A Streetcar Named Desire

This work is one of Tennessee Williams most famous plays, and for good reason.  In this play, the sister of character Stella Kowalski, Blanche DuBois, comes to visit her sister in a world alien to her, that of New Orleans.  She is a Southern Belle, unused to two room apartments with no doors.  But that is the life that her beloved sister has chosen for herself, having fallen in love with the crude officer, Stanley Kowalski.  During the course of her stay, which lasts several months, the reader (or viewer, being as it is a play) learns that the sisters' ancestral home, Belle Reve has been "lost".  Many other things have taken place in Blanche's life to make her nervous, and often irritable.  It is the tragedy of her life that the play centers around, both past tragedies and future.  This play is both enchanting and disturbing, for all of the strange situations it evokes in one's mind.

"Blanche: 'They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at-Elysian Fields!'"

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.