The Last Post For English: Blanche and Stanley Are Alike???

One word in the title, “A Streetcar Named Desire“ unveils to the audience the raw force that drives each character of this play, and that word is desire. For each character, desire works in a different way in their stories and in their life. Two characters dominantly reveal this, and those characters are Stanley and Blanche. Even though Stanley and Blanche seem to be complete opposites, they are both driven dominantly by their desire for attention and respect. Even though their dominant desires are alike, Stanley and Blanche are two very different people, which reveals that they ultimately were driven by these desires on completely different routes.

Stanley and Blanche share the same desires of both attention and respect. However, these two want these desires in a specific way and these characters act a different way to get it. Blanche desires attention from anyone to gain a sense of importance. She does not just want attention from people she knows, but she wants attention from anyone, including strangers. She reveals this in Act 11 when she states “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (1602). However, Blanche more specifically desires the attention from men in general. She wants to be complimented and wants the men to woo her, so she acts flirtatious and presents her physical beauty in a way that attracts them to her. She wants this attention from the men more so to blind her of the reality that she is aging. Thus, she desires the attention to remind herself that she is still the beauty that she was in her youth. However, Blanche also takes on this persona to gain respect. She wants the men to come to her and not think lowly of her. She thus expects these men to act like gentlemen because they are in a presence of a lady.

However, Stanley’s desire for attention is different than Blanche’s want for attention. He does not want to be the center of attention, but wants others to heed to his needs. Yet, Stanley goes beyond what Blanche is willing to do to gain attention and respect because he has another desire. This other desire of Stanley’s ultimately corrupts his want for attention and respect from others, which this desire is for control over others. Blanche only wants some control over the men that she was interested in to give her gifts, along with a “magical” lifestyle, but Stanley wants control over everything and everyone around him and does not want anyone controlling him. Due to this craving for control, he demands the attention and respect from others, which he finds he can get by being rude, ruthless, dangerous, and loud. He reveals these characteristics especially to Stella. Even though Stella is his love, he makes sure that his desire for control is fulfilled, even with her. He orders her around and if she does not respond, he starts yelling for her. He wants her then and there, and he makes sure that he is in control over her rather than vice versa. Stanley reveals this when Stella decides to tell his friends to leave his house even though they were in a middle of their poker game. Stanley realizes that he is losing control over his wife, and when he notices this, he decides to beat her for doing so. Therefore, Stanley’s dominant characteristics are brought forth by his desires. These desires ultimately blind Stanley from the reality that respect and attention can be gained by other less destructive means.

Even though Stanley and Blanche have the same dominant desires, these characters take on different ways to obtain what they desire. Blanche creates a flirtatious ladylike persona because she feels this will help her in attaining her desire for attention and respect to gain pleasantries from others. On the other hand, Stanley only allows his emotional, illogical self to take over him in order to gain his desire for attention and respect.

STELLA!!!!!

In “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Stanley’s character is prominently shown as a one-dimensional egotistical brute. His actions and reactions throughout the play make the audience see Stanley’s character as this because he is selfish, disrespectful, impatient, rude, controlling, rough, and dangerous. Stanley won’t take orders from anyone and wants to be in control of everything around him. He does not want anyone giving him orders, and he feels no need to change himself and will not let anyone tell him otherwise. However, two moments in the play specifically allow the audience to see Stanley’s character take on a greater complexity than the one-dimensional egotistical brute. He breaks away from this title in these scenes and reveals another side to him, which is uncharacteristic of Stanley.

One scene that reveals complexity to Stanley’s character is when Stella leaves their house after Stanley beats her. He had invited his friends over that night to play poker and got drunk. At this point, his impatience had increased and he became more controlling. Therefore, when Mitch had annoyed him by turning on the radio, he decided to throw the radio out the window. Stella told his friends to leave the house then if they knew what was best for them, and that was when Stanley began to beat her. The men pried him off of her and Stella left to Eunice’s place. Stanley yelled for Stella at the top of his lungs and says he wants his baby back. This still reveals the one-dimensional character of Stanley because he does not care that it is early in the morning and people may be asleep. He does not care that Eunice is telling him to go away and just keeps on screaming for her. However, when Stella comes down the stairs, Stanley is not mad at the sight of her, but is sincere, which is uncharacteristic of his brute nature. He kneels to her presence and then holds onto her. The audience can discover at this moment that he truly is not as stern as he portrays. He reveals here that he is vulnerable to the notion of not being with Stella. He cares so deeply for Stella and shows that he does not want to be away from her. This allows the audience to see that this character does have a heart. Before this scene, Stanley’s genuine and caring side is not truly prevailed, and at this scene it is. Also, by him also taking care of the broken radio the day after, he reveals that he knows he did something wrong. By getting the radio fixed, he admits his wrongdoing with how he reacted at the poker party and shows that he feels responsible to fix his mistakes to regain Stella’s love and trust for him.

The second moment in the play that opens up an alternate view of Stanley is when he returns back from fixing the radio and he decides to overhear Blanche and Stella’s conversation. By how the play portrays Stanley as being loud and intrusive on others without warning, it is quite surprising to see that Stanley does not just barge into the room without any disregard of intruding their conversation or not. He decides to stop before the entrance of his place and overhear what Stella and Blanche are talking about. He overhears Blanche ongoing insults of Stanley’s characteristics out loud to Stella. At this point, the audience would suspect that Stanley would make a big scene where he starts yelling at Blanche that she knew nothing about him and would then take the opportunity to say everything on his mind about her, but he does not. All he does is just overhears them until a train passes outside their place, which he uses the loud noise of the train to disguise that he was right there in front of his place. He does not even mention that he had overheard them, but just switches the subject as he enters in. He only keeps his anger inside rather than showing his anger right out forth like he usually does. Also, the audience would not think that Blanche’s comments would affect Stanley because he has had a low opinion of Blanche from the start, but yet he remembers the title that Blanche had referred him as, which was “common" (1568). He shows that this comment bothered him because he mentions the comment later on in the play. Therefore, this moment in the play reveals that Stanley is truly not as hard headed as he conveys at the start of the play and is affected by what even Blanche says about him. Also this scene opens the play to a character that may realize that he needs to change his rude habits for the one he loves to make her happy.

Stanley’s actions in the play have dominantly given Stanley a personality that is controlling, rude, and vulgar. However, Stanley prevails in these two scenes other aspects to his character, which reveal to us a softer side to Stanley, which is quite unusual for Stanley’s character. These scenes allow Stanley’s character to have more depth and allow the audience to not see Stanley plainly as the brute in this play.