ESSAY STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE - Self Deception & Reality

In ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, self-deception and reality are key ideas presented throughout the entirety of the play and are perhaps the two most important themes which are explored. The 11 scene play shows the downfall of the protagonist Blanche DuBois and the web of lies she spins whilst the other characters, notably Stanley, try to sift through the truth.

The character of Blanche DuBois is single-handedly the most obvious example of self-deception in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. It is her hamartia. From the immediate onset of the play, the audience see Blanche deceiving herself as her “appearance is incongruous to [the] setting”. She is dressed in white, a colour which connotes purity and innocence an image that Blanche attempts to portray, however this juxtaposes her surroundings as there is an “atmosphere of decay”. The white colour makes her stand out from her dingy surroundings of mundane New Orleans and represents how she is a social outsider, consequently reinforcing how at times she feels like a victim and why possible audiences may feel sympathy for her. Throughout the play, Williams uses dramatic irony to show Blanche consistently lying to the other characters making her seem somewhat unlikeable. One of the first things Blanche does when she arrives at her sister’s house is look for a drink. “She springs up and crosses to it, and removes a whiskey bottle” The use of “springs” makes it seem like a drink for Blanche is a necessity and she deceives herself in to thinking it will get rid of all her problems. She then repeatedly denies her intimacy with alcohol saying “One’s my limit” or “I rarely touch it” when the audience know fully well that she drinks as they have seen her already have multiple drinks within the first few scenes. She experiences difficulty when confronted with her past (which was full of pain) and it’s later revealed that she drinks as a coping method but her failure to be able to face the truth form the exposition of the play catalyses her decent in to insanity and has resulted in numerous stories all of which are lies and fakes, and it is this deception used by Blanche to keep reality at bay not only for herself but also for those around her. Blanche’s alcoholism may be modelled of William's own personal experiences as he was known for modelling his most memorable characters off aspects of his own life. William's father was a heavy drinker and he loathed his father, which may be an explanation as to why he created Blanche in an obnoxious manner. At the play progresses we see Blanche’s developing obsession with bathing. "Blanches is bathing." Throughout the play we see Blanche phase many times it is her way of coping with the past as she says it relaxes her. However it may be symbolic of how she is trying to cleanse and purify herself from her sins, perhaps the sin of lust as she has had "many intimacies with strangers".  She is yet again trying to deceive herself into thinking that she is pure and innocent and this is representative of the internalized guilt that she feels. In Scene 3 Mitch places the paper lantern over the naked bulb as requested by Blanche. At this point in the play he honestly believes all the things Blanche tells him. She has created a “phony world” and her compulsive lying has become second nature to her - even her character believes in them. She lies about her drinking, about her age, about the loss of the family estate and why she lost her job and it is these cold, hard and unpleasant truths that Blanche is unable to cope with. The paper lantern dims the light, enabling Blanche to hide from the truth and reality more easily. However in Scene 9 Mitch “tears the paper lantern off the light bulb”. The light is symbolic of the truth and reality, - something Blanche has been hiding from throughout her stay with the Kowalski’s. The verb “tears” is the first mildly aggressive action we see from Mitch, which emphasises the frustration the other characters feel due to her countless “make-believe” stories. The plastic theatre of the light representing the truth connotes that of an interrogation light, shone in the faces of those when the truth is trying to be revealed. However, for Blanche it means she can see herself for who she is, she cannot pretend to be young, as the light shows her true age – she can’t hide from the truth. Blanches descent into insanity is highlighted significantly by Williams play and is also a key ingredient of the  Young Vic Production (2014) directed by Benedict Andrews, in this scene Blanche is characterized in such a way that highlights and emphasises her decent into insanity. When Blanche finally looks at herself in the hand mirror in the light (the light being reality) she “slams the mirror face down with such violence that the glass cracks”. The verb “slams” shows how she is horrified by her reflection in the light or rather reality. That fact that she chooses to put the reflective side down stresses how she cannot deal with the person she has become and her past in Laurel disgusts her. Women in the Old South had a social and symbolic role, were expected to be passive and chaste.  This ‘liberal’ world could not give Blanche what she needed and so she tried to marry into the 'light and culture'; however, she discovers that there is corruption and deceit behind the façade. Her only way to deal with it is to pretend none of it is real. So yet again she deceives herself, by telling Stanley that she has been invited on a cruise by Mr Shep Huntleigh – a blatant lie that Stanley picks up on immediately. She doesn’t “want realism” – it, in its own tragic way, is too hard for her to comprehend, her reality is the “Varsouviana polka” music playing in her head again and again (and for the audience to hear which allows them to empathize with Blanche) which is suggestive impending doom as it was the last thing she heard before the gunshot of her late husband’s suicide. She can’t escape it no matter how hard she tries.

