Critique: A Streetcar Named Desire - Book Report/Review Example

Running Head: Critique: A STREETCAR D DESIRE Critique: A Streetcar d Desire of the of the Critique: A Streetcar Named Desire A Streetcar Named Desire is a romantic onomasticon of personal and place names alike written by Tennessee Williamss. The names Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski have long been talismans, symbols of the individuals and the historical clashes they represent--Old World vs. New, rural vs. industrial, "silky lingerie and sweaty brutality." (Logan, 1990). As Jessica Tandy, the first Blanche, so eloquently observed, Blanche and Stanley are "a wonderful mixture" of "decayed elegance and sheer unadulterated guts." (Undated letter to Williams from Jessica Tandy ). Despite the critical attention that the names in Streetcar have received, two important personal names have gone unglossed, those of the Laurel connections Kiefaber and Shaw, whose testimonies about Blanches misdeeds convince Mitch that she is not the woman for him and provoke his fiery attack on her. Kiefaber is the product of Williamss inventive imagination. A search through the Laurel, Mississippi, telephone books for the years 1940 through 1947 turned up no Kiefabers, nor did the name appear in the personal name or obituary indexes for the New York Times. The etymology of the name is more revealing. Kiefaber symbolizes a number of ideas pertinent to Blanches predicament in the play. The names second part, faber, points to the Latin faber "artificer, craftsman who works with solid materials." Faber, of course, is the root of the English word fabricator, a role that the Laurel merchant all-too-happily assumes in Blanches view of him as a fabricator of malicious "stories about me." The merchant/craftsman Kiefaber thus joins ranks with another fabricator, Stanley Kowalski--the Stone Age man who is also a blacksmith (Leonard , 1977)--who labors with all kinds of materials to destroy delicate Blanche. Significantly, too, the merchant is a Kie-faber, and in context the prefix might be explained in two appropriate ways. Kie might be seen as an adjective modifying Kiefabers role as a fabricator; he is the key fabricator of the stories that doom Blanche in Mitchs eyes. After all, Mitch considers the merchant, whose trade is gossip, to be a much more reliable source about Blanches scandalous behavior than the supply-man, Shaw, who, according to Stanley, is certain that he had met Blanche in Laurels infamous Hotel Flamingo. Testifying to the merchants role as the key contact, Mitch reveals that Stanley also picked up information about Blanche from Kiefaber. In addition to functioning as an adjective, Kie might be seen as a variant spelling of the early modern English word kee (OED), a weakened form of quoth. Thus Kiefaber might be translated "So says (or quotes) the fabricator." Shaw, the "supply-man," who "has been going through Laurel for years and . . . knows all about her" (359), is Mitchs other source about Blanches doubtful reputation. According to the OED, to straw (vb. 1) means "to fence or border (a field) with straw," a straw (sb. 2) being a "strip of wood or under-wood forming the border of a field." Furthermore, the OED links straw (sb. 2) with "what shows above ground" and gives as a second meaning of to straw (vb. 2) "to cut off the tops of (potatoes, turnips, etc.)." The etymology behind the drummers name symbolically defines Shaws function in Streetcar. His task is, as Stanley puts it, to "check on it [Blanches notoriety] and clear up any mistakes" (330). He does this by fencing in the truth, removing or "cutting off" the top layer of pretense and deception that Blanche superimposes on the solid facts, and by defining the borderline between "realism" and "magic," the two conflicting realms of Blanches life (385). Shaws testimony, like Kiefabers, shows how Stanley and Mitch depend on experiential data rather than depend on the truths of the heart as Blanche does. (Thomas , 1990) Besides their symbolic names, the unseen characters Kiefaber and Shaw resonate with meaning through their ties to folklore. Blanche dismisses her accusers, Stanley, Shaw, and particularly Kiefaber, as no more creditable than the three men in a tub from the childs nursery rhyme. Such a self-defense is consistent with Blanches habit of coquettishly trivializing something that might embarrass her. According to Blanche, these three men all inhabit "a filthy tub" because of the slander they spread about her. In her eyes, their tub is a cesspool, seething with lies about her, that contrasts with the healing baths she takes in a hot tub each day--"I take hot baths for my nerves. Hydrotherapy, they call it" (374). The three men in the rhyme are the "butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker," occupations that reinforce the fabricator meaning. Although Shaw, Stanley, and Kiefaber are not