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Streetcar Named Desire, A - In Depth Analysis Of Blanche Dubois

    Tennessee Williams was once quoted as saying "Symbols are nothing
but the natural speech of drama...the purest language of plays" (Adler
30). This is clearly evident in A Streetcar Named Desire, one of
Williams's many plays. I n analyzing the main character of the story,
Blanche DuBois, it is crucial to use both the literal text as well as
the symbols of the story to get a complete and thorough understanding
of her.

    Before one can understand Blanche's character one must understand
the reason why she moves to New Orleans and joins her sister, Stella,
and brother-in-law, Stanley. By analyzing the symbolism in the first
scene, one can understand what prompted Blanche to move. Her
appearance in the first scene "suggests a moth" (Williams 96). In
literature a moth represents the soul. So it is possible to see her
entire voyage as the journey of her soul (Quirino 63). Later in the
same scene she describes her voyage: "They told me to take a streetcar
named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six
blocks and get off at Elysian Fields" (Quirino 63). Taken literally
this does not seam to add much to the story. However, if one
investigate Blanche's past one can truly understand what this
quotation symbolizes. Blanche left her home to join her sister,
because her life was a miserable wreck in her former place of
residence. She admits, at one point in the story, that "after the
death of Allan (her husband) intimacies with strangers was all I
seemed able to fill my empty heart with" (Williams, 178). She had
sexual relations with anyone who would agree to it. This is the first
step in her voyage-"Desire". She said that she was forced into this
situation because death was immanent and "The opposite (of death) is
desire" (Williams, 179). She escaped death in her use of desire.
However, she could not escape "death" for long. She was a teacher at a
high school, and at one point she had...