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Final Exam Essay - A Streetcar Named Desire

 

            The ending in Tennessee William's play A Streetcar Named Desire in which Blanche DuBois' sister Stella Kowalski leads her off to a mental hospital by a matron and a kind-hearted doctor was indeed inevitable. Blanche's "desires " have led to her eventual fate when she when stays in with Stella and her eventual "judge, jury, and executioner " Stanley Kowalski, Stella's husband. Blanche even said that desire brought her to where she is right now. Blanche's horrid past, which traumatized her throughout the play, which she reveals to be her husband ˜s suicide with a gunshot to the mouth because of Blanche's personal disgust with him sleeping with another man. Blanche's past also led her to live a life of fantasy and in which she indulges herself with various men. Lastly, to an extent, Stanley exploits Blanche's past and fantasies that leads her to insanity.
             Firstly, throughout the play, it is evident that Blanche's past has always been a burden to her and have haunted her throughout. The first example of this is in Scene II, where Blanche talks to Stanley about how Belle Reve was lost when she says, "There are thousands of papers. Stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reve as, piece by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications " (Williams 43). This quotes foreshadows her fate and shows the audience that even Blanche's family and their "epic fornication " led to their downfall. Also, Blanche's love for her husband and his suicide is what triggered Blanche's eventual path to insanity. In Scene VI, Blanche tells Mitch that the death of her husband caused " the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this " kitchen " candle " (Williams 96). Blanche's desire for love and intimacy leads to her husband's death and in return, gave her nothing but pain and sorrow.


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