Isabella Parker

Minor Characters

Love, often between minor and main characters, is often destructive. The main characters

of stories go through many forms character development spurred on by minor characters

throughout their life and story. Many authors use the death of minor characters as factors to spur

character growth and decay despite other events in the stories. In the play, A Streetcar Named

Desire, Blanche is affected throughout the entire play by the death of her husband, Allan. Out of

guilt and devotion, Blanche keeps her memory of Alan up on a pedestal in her mind. Allan’s

death and the events leading up to it shaped Blanche’s ideals of love, her feeling unworthy of

love, and how to live for the rest of her story. In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee

Williams uses Allan to convey how a failed love, especially at a young age, negatively affects

the perceptions of love in future interactions and imposes guilt.

For a reader, the idea of Allan is first introduced as a nameless concept. Stella, Stanley,

and Blanche are talking on the night of Blanche’s arrival. Stella leaves for the bathroom, and

Stanley innocently brings up Blanche’s past marriage. Blanche doesn’t go into detail about how

he died, only exclaiming that the boy died after they married young, and she begins to feel ill.

Later on, Stanley and Blanche are talking about Blanche’s past and how she lost Belle Reve.

While Blanche looks for papers to show proof of economic downturn and other circumstances,

Stanley stumbles across “poems a dead boy wrote. I hurt him” (Williams 42). These letters

became the most precious pieces of paper in Blanche’s documents, and she is willing to “burn

them” after they have been desecrated by Stanley (Williams 42). Despite it being years since

Allan has died, Blanche is still holding onto the memory of Allan. The pain she caused him, that

immediately led to his death, is later exposed. Blanche can’t bring herself to burn the letters in
the end. She treasures them and feels too much guilt. Blanche loved Allan completely, and in a

way, Allan loved her the same.

During Blanche’s heart to heart with Mitch in scene 8, Blanche explains her story with

Allan, and how she inevitably caused his death. A polka tune plays on the radio, and Blanche is

reminded of the night Allan committed suicide. Despite all the love Blanche had for Allan, she

felt she was “slipping in with him!” (Williams 114). Allan was homosexual, but during this time

especially, if he had been found out, he would have been sent to a mental institution or worse.

Blanche and Allan were 16 when they fell in love. Allan loved Blanche, but he desperately

wished for help and someone with whom he could talk. Blanche loved Allan so much she was

blinded from the truth, until Allan’s secret was discovered. Blanche, Allan, and the other man all

avoided talking about this discovery and went out drinking and dancing. The polka song from the

beginning of the scene was playing when Blanche told Allan how he “disgust[ed] me [Blanche]”

(Williams 115). These words snapped something in Allan, and as the song was ending, he ran

from the room and shot himself. Blanche’s words broke Allan so deep that he couldn’t recover.

Blanche feels all the guilt from these actions even to the current day in the story. She has been

carrying the guilt around for years. The image of love in Blanche’s mind became twisted and

obscure when Allan died. Blanche did not feel she was worthy of receiving actual love anymore

after her role in Allan’s death. She began sleeping with a multitude of men to try and fill the

gaping hole inside her heart left by the death of the man she loved. Blanche kept these activities

secret from everyone else in her life, and they eventually lead to the downfall of her relationship

with Mitch.

Allan’s story, despite being short, is an important element in A Streetcar Named Desire.

By including details about Blanche and Allan’s relationship, Williams shows the reader the
deeper effects of grief and guilt felt by Blanche later on in her life and their effects on her

character’s relationships. Williams highlights these effects in the relationships between Blanche

and Stanley and Blanche and Mitch. The love of minor characters is a powerful tool which

Williams used to break characters down to their bare essentials and true forms. Minor characters

and influences can impact