Peerapas Thiwatporn (Buckbeak) 1209

A Streetcar Named Desire Final Assessment

Prompt 2

Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” shows a variation of power dynamics

through the actions and personalities of different characters presented along with the play.
Stanley Kowalski expresses his power through physical strengths and aggression, while
Blanche Du Bois deals with other’s emotions through their anxiety and her own manipulations.
Even though each character demonstrates power dynamics in a different approach, they all
have the same ambition of illustrating dominance over one another.

Throughout the play, Stanley uses intimidation and offense to force others to act upon
his own preference. This can clearly be seen in Scene 3 when Stanley tosses the radio out of
the window during the poker night. Stanley didn’t have that much ability to fully control others
through his speech just like when he ordered Blanche to turn off the radio but she didn’t listen.
By utilizing violence, Stanley was able to turn the tables around and make the situation work in
his favor. “He acts like an animal” and uses more of his primitive nature rather than reasonings
to control a situation. Because of fear, others have no choice but to follow what Stanley wants
them to do in order to avoid getting into conflicts. Tennessee uses the character of Stanley to
represent the advantages his father, Cornelius Coffin Williams gained over Tennessee and his
family members through the aggressiveness and violation derived from his alcohol addiction.

Hostility can be quite effective in compelling other people through the extrinsic reactions
of fear, however, unlike Stanley. Blanche takes advantage of the soft sides of human emotions:
the feelings of desire and sympathy. In Scene 5, on a date with Mitch, Blanche told a story
about her marriage with a boy named Allan during her youth and mourned for the tragic loss
after finding out her boyfriend was homosexual. She acknowledges the anxiety that Mitch is
going through with his sick mother and uses that fact to carefully maneuver his emotions and
convince him that “You need somebody. And I need somebody too.” The combination between
the sympathetic feelings Mitch had for Blanche’s past and the satisfaction acquired from her
fraudulent understanding confines him under Blanche’s control. In actuality, Blanche isn’t that
interested in Mitch himself but she needed someone she could depend on. She wanted to
escape the miserable experiences she’s been going through with Stanley, therefore Mitch is just
a puppet used by Blanche to satisfy her goal.

The tragedies that occurred in the play are bounded by the necessity of dominating one
over another in order to accomplish a certain goal. The belligerence of Stanley and Blanche’s
manipulation represents the power dynamics between the physical and psychological states of
actions. Through the impact of these characters, Tennessee implies that in the worst
circumstances humans will do whatever it takes to fulfill their needs no matter how bad it might
influence other people.