The Destruction of Blanche Dubois
Critical Analytical Response to literary Texts Final Essay
Herneet Samra
A Street Car Named Desire by Tennessee Williams explores the aspect of when one creates an alternate reality and loses their sanity in response to destructive forces. The play is about thirty year old, Blanche Dubois who moves into her sisters house after losing everything that was important to her such as her relatives and home. This leaves her feeling alone, confused, and insecure. These destructive forces of loss, desire, and tragedy cause Blanche to lose herself and live in a different reality.
The root of Blanche’s destruction is her tragic past. At sixteen Blanche experienced happiness as she married the love her life, Allan Grey. This happiness was short lived as Blanche discovered the truth about her husband’s homosexuality. She then confronted him aggressively, causing Allan to commit suicide. This event haunts Blanche deeply as she constantly hears polka music followed by a gunshot, reminding her of the tragedy. Not only has Blanche had to deal with this loss but also later on she was faced with the loss of her relatives as well as her home, Belle Reve. These tragedies acted as destructive forces, leaving Blanche out of place and contributing to her mental instability.
Another main cause of destruction for Blanche was her own desires and her inability to move on. This is foreshadowed in the very way Blanche reached Elysian fields by first taking a street car named desire, then one named cemeteries, this symbolized how her desire led to destruction. Blanche had the desire to feel young again this is why she would seduce young boys, and she had the desire to be make a decent woman of herself again by marrying Mitch. Chasing these desires cost Blanche her teaching job and made her lie impulsively. From this we see that Blanches attempts to escape destruction caused more disaster. Blanche is unable to deal with this so she chooses to escape "I don't want realism,