In describing
's artistic presentation of his play, , Arthur Miller wrote that music
served to underline motifs:
[Williams's] rhapsodic
insistence that form serve his utterance rather than dominating and cramping it...
To maintain the continuity of his play, Williams has not employed
separate acts; instead he has scenes that are thematic using symbols and music to highlight
these motifs. For instance, Williams uses the blues to connote animalistic pleasure--such as in
Scene Four when Stanley wins Stella back and smiles over her head to Blanche--or in moments of
leisure as the men play cards or when people relax and drink. Blues are also used in highly
charged emotional scenes involving sexual desires, or when Stanley consoles Stella after she
comes down the stairs. It plays during the rape scene. The polka which is heard only by Blanche
signals crucial moments in the play. And, once the audience learns that this music is what
played in the ballroom where Blanche renounced her young husband, they are alerted to disaster
when this music plays.
The symbolic streetcar is also employed as a literary
element. Blanche must ride this streetcar to arrive at Stella's and she alludes to it in her
remark, "Haven't you ever ridden that streetcar named Desire?" The streetcar
continues running, just as Blanche and the others must see their lives through to the end. For,
Blanche must transfer from Desire to a streetcar named Cemeteries and then come to Elysian
Fields.
These motifs underscored by music and symbol develop the theme of
Class Conflict as Blanche of the aristocratic South comes into
conflict with Stanley Kowalski of the North who is a factory worker. Her sister's and her Belle
Reve, the plantation, have been replaced by a second story flat in the Vieux Carre of New
Orleans and Blanche, as respresentative of this dreamy and romantic era, is in conflict with
the animalistic Stanley who has his "party of apes" and has taken her sister Stella
"down off them columns" and she has "loved it."
Another
theme is that of Gender Roles. Mitch has elevated Blanche to the
Southern lady, and when he finds out that she does not fulfill this role, he rejects her,
causing her the loss of her final opportunity. Blanche understands the subservient role of
women as she repeats, "I have always been dependent upon the kindness of strangers,"
but her sexual desires cause her to say and act outside what is expected of her, a behavior that
effects this conflict.
A third major theme is that of Violence
and Cruelty. When Blanche objects to Stanley's violent nature, Stella tries to
explain to her that "there are things that happen between a man and woman in the dark"
that mitigate the violence. This Blanche does not understand even though the upstairs residents
have the same violence in their relationship. As the streetcar passes down the street, Blanche
tells Stella she is just talking about hard, cruel desire, "the name of that rattle-trap
streetcar." It is a place where Blanche has been, and the streetcar Desire has brought her
to Stella's apartment. And, it is Stanley's violent rape and cruelty--he tells her, "We've
had this date with each other from the beginning"--which drive poor Blanche to her maddess,
an act that demonstrates the continuity of violence that is hard to break.
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