A Streetcar Named Desire

• light

  • blanche is afraid to reveal her age and the light will reveal the truth
  • she covers the light bulbs in the house with paper lanterns and refuses to go on dates with mitch during daylight
• bathing

  • blanche is a hysterical woman - baths calm her down
  • symbolises her washing away her past
• drunkenness

  • both stanley and blanche drink a lot throughout the play
  • stanley drinks in social situations - poker game, friends at the bar, celebrate his childs birth
  • blanche drinks antisocially - taken to her own world of imagination
  • both characters lead to bad behaviour - alcohol + violence
• meat

  • stanley throws meat to Stella at the beginning of the play
  • a sense of control over Stella
  • gives him a caveman aspect
• its only a paper moon

  • plays every time blanche bathes
  • lyrics sums up blanches approach to life
• varsouviana polka

  • blanche and her late husband Alan were dancing to this song before his death
  • it is played various times throughout the play as it drives blanche to distraction
• sexual imagery

  • sign of the Capricorn (goat) - Stanleys sex centred life
  • coloured lights - uninhabited sex world
  • sign of the virgo (virgin) - blanches facade of purity
• antithesis

  • a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else
  • e.g. blanche is the antithesis of stanley
• exhortation

  • an address or communication emphatically urging someone to do something
• ecphonesis

  • an emotional exclamatory phrase
  • e.g. blanche
• pragmatographia

  • vivid description of an action