The Theme of Death in Streetcar Named Desire - Essay Example

Your full December 14, The Theme of Death in “Streetcar d Desire.” Death is one of the most important and central themes of the play “Streetcar Named Desire.” Death causes important changes in the story right from the start till its end. Blanche, Stella’s sister happens to be the focus of the story who is moved by the death of her ancestors and also dies herself by the time the play approaches end. Blanche has always been living in a fanciful world, a world of illusions. She is beautiful, though the passing time is sapping her beauty and she starts to look aged and wrinkled. This is her biggest fear and she would do all to make her look young and energetic so that she may enjoy the wonders of youth for long. For example, she tends not to move into very bright light as it would make her wrinkles prominent and her true age would show up. Blanche is always very reluctant to leak out her true age to any one. Also, looking young is an attempt to escape death for Blanche. Blanche tends to associate herself with men younger to her so as to tell her own subconscious self and others that she is still young and has the entire youthful tendency to draw youngsters towards her. This feeling makes her feel contented and far from death as she feels like having made her way back to the teenage bliss. Owing to her fear of death, Blanche becomes dumbfounded as the Mexican woman in the Scene Nine who sells “flowers for the dead” discloses Blanche’s fate to her. She fulfills her own desires and death, to her, is the opposite of that, so she tends to be far from death. Death, in the play, has been quite associated with sex that is a means of fulfilling one’s desires. Since Blanche refers to death as the opposite of desire, that in a way, tells that sex and death are in conflict with each other, though the former leads to latter as the story explains. Blanche lives a life of poverty and deprivation as a result of the lavish life style of her ancestors that left little money and property for her. She had to pay the price of the mismanagement of former generations. She spent much of her youth looking after her ancestors until all of them died. After that, she lost her DuBois seat in the Belle Reve. Already obsessed with her misfortune, her emotions and zeal are further declined by the homosexuality of her husband. Her husband had to endorse death in the form of suicide because he could not get his unrestrained and illegitimate sexual activities approved by Blanche as he was a homosexual. One after another, different saddening events made Blanche face her misfortune in different forms until she lost the sense of reality and covered her thoughts and emotions in the blanket of illusion. She was so emotionally destroyed that she cared little about herself and her life in the later years as she lived with her sister Stella. Because of her insensibility, she lost her job of teaching in the school. She frequently had fights with Stanley, Stella’s husband and often was at the loosing end because his reality of arguments outshined Blanche’s fanciful womanly assertions. In order to satisfy her physical needs, she tried to build a relationship with Mitch but it did not materialize. Much of Blanche’s downfall can be attributed to her love for sex. It was revealed in the very first scene of the play that her illegitimate sexual history leads Blanche to her downfall. She was exiled from Belle Reve, evicted from Laurel and finally, from the society upon death for ever. Blanche herself narrates her unrecognized belief that her desires led to death when she acknowledged on her very first arrival on the Kowalskis’ that she had first rode a streetcar that was called desire, then moved to another one called Cemeteries and finally, had her visit to the street called Elysian Fields. This is indeed, the narration of her whole life. In Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields are referred to as the land of dead people. Therefore, by visiting Elysian Fields, Blanche endorsed death. Near the end of the play, Blanche becomes mad. There are two underlying reasons for that. First, she can not act according to her desire and secondly, she is obsessed with the fear of mortality. For both Blanche and her husband, their fulfillment of immoral desires leads them to their downfall. It so happens because their indulgence in unrestrained promiscuity causes them to endorse departure from the world willingly or otherwise. In the time the play was written, the American society was very conservative and the same culture prevailed nearly all over the world. Unusual sexual orientations leading to homosexuality or else, sex out of marriage were considered social taboos and were not openly discussed. Sex was restricted to marital bond and any display of sexual behavior outside marriage was considered unethical. Any individual who displayed such attitude towards sex was thought to increase his/her own susceptibility to acquiring nature’s wrath. That is why, Blanche’s husband felt so depressed that he committed suicide. By doing that, he endorsed death for himself without the intervention of any other individual. That fundamentally tells that he was punished by nature for his illegitimate sexual behavior. Similarly, for Blanche, her uncontrolled physical desires led her to exclusion from her own city. She degraded herself in the public eye and was loaded with insult. A careful analysis of the story tells that Blanche was also somewhat attracted to Stanley for her physical needs. Nature decided madness for her and ultimately, she also had to die. In this way, the play also conveys a moral message that one’s careless attitude about sex leads to humiliation and decline. Although no one can escape death, irrespective of deeds, yet those, who are careless in their sexual behavior often have tragic ends to their life as compared to others. Sex and death have been tied together in the play in the cause and effect relationship. The play correctly depicts the potential ways in which women’s rights were sapped by the members of opposite gender in the postwar America. Women’s thoughts and desires were subdued and they were left to live as per the dictations of their fathers before marriage and husbands after marriage. Blanche might have got married to Mitch who could have taken care of her while her health deteriorated had she not been on bad terms with Stanley. Blanche actually wanted to marry Mitch so as to escape destitution. After Mitch rejected her, she tried to build a relationship with yet another man, named Shep Huntleigh. However, she was wrong in her approach. Blanche looses all capacity to take rational decisions in an attempt to improve her tarnished image in the society. She has a mental disorder and dies. Her challenging attitude and irrational sexual activities led her to madness and ultimately death. Both sisters in the play, Blanche and Stella depend upon the men for happiness and the fulfillment of their needs as was the trend during the transition of old South into the new one. Although Blanche always sounds appealing and sensible to Stella, yet she prefers to follow her husband in comparison to Blanche. Having obeyed her husband, Stella was shown secure and safe when the play ended while Blanche had to endorse death. Stella favored Stanley even when Blanche died. Works cited: Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. UK: Heinemann Educational Publishers. 1947. Read More