In
the stage directions for the opening scene of his play ,provides a wealth
of background information that's important to understanding the setting, characters, and action
of the play.
SCENE ONE
The exterior of
a two-story corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs
between the L & N tracks and the river.
The
perception of New Orleans for the people who don't live there is of the old-world Southern city
famous for the never-ending partyof Bourbon Street in the lively French Quarter of the city, and
the annual, pre-Lenten "Mardi Gras" celebration. In contract, the setting of
A Streetcar Named Desire is in a very different working-class area of New
Orleans.
In Greek mythology, the "Elysian Fields" (also known as
"Elysium") is a place of peace and happiness where the souls of heroic and virtuous
people are sent when they die.
Symbolically, the "Elysian Fields"
is a place that Blanche Du Bois is searching for at the beginning of the play. Blanche arrived
at Elysian Fields on the streetcar named "Desire," which is symbolic of Blanche's
motivation for coming to New Orleans, one of the major themes in the play.
It
also foreshadows Blanche's fate. Even though Blanche hopes to reach the elusive Elysian Fields,
at the end of the play she's taken away to a sanatorium, a symbolic representation of the
mythological hades, where lesser mortals reside after death.
According to Homer, the Elysian Fields were located on the western edge of the earth,
literally "at the ends of the earth." The street, Elysian Fields, "runs between
the L & N tracks and the river," symbolically and literally putting the street, and the
characters of the play, on "the other side of the tracks."
The section is poor but, unlike corresponding sections in other
American cities, it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly white frame, weathered gray, with
rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables. This building contains two
flats, upstairs and down. Faded white stairs ascend to the entrances of both.
Upstairs, where Eunice Hubbell lives, is a symbolic haven for
Stella Kowalski when she's fighting in the downstairs flat with her husband, Stanley. Even so,
the upstairs flat is no haven for Eunice from her abusive husband, Steve.
It is first dark of an evening early in May. The sky that shows
around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the
scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay. You can almost
feel the warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses with their faint redolences
of bananas and coffee.
Williams introduces the quality of
light as one of the recurring motifs of the play and draws a distinction between the reality and
the appearance of decay in the neighborhood.
In the light of day, the houses
in the neighborhood are "weathered gray," with "rickety," faded white stairs
leading to each flat. In the early evening light, the neighborhood appears almost
beautiful.
Williams also introduces a sensory element to the setting that is
often missing from other plays. He describes the "redolences," the smells, of the
neighborhood.
"The warm breath of the brown river" gives a sense of
the stench of the polluted river, into which the dirty and decaying byproducts of the city are
dumped. This stench is tempered by the smells of bananas and coffee coming from the warehouses
for two of the products closely associated with the daily commerce of New Orleans.
A corresponding air is evoked by the music of Negro entertainers at
a barroom around the corner. In this part of New Orleans you are practically always just around
the corner, or a few doors down the street, from a tinny piano being played with the infatuated
fluency of brown fingers. This "Blue Piano" expresses the spirit of the life which
goes on here.
"Blue Piano" is a form of
improvised jazz that is imbued with the emotions of the performer (the "blues"), much
as the play is imbued with the emotions of the characters.
The "Blue
Piano" music is heard throughout the play as background music for the events of the play.
The music symbolizes the reality and the hardship of life in New Orleans, but it also symbolizes
the "life goes on" and "enjoy it while you can" spirit of the people of the
city.
The reality of life expressed in the "Blues Piano" music is
often juxtaposed against Blanche's unrealistic perception of the world, and of herself.
Blanche's lives in a dream world, an illusion of reality.
Ultimately, reality
prevails. The "Blue Piano" music is the last music that the audience hears as Blanche
is led offstage at the end of the play, still depending "on the kindness of strangers"
to help her cope with the reality of her life.
Above the
music of the "Blue Piano" the voices of people on the street can be heard
overlapping.
Williams emphasizes how the "Blue
Piano" music, and the reality it symbolizes, is an integral part of the life of the
characters in the play.
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