapes her just to prove his status and to fulfill his desire. Stanley has to bethe domineering figure in his relationships we see it not only with Stella and Blanche, but with his friends as well. He is a leader and does not like it when someone tries to complicate his role. All in all, Stanley is a man who lacks insight to see what he really is – a coarse, crude, domineering man ruled by animal instincts, Stanley‘s intense hatred of blanche is partly motivated by the aristocratic past blanche represents, he also rightly sees her as untrustworthy and does not appreciate the way she attempts to fool him and his friends into thinking she is better than they William's uses a different type of savagery in Blanche's character.Blanche is more deceptive and exaggerated than Stanley is, she tries to hide her age, from others, by constant bathing and dim lighting, and from herself, by drinking and lying. Through out the whole play she is trying to hide her real identity, the actual animal instincts that are inside her. She hides these with perfume, wearing fancy clothes, even by putting a lampshade to hide the actual light. She also attempts to steal Stella away from Stanley by relating him to an animal. This is best represented when Blanche says:”He acts like an animal, has animals habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one!” Despite the fact that there is a lot of truth in Blanche's words she deceives herself by her drinking and her need to feel 'wanted by men'. She blames society for these 'cravings' and states that she only does it to 'survive'. Blanche is not happy with her actual self, so she is always trying to hide it. Although she appears the opposite of Stanley, they both share the same characteristics. They both are very lustful, they both drink a lot, and they are both very competitive toward each other. They are both savages raised in different worlds.William's character Stella seems to set the standard for the civilized person, but at a closer look Stella may be just as guilty of savagery as Stanley and Blanche. The humble Stella has 'desires' just like Blanche and Stanley; she needs Stanley for his security and companionship, she likes to feel overpowered by a rugged man. Stella's weakness is present throughout the play, when she takes Stanley's word over Stella's, but more so when she goes back to Stanley after being struck by him. Once again with Stella we see that she enjoys sex. At the end of the play she knows that her husband, Stanley, raped her sister but still decides to be with him. She wants sex and she needs it. Stella is basically admitting that her and Stanleys relationship is based around sex. This is a very animal instinct. Stella, although does not say it, enjoys being domineered. She needs it.There is no doubt that Tennessee Williams believes 'we are all savages at heart.' He seems to indirectly-attack the way in which society makes people think and act towards the more untamed desire, guilt, spiritual torment, and repressed sexuality. In the play every one has certain basic animal instincts and all of our characteristics can be drawn back to that. He seems to base most relationships on sex, which is the most natural, act that humans and all other animals can do. All three of these characters have the same personalities in many ways. Blanche hides her real emotions and her savageness, While Stanley does the opposite and does not hide it enough. And Stella is the most intriguing character of them all. she is mixed up in between the two. Having the American south as the background, Tennessee William’s play depicts the decline and decay of the south, the frustration and nostalgia of the characters and the torturing and dying outof desires. The play is concerned with the marginalized and psychologically-sacred individuals, highlighting the inner animality of his characters by means of poetic language.。
