A tram trial called desire
Introduction
A tram called desire is a literary work written by the American playwright Tennessee Williams in 1947. This means that it was published two years after World War II ended. Williams won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for this work and the work, even being fiction, with a social and existential issue, has personal aspects of the author, his life and his obsessions, and this is reflected through some characters from thehistory.
A tram called desire is about a society that is trying to recover from World War II that began in 1939 and ended in 1945. We know this since the work was published two years after the war ended. The main character, Blanche, brings a past that wants to forget his older sister’s house, Stella who lives with her husband Stanley. Blanche’s murky leads her to madness and as the events happen, we can see the contrasted reality with the American Way of Life and we can also see the author’s life reflected in the work.
Developing
The protagonist of the work is Blanche Dubois. She is a girl who is not very stable mentally after the death of her husband who had committed suicide after Blanche surprised her to see him being unfaithful with another man. As in the time being homosexual was still very frowned.
This can be seen in the sixth scene on page 202 where Blanche says “I have seen you! I know! You disgust me… ”As her husband decided to stop living after this, Blanche feels guilty for the death of her partner and this is one of the main reasons why Blanche is taken to madness. This is where the issue of homosexuality enters the history and is related to the author because he also liked people of the same sex. After this past that cannot rebuild, Blanche is going to live with his sister but ends up being even worse than he was before and this makes him end in the asylum at the end of the work.
Blanche has two different internal conflicts. The first conflict is that in his love life, he did not have a happy past and also has a difficult present. She has a conflict in love because she loses her family, since her whole family dies except her sister Stella. When Blanche and Stella’s father died, Stella had already left so Blanche stayed completely alone.
Apart from this death there was also the death of his ex -husband who committed suicide after Blanche discovered the truth about his identity. She feels guilty to this death because she thinks that if she had acted otherwise, he could not have taken her life. This event worsens the madness of Blanco, since it tries to erase the painful memories with fantasies because it does not want to accept the truth.
So many problems lead Blanche to have unconventional love practices. For example, he has love relationships with soldiers, with a student who had school and with men in a hotel. Then when he arrives in New Orleans, he meets Stanley’s friend, Mitch, with whom he has a relationship, but as she does not show who is truly, in the end they end up separating although in the background, Mitch continues to love Blanche.
She pretends to be a person who is not to fall in love with Mitch, since she feels insecure of herself, but this love that Blanche Dubois had was unsatisfactory, like author’s love life Tennessee Williams, since the author was also homosexual and thatleads him to hide his true identity. This action is reflected in Blanche, since she also hides behind a farce.
We can see that Blanche is hiding from his true identity in the ninth scene on page 224 when Blanche shouts Mitch “No lights the light!"Blanche wants to hide from the light because she does not want her to see her face, since she wants to be a young woman in front of others, but if people see her face really, they will know that she is lying and is not as young as she saysbe.
Another conflict that Blanche has is his mental illness. Has this disease because its conflicts are really. For example, there is the opposition of appearance-truth and the opposition of darkness-elz. That explains why when Blanche is with another person in the same room, the lights are very dark. One of the people who hides the truth is Mitch, the person who loves.
The lights are dark so that Mitch cannot clearly see Blanche’s face, since she wants him to think she is a very young girl when in reality it is the opposite as said before. What she is afraid of is that she sees her in real life and rejects her and that also explains why there is a conflict over the room lamp.
This can be seen in the ninth scene on page 224 when Mitch breaks the paper that covers the lamp and Blanche when he is worried that he will ask him ‘Why have you done that?’When Blanche confesses to Mitch the truth, he tells him‘ Blanche, you are not straight ’. The reason why Blanche does not want.
Madness also causes Blanche has hallucinations. One of the main reasons why Blanche has hallucinations is because he wants to escape from the harsh reality. We can see this because a millionaire man named Shep Huntleight is created. In the work on the tenth scene on page 234 she says: “I want to talk to Mr. Shep Huntleight of Dallas."
Blanche could be doing so that it may seem in front of the audience that is not alone, since it wants to appear as if it were a higher class. We can see this because of the clothes you wear and the accessories you have. I could be pretending, but so to say it, in the end he believes it. It is thought that Shep Huntleight really exists and that is why at the end of the work they take her to a mental hospital.
In conclusion, in the work there are conflicts, especially Blanche. External conflicts suffer love and rejection and internal conflict would be the fact that Blanche ends in madness. These conflicts reflect the situation of the moment that would be the crisis and contradiction with the American way of life. The author Tennessee Williams also reflects certain events of his life through Blanche’s character in the work of a tram called desire. For example, the love life of both people was unsatisfactory.
conclusion
Blanche’s love life was unsatisfactory because her husband was deceiving her with a man because she was homosexual. Tennessee Williams had an unsatisfactory relationship because he felt as if he had to hide the truth of the public, since at that time it was very frowned upon to be homosexual. The love of both people opposed the conventions of the moment and had to hide their relationship giving the image different from the real. In addition, both people were related to madness and mental institutions.
Blanche is taken to madness after all the conflicts he has with herself and that is why in the end it ends in a mental hospital. On the other hand, Williams’s beloved sister, Rose, spent much of her life in mental institutions. They made a lobotomy because the mother had demanded it, but this surgery worsened her sister’s health status and that led him to become an alcoholic.
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