A streetcar named Desire, "Repetition"

Résumé du document

In most of the classic plays we studied in high school, numerous events and rebounding occurred one after the other that enabled the plot to move forward. At the end of the play, the situations used to evolve and the characters' lives had often changed. However, in this work, the final situation is almost the same as that at the beginning because all the characters return pretty much to their initial situation at the end of the play. True, Stanley and Stella have a baby but they go on living together in the same place, Mitch stays alone and still spends his time taking care of his mother and Blanche becomes lonely again. Besides, the most striking example of the permanence of the situation is that the same event, the poker night, occurs at the beginning of the play and is also the last scene.

This event which seems to frame the play, is not the only action repeated several times in it. Actually, after a thorough reading, we notice that throughout the play the characters, especially Blanche, repeated a few actions and that some themes are recurrent. This observation brings us to question in what way these repetitions influence Blanche's behavior and state of mind. Do these actions help Blanche dismiss the past from her mind and begin a new life? Or is it the contrary? Do they quicken her departure from sanity? To what extent does the other characters' behavior influence her views on life?

Extraits

[...] Besides, the bathroom is the only room where you could wash you entirely and that's another reason why she spends all her time in there. In Scene Seven, Stanley tells Stella his discovery about Blanche's unflattering past and more specifically about her numerous affairs and the reputation of whore she had in the entire town of Laurel. Owing to these facts, Blanche doesn't seem to be a person anymore and the bath then appears to be a kind of symbolic act. [...]

[...] At last, we can notice that Stanley also take a shower after his bad behaviour with Stella in the Scene Three. As the bath calm Blanche's nerves, the shower soothe Stanley's violence but the faults of Stanley are forgiven whereas Blanche's ones are not. Then, Blanche and Stanley's bad behaviour, whatever it is past or present, is not the only element she has in common with Stanley. Indeed, both share a significant penchant for alcohol and drink excessively several times during the play. [...]

[...] As a result, Blanche is completely pulled between her desire of a new world and her heavy past and she feels totally stuck. This misunderstanding of Blanche and her impossibility to know what to do and what is better for her can be illustrated by her growing hesitation before entering in the flat. Indeed, in Scene Three she “stops before the dark entrance of her sister in Scene Four she “looks through the door, before entering” after the poker night. [...]

[...] In the last scene, this morbid music becomes omnipresent varsouviana rises audibly” varsouviana faintly plays” varsouviana is filtered into weird distortion accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle”. Moreover, the sound of this music piece is not the only element which directly comes from the past. Indeed, Blanche has conserved two sorts of papers; the legal documents concerning Belle Reve that Stanley wants to find in Scene Two and the letters of her deceased husband. We can notice that both types of papers embody the loss of something as if events occur again and again. [...]

[...] It seems like she fight against her past while trying to catch up with it. Indeed, she wants to get rid of it by constructing a fantasy world which emerges when she drinks, when she sings, when she is in the bath or when she writes letters. However, the violence of the world she lives in, the music she constantly heard or the papers she keeps, always bring her to the past and especially to this determining moment of her husband death. [...]