Streetcar Named Desire Conclusion Essay Example

that appeal to what he calls pesticides literary critics" (Kaolin 1 33) and says of Williams, "The one American playwright who is a conspicuous exception to the dichotomy between 'high' and 'low' culture is Tennessee Williams. Williwaw's South, with its sexual ambivalence, self-delusion, and irrational violence, has become part of our popular myth's, the ambiance of countless B-movies and television melodramas" (Kaolin 134).

It also has been produced on television, and the play has been staged widely. Thomas Adler and other critics believe that Williams created a new form of lyrical drama with this play. According to Adler, "Williams fully utilized the stylistic possibilities of the stage.

.. To break away from the language-bound realistic drama of the nineteenth century This new type of play would not only admit but insist that the language of drama involves more than just words; it would acknowledge the stage symbols and the scenic images that speak to the audience as powerfully as what issues from the mouths of the characters" (Adler 8).

Other critics have found comedy in the play, that at first may seem to be a harsh picture of anger and misery, calling it brilliant tragicomedy.

With the tragic implications of so many events in Streetcar, one is tempted simply to label the play a tragedy, if an imperfect one. What rises again and again, however, to contradict such a position is a comic spirit that continuously puts the audience off balance.

Rather than viewing these comic elements as imperfections in a purely tragic mode, then, or the tragic events as weak melodramatic elements in a comic mode, our appraisal should encompass both modes and allow Williams

his tragicomic stance with all of its irreconcilability's" (Redbrick 93). STAGING OF THE PLAY Tennessee Williams gives very explicit directions as to how A Streetcar Named Desire is to be staged: "The exterior of a two-story corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs between the L & N tracks and the river.

The section is poor but, unlike corresponding sections in other American cities, it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly white frame, weathered grey, with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables.

This building contains two flats, upstairs and down. Faded white stairs ascend to the entrances of both" (13). Later he describes the unusual relationship between an outer wall of the house and street, "Depending on the location of the action, the audience sees either the inside or the street and outside of the house: A light goes on behind the blind, turning it light blue.

Balance slowly follows her into the downstairs flat.

The surrounding areas dim out as the interior is lighted" (16). It is important as one reads the play to realize that sometimes we can see the street and the outside of the house; and, sometimes, a wall of the house becomes transparent, and we see inside the house. When the lights fade on the gauzy, shimmers exterior and rise on the inside two rooms of the apartment, the contrast from the beauty-?even beauty in decay-?is startling.