In the play A Streetcar named Desire Blanche is a sad creature. She has no one to love her, owns nothing, and has not handled growing older well. Blanche is flirtatious and selfish. She lies to men and manipulates those around her. She goes into her sister's life because she has no where else to go and criticizes her sister's lifestyle and marriage. Blanche is always play acting who she wants to be instead of who she really is, and she loses the ability to know the difference between play acting and reality. However, she has become the way that she is because of a terrible trauma. Her husband whom she loved and married when she was young was observed by her having relations with a man. After Blanche confronts him, he shoots himself and dies.
The darkness in the play represents Blanche’s decent away from the light of joy, youth, and innocence to the dark days that follow after her husband's death. His death brought darkness into her life. She equates a new fresh love to being like a bright light (hope). She desires to be able to be in the light, but she is dark and stained by her guilt over her husband's death. She can not been seen in "the light" because of her aging face so she hides her face from Mitch. She lies about her age to him, but the light and the darkness symbolize her guilt and her desire so that others do not know her guilt. She can not let them know her, so she play-acts, but in truth she longs to be seen and loved. She eventually loses her sense of reality.
Blanche is a very tragic figure. She was doomed for failure from a young age and should be pitied.
No comments:
Post a Comment