Stanley on the other hand is a voice of reason in the play and the polar opposite of Blanche which leads to the inevitable conflict between the two. He has no imagination, nor patience with Blanche living in a fantasy world. Like how Blanche uses self-deception as a means of survival, Stanley uses sheer force. His desire for the truth is shown through his bluntness and primatal behaviour. According to Blanche he is “simple, straight forward and honest [as well as] a little bit on the primitive side”. Being primitive in essence is about one thing: survival, and this highlights the simplicity of life in Stanley’s eyes. There is truth, and then there are lies. Stanley’s honesty, combined with his primitive behaviour makes him an ideal character to bring the truth to light as he will go out of his way to make sure it’s known. It gives him the determinism that enables his character to keep pushing Blanche until he gets what he wants that being the truth. When he questions Blanche about Belle Reve, he doesn’t play in to her games and give her compliments, instead is very aggressive. In Scene 10 he accuses Blanche again of “lies and conceit and tricks!” The list of three emphasises the anger he feels towards Blanche which has been heightened throughout the course of the play for her persistence to live in a world other than reality. He mocks her failure to deal with reality as he says “behold the place has turned into Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile!” By depicting Blanche as “queen” in this fantastical illusion, he implies that she believes she is above him when in reality that is not the case – Stanley believes to be on a least the same level as Blanche. His parents may be immigrants from Poland but he is “one hundred percent American”. Stanley represents the new American society, which is full of much more diversity and equality as immigrants become increasingly prosperous in the land of the free. Contextually, From another perspective, A Streetcar Named Desire can be seen as a thriving, exuberant atmosphere, one that nurtures an open-minded sense of community. In the play's beginning, two minor female characters are chatting. One woman is black, the other white. The ease at which they communicate demonstrates the casual acceptance of diversity of the French Quarter. In the low-income world of Stella and Stanley Kowalski, racial segregation appears non-existent, a sharp contrast to the elitist realms of the old South (and Blanche Dubois' childhood). As sympathetic as Blanche may appear, she often says intolerant remarks about class, sexuality (in the case of her homosexual husband who was devastated by her negative comments), and ethnicity. In fact, in a rare moment of political-correctness, Stanley insists that Blanche refer to him as an American (or at least Polish-American) rather than use the derogatory term: "Polack.".  Before Blanche’s arrival with her superior attitude, Stanley was the “king” of the house. He was in charge and Stella listened to him. He got to decide what to believe and what not and Stella went along with him. However Stella strays from this and begins (albeit temporary) to believe Blanche and his sense of reality becomes distorted by Blanche’s deceptions. He feels as if he been cheated by the truth and so he dives into the problem without taking any shortcuts headed straight for the truth. He does not care if the truth hurts Blanche’s feelings, he only wants to see it through until the end. An audience watching the play ordinarily have one of two opinions of Stanley. They may see his character as doing the right thing in finding out the truth about Blanche and telling others the reality of her situation. Although people may think he goes about it in a rather brutal manner that inevitably causes Blanche’s considered mania to worsen, he is doing what he believes is the right thing to do, and therefore is not at fault and is some ways perhaps heroic in the sense that he opened the other characters (predominantly Mitch and Stella) to Blanches façade. However the audience may feel that he was poking his nose in to business that did not concern him and he was the sole cause of Blanche’s downfall. If he hadn’t pushed the truth out of her she would have had a chance to fall in love with Mitch, filling the hole in her heart that has remained empty since the death of Allen. Mitch would have been able to provide Blanche with a sense of stability in her life, and she would eventually have been able to live with herself and reality without the need for self-deception. 

In conclusion, Williams explores self-deception and reality in a variety of ways in his play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Not only does he use language and action to convey the two themes but also Plastic Theatre, which he uses to enhance the performance.  Williams did this as he wanted to create a theatrical experience greater than realism. It is these audio and visual effects combined with the literacy itself that present self-deception and reality as overwhelming themes in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’.