Plot Summary - A Streetcar Names Desire
Major conflict · Blanche DuBois, an
aging Southern debutante, arrives at her sister’s home in New Orleans hoping to start a new life
after losing her ancestral mansion, her job, and her reputation in her hometown
of Laurel, Mississippi. Blanche’s brother-in-law, a macho working-class guy
named Stanley Kowalski, is so filled with class resentment that he seeks to destroy Blanche’s
character in New Orleans as well. His cruelty, combined with Blanche’s
fragile, insecure personality, leaves her mentally detached from reality by the play’s end.
Rising action · Blanche immediately
rouses the suspicion of Stanley, who (wrongly) suspects Blanche of swindling
Stella out of her inheritance. Blanche grows to despise Stanley when she sees him drunkenly beat her pregnant
sister. Stanley
permanently despises Blanche after he overhears her trying to convince
Stella to leave Stanley because he is common. Already suspicious of Blanche’s
act of superiority, Stanley
researches Blanche’s past. He discovers that in Laurel Blanche was known for her sexual promiscuity
and for having an affair
with a teenage student. He reports his findings to Blanche’s suitor,
Mitch, dissuading Mitch
from marrying Blanche.
Climax · After Stanley treats Blanche
cruelly during her birthday dinner, giving her a bus ticket back to Laurel as a
present, Stella goes into
labor. She and Stanley depart for the hospital, leaving Blanche alone in
the house. Mitch arrives, drunk, and breaks off his relationship with Blanche. Blanche, alone in the
apartment once more, drowns herself in alcohol and dreams of an impossible rescue. Stanley
returns to the apartment from the hospital and rapes Blanche.
Falling action · Weeks after the rape,
Stella secretly prepares for Blanche’s departure to an insane asylum. She tells her
neighbor Eunice that she simply
couldn’t believe Blanche’s accusation that Stanley raped her. Unaware of
reality, Blanche boasts that she is leaving to join a millionaire suitor. When the doctor
arrives, Blanche leaves after a minor struggle, and only Stella and Mitch, who
sits in the kitchen with Stanley’s poker players, seem to express real remorse
for her.
Scene 8
ReplyDeleteIn scene 8, Blanche’s gloomy birthday party is ending. During scene 7, Stanley informs Stella of her sisters past, which caused the dismal atmosphere of the birthday party. Inclusively she is handed a ticket to go back to where she came from. Through this, Stanley shows that he has taken all that he can handle of Blanche and will not allow her to stay any longer. He wants her to leave and he is not going to be kind and nice about it (he just handed her a bus ticket just like that). Blanche openly expresses her anger and looses her temper with Stanley. Stella as well becomes angry. In the scene, as Stella becomes angrier her vocabulary becomes more formal while Stanley’s becomes less formal. This represents them separating once again by social class. Just as Stella is starting to become independent of him, she goes into labor, thus making her dependent of him once again as he carries her to the hospital, ending the scene.