Rebecca Finkelman Mrs. Hoffman/ Mr.

Martin Street Car Named Desire Essay March 8th 2013

Throughout this entire play, Blanche and Stanley have had a few violent encounters with one another. The first major conversation Stanley and Blanche had was towards the end of scene two. Even though Stanley was not physically violent with her in this scene, they had a very heated conversation. Stanley finds out all this information about Blanche and he discusses the Napoleonic code with her. However, she claims she has never heard about it before. The heated part of this argument is portrayed through when Stanley touches the letters that Allan has written. Blanche freaks out and states, The touch of your hands insults them! (Williams 42). This demonstrates how the violence between Blanche and Stanley started that progressively increasing throughout the play. Another example of violence that is illustrated in the play is when Stanley throws the radio out of the window. When the girls came back from their night out, the boys were at the house playing poker. Blanche felt the need to turn on some music and Stanley demanded that she turn it off. Shortly after that, she turns the radio back on, however this does not suit well with Stanley. In fact, this sets off a violent rage, Stanley stalks fiercely through the portieres into the bedroom. He crosses the small white radio and snatches it off the table. With a shouted, oath he tosses the instrument out the window (Williams 62). This depicts how his violence increased because the first time he did not do any physical damage, but this time he actually took the radio and threw it

out the window. The last major violent outbreak of Stanley occurs in scene 10. In this scene, Stanley rapes Blanche. Blanche warns him to stay back from her so she could pass into the room, but Stanley makes it difficult and states, come to think of it-maybe you wouldnt be bad-interfere with (Williams 161). Blanche ends up hitting him with a bottle, but this results in Stanley picking her up and taking her to the bed against her will. These examples demonstrate how the meetings between Blanche and Stanley got progressively more violent as the play continued on. Blanche could be characterized by majority of things. For example, she could be characterized as a victim of circumstance, old south attitudes or a corrupt conniver. The real Blanche however, is characterized as a victim of circumstance. Blanche went through a lot in her life, which made her to be the person that she is now. Her first love shot himself because she found out that he was gay. This put a major emotional affect on Blanche because her meant a lot to her and she had a lot of trouble handling it. The next two years after the incident, she was not a very good girl. She felt the need to sleep around a lot, which got her nowhere. Due to this, she became broke and lost the house in Belle Reve. The major reason she came to New Orleans to see Stella was because she had nowhere else to go. An important example of how she was a victim of circumstance occurred at the end of the play. This is when Stanley rapped her. She had no control over that and when she tried to tell people, no one believed her. This resulted in Stella having to put Blanche in a mental institution because everyone thought she as going crazy. This evidence proves that Blanche was a victim of circumstance. In the beginning of the play, Blanche was very open to Stanley. She had asked him to unbutton her dress and always asked him if she looked nice. Throughout the play

Blanche had always been flirty to Stanley. Also, she would throw herself at these guys and just did not really care what she did to get their attention. She was very manipulative throughout the play, especially towards the young boy. Mitch would treat Blanche like royalty, but she did not treat him well in return. He would always take her out and buy her flowers and she was not very appreciative towards his kind gestures. However, the rape pushed her over the edge. She became more self-conscious and would not even look at or acknowledge Stanley or Mitch. In fact, she sound of his voice shocks Blanche. It pushed her over the edge to the point that Stella had to put her in a mental hospital because of how crazy she had gotten.