Behind the deceptive facades assumed by each individual is a starving soul hungry for fulfillment. In search of gratification, desperate seekers often spend their entire lives frantically looking for a savior to revive their weary bones. Heralded author and playwright Tennessee Williams understood this reality well. In his magnum opus titled A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams vividly illustrates the story of a woman named Blanche DuBois who embarks on a quest to find such salvation.
Readers watch as the protagonist of the play stumbles through the obstacle course of her life in search of a redemptive character who can bring her rest. In a captivating narrative, Tennessee Williams uses his characters to demonstrate the dangers of selling out to the search of worldly fulfillment. Williams begins his play by introducing Blanche DuBois as she is arriving from a distant city. She has travelled from her hometown, Laurel, to be reunited with her sister Stella who is a resident of New Orleans.
The very first thing that the author mentions about Blanche is crucial: Blanche is visibly lost. As Blanch makes her first stage appearance looking for her sister’s house, she is unsure of where she is. Blanche’s first line in the play is: “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… They mustn’t have-understood-what number I wanted… can this be her home? ” (Williams 6).
This state of uncertainty does not just apply to her geographical location; Williams meant this to be indicative of her overall status as a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual being as well. The “street-car named Desire” (6) represents the searching that Blanche has done in her life up to this point, and the car named “cemeteries” (6) symbolizes the natural destination dictated by her vain searches for fulfillment. Somewhere along the path that Blanche has walked, her desires have led her to where she is now: lost, trying to find herself.
In Williams’ “Streetcar”, Blanche may be compared to the Biblical image we have of a lost sheep. This proposition is bolstered firstly from a most obvious source: Blanche’s name. The word “Blanche” means “white”. Sheep are almost universally portrayed as white creatures in culture, and we see throughout the play that Blanche frequently dresses in white. When we are first introduced to Blanche, for example, she is described as being clothed in all white: “She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat… (5).
White is the universal symbol of purity, holiness, and innocence. Blanche’s choice to adorn herself in such a color displays that she is trying to preserve this image of blamelessness despite her past. In her humanistic evaluation of “Streetcar”, Critic Irina-Ana Drobot inserts a quote from colleague, Nicholas Smith, that succinctly explains Blanches attraction to the color white: “Her dignity and refinement, made obvious by her dress and manner, mark Blanche as a Southern belle.
This initial impression sets the stage for how other characters perceive and interact with Blanche, and how the audience understands her role in the drama before them. The passage of time will reveal that Blanche may exude her status as a Southern belle, that she strictly adheres to the persona and dignify of the antebellum Southern Belle when in public view, but that this personal dignity and modest behavior are incongruous with her past actions and present tendencies. ” Even the whitest of sheep, however, are prone to wander from the straight and narrow.
The biblical prophet Isaiah said that “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned-every one—to his own way” (English Standard Version, Isaiah 53:6). Williams successfully demonstrates that Blanche is indeed a lost sheep; having chased after fulfillment in all of the wrong places. It is seen early on that Blanche is an alcoholic, and she continues to drink throughout the play. Blanche has also been enslaved by her sexual desires. She was caught having an affair with a seventeen year old student that she taught when she was a teacher.
During a pivotal dialogue in the ninth scene of the play, the drunk Blanche DuBois speaks honestly about her past for the first time: “Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers… intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with. I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection-here and there, in the most–unlikely places… ” (146). When Blanche came to her sister in New Orleans, she was looking for a new beginning. Having grown weary of wandering, Blanche strove to find a sort of peace in the security of her sister.
Upon arriving in New Orleans, however, she found that this would prove harder than she expected. Early on in the play Blanche’s brother in law, Stanley, establishes himself as a staunch anti-character. He continually picks at Blanche, degrading her, questioning her past, and sexually abusing her. To Blanche, Stanley represents a Satan-like figure determined to keep her from moving on. It is revealed in the play that Stanley was born under the astrological sign of Aries; the sign which is represented by a goat.
This is significant because the goat has always been tied to images of Satanism. Tennessee Williams was trying to establish a poetic conflict between the sheep and goat. This tension was acknowledged by the Bible again in Matthew’s account of the gospel: “[The Son of Man] will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left” (English Standard Version, Matthew 25:32-33). Blanche clings to the vivid memory of one particular man that she knew named Shep Huntleig.
Blanche claims to have dated Shep, who is now a rich businessman, while they were in college. In spite of the fact that Blanche has not had an apparent relationship with Shep since that time, she still looks to him a sort of shepherd. Williams leaves readers with an stimulating play on words here, with the first four letters of Shep’s name being a condensed form of the word “shepherd”. Whenever there is a crisis in the play, Blanche is frequently seen making plans to get in touch with Shep (her shepherd) in hopes that he might save her from her circumstances and bring her fulfillment.
At no point, however, does Tennessee Williams hint at the prospect of Blanche and Shep actually conversing. Towards the end of the play, Blanche’s downward descent into insanity correlates with her inability her make contact with Shep. It is as Blanche sees Shep Huntleigh as her completion. Not being able to connect with Shep, then, reduces Blanche in a major way. Daniel Thomieres has some valuable insight on this topic: “[Human beings] want “the desire of the other,” which can be understood in the sense that we not only desire the other, but, more importantly, that we desire the other to desire us.
The implication is simply that, without being looked at, acknowledged and desired, we do not exist. ” Blanche feared being not loved more than she feared death itself. She was afraid that she would be forgotten by those in whom she had inseparably tied her self-worth to. Afraid to let go, afraid to commit, Blanche DuBois spent her life searching for something that doesn’t exist: completion in the arms of a mortal creations. A Streetcar Named Desire presents a haunting description for us all of where our own lusts can take us if we allow them to drive.
