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A Streetcar Named Desire
Reviews |
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| Authors:
Tennessee Will |
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Consumer Ratings and
Reviews for A Streetcar Named Desire |
Rating:
| | Review: One of the best 20th century plays
| | "A Streetcar Named Desire" is one of Tennessee Williams' signature plays that has propelled his reputation and made him into a household name. The play deals with a culture clash between two iconic characters, Blanche DuBois, a fading relic of the Old South, and Stanley Kowalski, a rising member of the industrial, urban working class. Their gender and ethnic differences also feature prominently, and are a source of lot of tension throughout the play. Setting the play in New Orleans adds to the colorfulness of characters and situations, and the title of the play is a reference to a particular tram line in that city. All of the characters in this play are very developed, and their oversized passions and outbursts are extremely entertaining to follow. The play has a quality of a train wreck, and we are simultaneously attracted to the scenes and appalled by their over-the-top shenanigans. The play appears as fresh as when it was originally written over sixty years ago, and reading or watching it is a pleasure. |
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| Rating:
| | Review: Book Review: A Streetcar Named Desire
| "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams is one of the most poignant and psychologically warped plays in creation, tackling harsh realities of life we like to tuck into the back of our minds and neglect--these kinds of themes include delusion, shattered dreams, aging and the seemingly impossible search for both love and self-acceptance in a world built upon brute facts.
Set in 1947, the play commences just as Blanche DuBois, an English high school teacher from Mississippi, arrives at her sister Stella's apartment in New Orleans. Blanche confesses that she lost their ancestral home Belle Reve and must live with Stella for quite some time. This single act launches several plots instantaneously. We learn about the major characters throughout the play simply by how they react to the mental deterioration of Blanche and her struggle to find happiness. Her endeavor is ultimately destroyed by Stella's brutish and shrewd husband Stanley, whose already exasperated disposition is worsened as he lives with Blanche.
Even though the intensity, action and violent scenes render this play so popular,
"A Streetcar Named Desire" ought to be read--and reread for that matter--so that people become aware of metaphors and themes they don't register while watching the play. This isn't to be done solely for learning's sake, though; these components solidify the play and leave readers with a greater appreciation for Williams's masterpiece.
Whether you enjoy riveting plot or walking away from a book or play with a fresh, new perception of life or with a wisp of knowledge, you're bound to love "A Streetcar Named Desire."
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Rating:
| | Review: odered the book
| | These folks did a great job. I ordered it, they confirmed it and I had it within a week. The book is in excellent condition. No issues! |
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| | Review: Scott Barnett
| | In the nihilistic social commentary entitled A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the author constructs a tale of old and new south, wealthy and impoverished peoples, and brutality and gentility. Williams conveys Stella Dubois as a model of southern elegance. She graces everyone she meets and brings a sense of nostalgic southern values to her Louisiana friends and acquaintances. Blanche, a fallen southern bell, as well as Stella's wealthy sister, comes to live with Stella and her husband. She isn't accustomed to the blue collar life that Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski is providing. She points out many `flaws" in their economic situation which displays the socioeconomic differences in our society. Williams brilliantly crafted Stanley Kowalski as the blue collared, coarse, and barbaric "man's man" He displays no remorse for any of his insensitive words or actions. This starkly contrasts with Stella who is vary affable and sensitive towards everyone. Throughout this novel, Williams displays these themes successfully through the characters and situations they confront. |
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| | Review: A Streetcar and a Broken Tower
| In the published edition of his masterwork, "A Streetcar Named Desire", Tennessee Williams uses as an epigraph the following stanza from "The Broken Tower", probably the final poem written by the American romantic poet Hart Crane (1899-1932):
"And so was it I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice."
Crane wrote this difficult poem in 1932, shortly before his suicide. The poem speaks of Crane's efforts to capture the fire of the imagination and the gift of love in the course of an unhappy life. With his passionate romanticism and his lyricism, Crane was a deep and lifelong influence on Williams.
It helped to think about the importance of Crane's lines when I revisited "Streetcar". They capture something of the way we are to understand Blanche DuBois The unhappy heroine of Williams's play did indeed live in a "broken world" of sundered dreams. She lost the remnants of Belle Reve, the family plantation in Mississippi, together with her self-respect. On her fateful visit to her sister Stella and her husband, the coarse, brutal Stanley Kowalski in New Orleans where the play takes place, Stella's world becomes broken again when she loses her last chance at love and her sanity.
All Blanche has are her dreams and her attempt to find "the visionary company of love." She is a woman of illusions who attempts to hide the sordid details of her own past, including the suicide of her young husband, her attendant nymphomania, and her alcoholism from herself and from others. Her illusions cannot survive realistic scrutiny, particularly when they are exposed to Stanley. Blanche is unable to hold on to her last "desperate choice", similarly to the speaker in Crane's poem. As his own life progressed, Williams came increasingly to identify himself with Blanche DuBois, and perhaps these lines from Hart Crane apply to Williams view of himself as well.
With its lurid, pulpy, and melodramatic story, Streetcar has always been a tempting target for critics. But in beautifully poetic language, the play raises certain timeless themes, including the search for love, the powerful and destructive force of sexuality, and the centrality of romance and imagination to give life meaning in a world of brute fact. In a short introduction he wrote to the play called "A Streetcar named Success" Williams suggested, following William Saroyan, that the theme of the play was that "purity of the heart is the one success worth having. `In the time of your life -live!'" The play and Blanche come to a sad end. But capturing Blanche's story in art gives the reader or viewer of the play a power to persevere, similar to the power given to art and love in Hart Crane's "The Broken Tower."
Robin Friedman |
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