Violence in A Streetcar Named Desire

Our class recently completed timed essays on the theme of violence in Streetcar and we got given teacher feedback and marks. I thought it’d be helpful if I posted mine along with my feedback 🙂

Explore Williams’ dramatic presentation of violence in the Poker night and in the rest of the play.

Williams presents violence in the poker night and in the play as a whole through the use of plastic theatre, and through the juxtaposition between Blanche and Stanley’s characters. Plastic theatre was a term Williams used to describe how elements of staging can be used to enhance the storyline and exaggerate certain qualities in characters, and it is used in this play to highlight the violence in the character of Stanley.

Williams uses plastic theatre to demonstrate violence in the poker night and in the rest of the play by using it to highlight differences in personality between Stanley and other characters, and how violent he is in contrast. In the poker night during scene three, Williams’ use of plastic theatre is shown through how he uses the radio to represent the power balance between Blanche and Stanley. Trying to seduce Mitch after poker, Blanche ‘turns the knob on the radio’ and ‘waltzes to the music with romantic gesture’. This playful and romantic atmosphere is then shattered when Stanley ‘stalks fiercely into the room’ and ‘with a shouted oath, he tosses the instrument out of the window’. The verb ‘tosses’ is incredibly careless, and the ‘shouted oath’ suggests swearing which intensifies the already violent act, as does the juxtaposition between how Blanche and Stanley use the radio. This violence in Stanley is shown again through plastic theatre in scene one, where Stanley ‘heaves’ a package at Stella, shouting ‘meat!’ Williams uses the prop of the bloody package to highlight the forcefulness and violence of Stanley’s character in contrast to Stella’s ‘gentle’ one. All of this use of plastic theatre allows Williams to exaggerate traits of the ‘modern man’ in his time, represented by Stanley, and to highlight the power this violence gave them.

Again highlighting the power of violent modern men, Williams uses a lot of predatorial animal imagery when describing Stanley’s actions in the stage directions to present violence and how dangerous it is in the poker night and in the rest of the play.  In scene three, Williams writes how he ‘stalks fiercely’ into the bedroom where Blanche is with Mitch, and later ‘charges after Stella’. The verbs ‘stalks’ and ‘charges’ sound very threatening, and are characteristic of predators in the animal world, demonstrating how Stanley’s violence almost dehumanises him and turns him into more of a dangerous animal. This trait is shown again in scene one, when he says to Blanche that Laurel is ‘not in [his] territory’. Being territorial is a very common trait in animals, and Williams seems to be suggesting, through this resulting portrayal of Stanley as almost a two-dimensional caricature of violent masculinity, that male power was extremely dominant in that society. Certainly Stanley is shown to have a soft side when he starts crying in scene three when Stella leaves him after he hits her, but for the most part his façade remains unbroken. Williams uses his character, along with Blanche’s, to portray the meaning of the play, which, in his own words, is ‘the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate by the savage and brutal forces of modern society’. Stanley represents the ‘savage and brutal forces of modern society’ as we can clearly see through the use of predatorial animal imagery and the violence it suggests. Violence seems to be the driving force of these forces of modern society.

While Stanley represents these ‘savage and brutal forces’, it is clear also that Blanche represents ‘the tender, the sensitive, the delicate’, and Williams uses Blanche’s character to present how destructive violence is both in the poker night and in the rest of the play. In scene three, after the poker game and when Stanley hits Stella, Blanche ‘screams and runs into the kitchen’ and shouts ‘shrilly’ at him. This certainly makes her sound very unstable, and the adverb ‘shrilly’ suggests that this act of domestic violence has brought her to near hysteria. This inability to cope with violence is shown again in scene two after Blanche and Stanley have their tension-filled discussion and she meets Stella outside. When a vendor calls out on the street, Williams writes that Blanche ‘utters a sharp, frightened cry and shrinks away’, and that as they turn the corner, Blanche’s ‘desperate laugh’ can be heard. Both of these times she appears very mentally unstable, and they are both after a particularly violent and intense interaction with or display of power from Stanley. Williams uses this to demonstrate the destructive power of violence, and how the ‘New South’ was completely destroying the ‘Old South’. He presents Blanche’s character as a typical Southern Belle whose mental health, already unstable, slowly deteriorates throughout the play until Stanley’s rape of her at the end. Through this ultimate violent act and everything leading up to it, Williams presents very effectively the extreme destructive power of violence and violent people.

In conclusion, Williams uses Stanley’s character, exaggerated through use of plastic theatre, to present violence as a dangerous and destructive force with the power to completely break down the society of the ‘Old South’ and all the people and Southern Belles in it. Williams demonstrates very clearly that to be forceful and violent is to have power, and that if you don’t have power, you’re  left as an easy target for the ‘savage and brutal forces of modern society’.

Teacher Feedback:

• WWW: You link your ideas effectively to context and also explore Williams’ methods.
• EBI: Ensure you have a clearly focused thesis statement that summarises what your argument is and develop contextual ideas further.
• Mark: 13/25 (Grade C)

So, as you can see, this is far from a perfect essay but I thought it would be helpful for you to see where I made mistakes and where I could have improved so you can have that in mind when writing your own essays.

I hope this helped! Feel free to share your thoughts in a comment or in an email to englishlityear12@gmail.com – I’d love to hear from you!

Amber x