Stanley Kowalski

• Stanley Kowalski is a representation of New America, an America that was born after World War II.
• Stanley, having fought in the Second World War, is now a part of the working class in New Orleans.
• Stanley represents the American Dream of freedom and opportunity for all, a dream that transcends the boundaries of social classes.
• Stanley is characterized as a domineering male, loving gambling, drinking and sex, but harbouring hatred towards Blanche.
• Stanley is aware of his wife's aristocratic descent, but his class is unaffected until Blanche, the epitome of everything he isn't, finds her way into their household.
• Williams depicts Stanley as a misogynistic, hypermasculine specimen who believes in male superiority.
• Stanley Kowalski is a working-class man who provides for his wife and unborn child, owning a small apartment and having a stable day job.
• Stanley strongly asserts that everything he provides for and owns is his, and is offended when Blanche calls him a Polack and states he is Polish.
• In this understanding, Stella can be the ego, operating on the Reality principle.
• Performance is given much importance in criticism, with Susan Spector arguing that Blanche under Kazan’s direction was an image of a redundant dying culture and left audiences accepting Stanley’s aggressions.
• Stanley is the Id, working on the animalistic pleasure principle which drives all his actions while Blanche is the superego that struggles to stand on Morality.
• In Scene 4 of the play, Blanche delivers a monologue about Stanley, describing him as an animal, a creature, an ape, and a survivor of the Stone Age.
• Spector believed that the script was compliant and left actors and directors with the power to construct and influence interpretation.
• Some audiences actively cheered during Blanche’s rape.
• The dialogue in Scene 4 is significant as Stanley, unseen, overhears everything Blanche is saying and when Stella later calls him an animal, he realizes that Stella is easily influenced by Blanche, deeming Blanche as a threat.
• In “Most Famous of Streetcar”, Siever uses the Freudian understanding of the subconscious to translate the characteristics of Stanley and Blanche.
• Stanley is portrayed as primitive, uncivilized and animalistic in the play.
• Stanley is probably a second or third-generation immigrant, proudly asserting that he is “American” as he is born and raised in America.
• Stanley is often seen using brute force to convey his emotions rather than his words, treating objects around him with underlying violence and objectifying women, leading him to treat women just like objects, violently.
• Foreshadowing is a literary technique where a writer drops hints or warnings about what is to come in the plot.
• A recurring idea in artistic work and literature is referred to as a motif.
• Nietzsche proposed two forces that operate, the Apollonian and the Dionysian: the former characterized by purity, order, logic and a dreaming state of illusions while the latter is a celebration of chaos and instinctual pleasures.
• An antihero or antiheroine is a protagonist who does not showcase any “heroic” qualities like honesty, courage, virtue, etc.
• Authorial context refers to the life of an author and how it influences their works.
• Nietzsche philosophy believes that humanity cannot rely on absolutes and there is no absolute truth but only many interpretations.
• Socio-historical context involves understanding how a work criticizes society and which social or political events are alluded to or recreated.
• Literary context involves understanding if a work fits into realism or modernism, or has aspects of both.
• Critical context involves understanding if a work is critiqued and how it is judged.
• Philosophical context involves understanding how a work creates or represents reality and addresses questions of ethics or existence.
• Stanley rapes his sister-in-law while his wife gives birth to their child in the hospital, furthering him as the selfish villain.
• Tennessee Williams writes about the socio-economic effects of the lost Civil War (1861 - 1865) on the South, despite the World War that has just come to an end when he writes this play.
• Williams uses Blanche in this southern gothic tragedy to look into the notions of Masculinity and Femininity.
• Stanley, from a feminist lens, is considered irredeemably evil as he shows no remorse for his actions.
• Blanche struggles with the ideal traits of femininity that were embraced by the Old South.
• The rape scene in "A Streetcar Named Desire" is accompanied by inhuman voices like cries in a jungle, illustrating the trauma of the actions and the primitive and animalistic dominance over carefully constructed ideals.
• Stanley reflects the societal norms of male superiority and the fundamental cultural misogyny.
• Stanley is an amalgamation of three real people who affected Tennessee Williams’s life: the real Stanley Kowalski who was working-class and friend to Williams; Cornelius Coffin Williams, the father Williams who was a domineering, working class man and also a violent drunk; and finally, a boxer Pancho Rodriguez y Gonzalez who Williams dated for a while and had an abusive relationship with.
• The rape is an event where Blanche finally breaks down and crosses over to almost completely delusional.
• Stanley signifies the American Dream where all men are equal by birth and can prosper, as a fresh out of war, working-class man.
• In Julie Adam’s Versions of Heroism in Modern American Drama, she discusses how Elias Kazan directed the play to portray Stanley and Blanche as the moral victor and the physical victor, the hunted and the hunter, refinement and barbarism, decadence and robustness, death and life, old and new, feminine and masculine.