A Streetcar Named Desire -- desire and death
Uploaded by SouthernGirl on Jun 19, 2001
There are only two streetcars in life -- desire and deathTennessee Williams once wrote, according to his esteemed friend and biographer, Gore Vidal, that there were only two streetcars in life--desire and death. When you get off of the streetcar desire, you get on the streetcar toward cemetaries. Ironically, at the beginning of his play, "A Streetcar Named Desire," the character, Blanche DuBois, is about to take the streetcars in just that order.
She remarks to a young soldier whom she seeks assistance from: "They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then get on one called Cemetaries and then get off at Ellysian Fields." When she leaves the streetcar at the end of the line at Ellysian Fields, where her sister and brother-in-law live, she walks into a mysterious world that both mesmerizes and destroys her fragile inner life. Whether she moves toward death in the end, or toward a higher reality to be found in an Ellysian dream---akin to a kind of necessary delusion produced by her in order to survive---one does not know. But, it is indeed certain that Blanche is one of the most lyrical, beautiful and memorable in the pantheon of Tennessee Williams' female characters.