English 102 Critical Thinking & Literature
Essay One
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For this essay you must write on ONE of the following topics pertaining to Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Make sure that you respond to the topic, utilizing a number of pertinent quotes from the text. This paper must be 4-6 pages (not including the work(s) cited page), double-spaced, and typed, using correct MLA formatting and quoting techniques. A work(s) cited page is also required. For this essay, no secondary sources are required. However, if you include any secondary sources, be sure all sources are properly acknowledged in the essay and on the works cited page. Also, be sure that any sources are appropriate for a college-level essay. For this essay, you may only use sources that you find in a scholarly journal or an academic database such as EBSCO Discovery Service.
Take just a single line or sentence from the play—one that stands out for some reason as greatly important. Perhaps it states a theme, reveals a character, or serves as a crisis or turning point. Write an essay demonstrating its significance. Some possible lines include:
Mitch to Blanche: “You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be—you and me, Blanche?” (116).
Blanche to Mitch: “I don’t want realism. I want magic!” (145).
Stanley to Blanche: “We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning” (162).
In “Dream Addict,” an article from Time magazine, critic T E Kalem notes that American playwright Eugene O Neill’s “magnificent obsession was that a life of illusions is unpardonable but that a life without illusions is unbearable” (Kalem). Discuss the unpardonable illusions that Blanche Dubois creates in the play and analyze how these illusions are a response to her deepest fears and regrets and an attempt to make her life bearable.
What does the play suggest about gender and sexuality (expectations of men and women and homosexuality) in the United States in the era immediately following World War II? For this topic, you might want to create a more specific focus.
Discuss Williams’ use of music and other aural effects in the play. How does his use of music and other sound effects reveal aspects of the characters and enhance themes and motifs in the play without the use of words? How do music and sound effects function as narrative and dramatic devices?
Discuss how the play suggests the connection between desire and destruction or death. Point to various examples in the play for support.
Assess whether Blanche’s downfall is caused by her actions or her deception of others about them.
It has been noted that Streetcar is a play about the clash of two cultures, not two individuals. Discuss how the play is a conflict between the culture of Stanley, who represents the modern values of a working-class individual originally from the North, with Blanche, a woman who embraces the decaying and outdated values of the Southern aristocracy.
Analyze the character of Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire. How does the audience’s perception of him change through the course of the play?
Blanche states in a conversation with Stella the following about Stanley, “There’s something downright bestial—about him! … There’s something—subhuman—something not quite to the stage of humanity yet!” (32-33). Aside from Blanche’s comments, what evidence in the play supports her assessment of Stanley?
Discuss passivity and dependence on Stanley as primary traits of Stella in the play.