Fantasy’s Inability to Overcome Reality Essay

Although Williamss protagonist in A Streetcar Named Desire is the romantic Blanche DuBois, the mash is a work of social realism. Blanche explains to Mitch that she fibs because she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her. guile to herself and to others allows her to make flavor appear as it should be rather than as it is. Stanley, a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world, disdains Blanches fabrications and does everything he can to unravel them. The antagonistic relationship between Blanche and Stanley is a struggle between appearances and reality.It propels the plays plot and creates an overarching tension. Ultimately, Blanches attempts to make over her own and Stellas existences? to rejuvenate her life and to save Stella from a life with Stanley? fail. One of the main ways Williams dramatizes partialitys inability to batter reality is through an exploration of the boundary between exterior and interior. The hardening of the play consists of the two-room Ko walski apartment and the surrounding street. Williamss use of a pliant set that allows the street to be seen at the same time as the interior of the home expresses the notion that the home is not a interior(prenominal) sanctuary.The Kowalskis apartment cannot be a self-defined world that is impermeable to greater reality. The characters give way and enter the apartment throughout the play, often bringing with them the problems they encounter in the larger environment. For example, Blanche refuses to leave her prejudices against the working class behind her at the door. The well-nigh notable instance of this effect occurs just before Stanley rapes Blanche, when the back protect of the apartment becomes transparent to show the struggles occurring on the street, foreshadowing the violation that is about to take place in the Kowalskis home.Though reality triumphs over head game in A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams suggests that fantasy is an important and useful tool. At the end of the play, Blanches retreat into her own private fantasies enables her to partially sieve herself from realitys harsh blows. Blanches insanity emerges as she retreats richly into herself, leaving the objective world behind in order to countermand accepting reality. In order to escape fully, however, Blanche must come to grok the exterior world as that which she imagines in her head.Thus, objective reality is not an antidote to Blanches fantasy world rather, Blanche adapts the exterior world to correspond her delusions. In both the physical and the psychological realms, the boundary between fantasy and reality is permeable. Blanches final, deluded happiness suggests that, to some extent, fantasy is a live force at play in every individuals experience, despite realitys inevitable triumph.