literally tied to these symbolic professions, it seems likely that Williams intended some symbolic linkage to emphasize Blanches plight, expressed in her comparison of her accusers with the three men in the rhyme. Doubtless Stanley is the most appropriate candidate for the butcher in the slanderers tub. Throughout the play he is linked with the flesh. At the start of Streetcar he carries "a red stained package from a butchers" and "heaves" it to Stella as he shouts "Meat!" (244). Visually and verbally, the association of Stanley with a butcher could not be more appropriate. In scene four, Blanche attempts to pull Stella away from Stanley by characterizing him as a primitive butcher--". . . and there he is--Stanley Kowalski--survivor of the Stone Age. Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle" (323). Stanleys role as Blanches executioner, her destroyer, also links him with the occupation of butcher, one who violates her body and cuts her off from her sister, Stella, and her savior, Mitch. Kiefaber and Shaw might be representatives of the baker and the candlestick maker in Blanches use of the nursery rhyme. Shaw corresponds, occupationally speaking, to the candlestick maker because his illuminating wares are essential to the work of the other fabricators/slanderers. In terms of the calumny directed toward Blanche, it was Shaw who lighted the fire under Stanley by telling him what he had learned about Blanche in Laurel, and it was also Shaw whom Stanley and Mitch expected to throw light on Blanches notorious past. Kiefaber can be associated with the baker, who gives shape to initially amorphous material about Blanche. He becomes especially responsible for Blanches disastrous birthday party dinner, which is ruined because of the news that Stanley and Mitch receive from Laurel. Blanches cake and the candles on it in scene eight, therefore, may ominously foreshadow the chief symbols of the fabricators of the nursery rhyme in scene nine. Blanches accusers also may come from the same seedy origins as the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker. In the nursery rhyme, this trio crawled out of a "rotten potato" before embarking on their journey in the tub. In spreading malicious stories about Blanche, Kiefaber, Shaw, and Stanley crawl from one rotten place (Laurel) into another equally sordid one (Stanleys apartment) as far as Blanche is concerned. If Blanche does not give full details about the rhyme, Williams himself most likely had them in mind to stigmatize Blanches enemies. The rotten potato--embedded in the text of Blanches retort--is an appropriate symbol on a number of levels. It offers a comment on the bad merchandise that Kiefaber, Shaw, and Stanley peddle. Rotten potatoes, like slanderous stories, leave a bad smell. The rotten potato also functions subliminally as a bitter reminder of spoiled love. The potato has long since been regarded as an aphrodisiac, and a rotten potato in the context of scene nine stands for infected, tainted love. When Kiefaber made an unsuccessful pass at Blanche, she spumed him; it was rotten potatoes for him to be sure. Finally, Blanches reference to the nursery rhyme may also hint at its well-known variant ending "Turn em out, knaves all three." (The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes) Summarizing Blanches wished for expulsion of these rascals, this submerged line in the text of Streetcar calls attention to Blanches feminist tragedy. Blanche has lost Belle Reve and everything noble it represented because of her male ancestors "epic fornications" (284). Now, in New Orleans, she has lost the last vestiges of her reputation as well as her sanity because of Stanleys fornication. With thoughts of the rhyme running through her head, it is no wonder that Blanche wants to upset the tub of male conspiracy and "turn out" the "knaves" who, as Stella put it, "have been doing all" they "can think of to rub her the wrong way" (358). References All references to Streetcar are from The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, vol. I (New York: New Directions, 1971) 329. Leonard Quirino, "The Cards Indicate a Voyage on A Streetcar Named Desire," Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, ed. Jac Tharpe (Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1977) 79. Logan Speirs, "Current Literature 1988," English Studies 71 (Feb. 1990) 55. Speirs uses this phrase to characterize Williamss fascination with this dualism in many of his plays. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, ed. Iona and Peter Opie (Oxford UP, 1951) 376. Thomas P. Adler writes convincingly about this distinction in his A Streetcar Named Desire: The Moth and the Lantern (Boston: Twayne, 1990; Twaynes Masterwork Series no. 47) 55. Undated letter to Williams from Jessica Tandy. Printed in Richard F. Leavitt, The World of Tennessee Williams (New York: Putnams, 1978) 77. Read More