Themes and Symbolism

Themes:

Appearance vs. Reality:  There are many examples of appearance versus reality in A Streetcar Named Desire, but the best example is Blanche DuBois.  She comes to her sister’s apartment, and throughout the play she lies.  She acts as if she is still wealthy in the beginning, and degrades Stanley the whole time.  She knows that she has no money and lost her social status in her hometown.  She puts on an act even to the end when she thought she was leaving to be with Shep Huntleigh when she was really going to an insane asylum.  Another example is the relationship between Stella and Stanley.  On the outside it looks like a perfect marriage where they both love each other and would do anything for each other; however, further into the play, Stanley turns aggressive and beats her, and he also rapes Blanche.  Their relationship is far from perfect.  Mitch is another character whose appearance is very different from reality.  At the beginning of the play, he was the only guy in the poker game that was sensitive.  He worried about his sick mom and hoped to find a wife before she dies.  He hoped that that person would have been Blanche.  Even though he had romantic interest in Blanche, he could not forget her past, but instead, he embraced it by breaking up with her and wanting to sleep with her. 

The Relationship between Sex and Death: Throughout the play Blanche feels like sex and death are taking over her life.  The first incident she mentions is losing the Belle Reve; she had no way of taking care of it sense there were no remaining relatives and was forced to move into the Flamingo Hotel.  The death that affected her the most was her young husband.  When she found out that he was gay, she confronted him, and he ended up committing suicide.  Her life was downfall from there; she started to have an affair with one of her students and lost her job as a teacher.  It’s ironic that to get to Stella’s apartment she rode on a streetcar named Desire, then switched to a streetcar named Cemeteries.  Sex and death led to her eviction from the Belle Reve, ostracism from Laurel, and to her insanity.

Dependence on Men: Both Stella, Blanche, and Eunice all depend on men throughout this play.  Blanche believes that men are the only way that she can be happy, and each time she entered a room with a man there, she would fix her make-up or make the lights fade.  She wanted to write a telegram to an old acquaintance, Shep Huntleigh, because she knew that she had no money and needed the support of a man in order to live.  After Stella and Stanley had an argument and beat her, Blanche told her that she could do better than him and his abuse.  Soon after Stanley beat her, she ran back to him and forgave him.  She needs him to be happy especially because they are about to have a baby.  Eunice is very similar to Stella in her dependence on her husband.  After Eunice and Steve had a fight in their apartment, Eunice ran out of the room saying that she would call the police, but instead, she went to the bar near her apartment.  Each of these women all have a dependency on the opposite sex, and part of this reason is because society thinks that women should have a dependency on men.

Symbolism:

The Varsouviana Polka: Because this polka tune was the last time that she saw her husband alive and tune she danced to with her husband, the polka music was very important in the play.  During this music she told him the he disgusted her, and he ran out and shot himself.  When Blanche thought about Allen’s death, this song appears in the play.  The first time this tune comes is when Stanley asks about her husband.  The next time is when she tells Mitch what happened to her husband.  From then on the music appears more and more, and the sound does not end until she hears the sound of a shotgun in her head. 

"It's Only a Paper Moon":

          Blanche sings this song while she was in the bath in Scene Seven.  The lyrics to this song describe how love turns the world into a fantasy.  These words describe how Blanche approaches life.  She wants to have love and live the fantasy because in reality her life was destroyed by her husband’s death, the loss of her job, and the loss of her family’s estate.  Ironically as Blanche sings this song in the bath, Stanley is telling Stella about what he found out about Blanche’s past.  This scene shows how Blanche is not living in reality and uses lies and imagination while Stanley sees reality and tries to make everyone realize the truth.