"THE GLASS MENAGERIE & A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Steve is one of Stanley's poker and drinking cronies. Like Stanley, he is crass and inelegant. He fights with his wife Eunice, throws dishes at her, and later, comes crawling back to her apologetically.

^^^^^^^^^^A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: PABLO GONZALES

Pablo is the fourth member of Stanley's card-playing gang. Like the others, he is slovenly in mind and body.

^^^^^^^^^^A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: A YOUNG COLLECTOR

When he comes to collect for the newspaper he gets a kiss from Blanche instead of his fee. Blanche's encounter with the boy calls to mind two other boys in her experience: her young husband and the student in her English class whom she seduced.

^^^^^^^^^^A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: NURSE AND DOCTOR

They come to accompany Blanche to the asylum. The nurse, or matron, is just about to stuff Blanche into a straitjacket when the doctor, recognizing that a gentle hand is needed, steps in. Blanche rewards the doctor with thanks.


^^^^^^^^^^A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: SETTING

Streetcar arrived on the stage in 1947. But don't assume that the story takes place in that year. Think of the story unfolding from May to September of any year you choose. It's true that Stanley and Mitch were army buddies in World War Two, but they could just as well be veterans of Vietnam or any other war.

The entire drama is played out on a single set. The street called Elysian Fields crosses the front of the stage. Through the transparent front wall of a shabby two-story structure, you see Stanley and Stella's flat, two rooms separated by a curtain. Beyond the apartment's rear wall, also transparent, you see the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Williams may have wanted you to feel that the drama enacted in the Kowalskis' flat was merely an extension of life in the city, and so he specified see-through walls in his stage directions. Outside you find railroad yards, a big water tank, empty lots and river docks--in short, nothing pretty or natural. In the characters you see another kind of ugliness: meanness, lying, hatred and more. Another possibility is that the transparent walls symbolize Williams' approach to the people in the play. It's not that you know them inside and out by the time the play ends, but that the characters' actions invite you to probe the inner workings of their hearts and minds.

Throughout the play you hear the sounds of the city. The tinny music of a "Blue Piano," suggesting sadness and lost love, recurs in several scenes. In addition, trains roar, radios blare, couples fight and make love. Windows and doors are kept open all summer, blurring the distinction between inside and outside. Stanley and his friends seem to have erased that distinction from their lives, too. Like animals in heat, they lack inhibition. Stanley especially lets it all hang out. He says whatever he thinks, regardless of the consequences.

If you know New Orleans you know the French Quarter. It's an historic section of the city, a hive of narrow streets, alleyways, markets, coffee-houses, honky-tonks and shops of all kinds. It's known for its quaint charm. Elaborate wrought-iron balconies laced with flowers extend from the facades of numerous buildings. Some of the residents may live in squalor, but they put up a pretty front. In a sense, they may remind you of Blanche DuBois.

^^^^^^^^^^A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: THEMES

The following are themes of A Streetcar Named Desire.

1. THE VICTORY OF THE APES

One of Blanche's impassioned speeches to Stella depicts Stanley as an ape. It's true, there is something apelike about him. You see his primitive qualities from the first moment of the play, when he comes home lugging a package of bloody meat.

Stay alert throughout the play for many allusions to the subhuman quality of life in Elysian Fields. Sometimes the place is described as a jungle. Shrieks and groans pierce the hot, humid air. Mitch is described as a bear, the women are called "hens." Stanley and Stella emit "low, animal moans."

Blanche is the only champion for civilization in the play. "Don't hang back with the brutes!" she tells Stella. What conclusion can be drawn from the fact that the brutes ultimately destroy her? Are Blanche's values useless in a savage world?

2. LONELINESS

Loneliness is a fearful plague. Look at what it's done to Blanche. Bereft after her husband's suicide, she became a prostitute to fill her emptiness. She molests young boys and has constructed a web of pretense to delude herself and others that she is charming and sociable. She invents tales about her gentleman friend Shep Huntleigh. Whether he's a real or an imaginary person isn't important. He is real enough to comfort Blanche and to keep hope alive that someday she'll be rescued from loneliness.

The pain of loneliness brings Blanche and Mitch together. No doubt Blanche prefers men of another stripe, but rather than remain a lonely spinster for the rest of her life, she's willing to put up with him. Mitch, too, hopes to find a woman to replace his mother, who will soon die.

3. INVENTING A BEAUTIFUL PAST

When most of us glance back to the past, we wear rose-colored glasses, and if the present is bleak, the past appears still rosier. In Streetcar, hardly a character is immune from visions of a beautiful past.

Blanche's manner and way of speaking suggest the sort of past she has lodged in her memory. You'd think she grew up in grandeur and gentility of the Old South, at least until you hear her tell Stella the history of Belle Reve's decline. Why does Stella recall the white-columned plantation with fondness? Would she have left the place at an early age if life there had been so attractive? The name Belle Reve (beautiful dream) indicates, perhaps, that both Blanche and Stella believe in an illusion.