QUOTES FOR PAPER 2

Quotes for ASND - Theme: PURITY

- characterisation of Blanche - “white suit“ “fluffy bodice“ “necklace of pearl“ “white gloves and hat“ “delicate beauty“

- Costume (“red satin robe”)

- Motif of bathing (“in the bathroom“ and “bathing“)

Techniques for ASND - Theme: PURITY

Blanche is sleeping around

- Costume (constantly wearing white)

- Motif of bathing (trying to 'reclaim' her 'purity')

- Name (Blanche means white)

Madonna-Wh*re Complex

(describes ideals women in society should follow - either openly embracing sexually not respected by society, or a virgin, wife, or mother that is respected but not desired)

Blanche as wh*re

- Semantic field of predator ("school of sharks", "like a wildcat", compares herself to a "big spider" that captures its "victims")

- Costume ("scarlet satin robe")

- Characterisation (stage directions - "hysterically, "faintly hysterical humour" "laughs sharply" "dubiously" "springing up")

- Symbol ("delicate beauty must avoid a strong light" "suggests a moth" -> shows her as something dirty, not as good as a butterfly)

- Motif of cleaning - trying to get rid of 'wh*re' identity

Stella as madonna

- pregnant (symbolises a mother - "new maternity"

- Costume (less constrictive - "gentle" "mildly" "robe")

- Characterisation is sweet, timid ("sincerely" "like a cherub in a choir")

- Stage directions ("luxuriously" cries "glistening with tears" - like angel)

- Blocking ("first floor landing" - like an angel on the column, classical allusion to 'Romeo and Juliet')

Quotes for ASND - Theme: FEMININITY & MASCULINITY

Stanley is the epitome of masculinity

- Costume ("work clothes" "roughly dressed")

- Language ("baby" "I am the king")

- Motif of smiling ("grins at her" "grinning" - baring his teeth like a predadtor)

- Zoomorphism ("like an animal" "grunt" "ape-like" "swilling and gnawing and hulking" "eats with his fingers" "stalks")

Blanche wanting to epitomise femininity - specifically a Southern Belle (chaste, beautiful, young)

- Zoomorphism ("school of sharks" "like a wild-cat" "Tiger-tiger", "a big spider")

Techniques:

- Zoomorphism (used to highlight Stanley as a predator, to show he is not only strong and powerful as a man - but dangerous too)

- Smiling (showing teeth like a predator)

Quotes & Techniques for ASND - Theme: ALIENATION

Blanche is alienated due to her actions (losing her job)

- motif of blue piano (linked to suffering, gets louder in a tense scene showing how she continually suffers and will never escape her past - the only thing preventing her from joining back into society)

Quotes & Techniques for ASND - Theme: CONFORMITY AND REBELLION

Blanche wants to conform, but rebels

-"You've got to be soft and attractive" (italicisation shows how stressful this is for Blanche to achieve)

- "Young, young, young, young" man (repetition)

Stella conforms as the perfect women (link to purity)

- "like a cherub in a choir" (simile)

- "luxuriously"

- "glistening with tears" "hair loose" "tenderness"

- "new maternity" - like Virgin Mary

- "narcotised"

Quotes & Techniques for ASND - Theme: EXPLOITATION

Blanche is exploited by Stanley when he rapes her, breaking her mind

Quotes for ASND - Theme: DUPLICITY

Paper lantern

- "only a paper moon"

- “I can’t stand an open bulb“

- "his eyes are going to be like candles, like two blue candles lighted in a white cake" (white shows innocence, and saying life is brighter when dimming the truth)

- "[fearfully] Light? Which light? What for?"

Techniques for ASND - Theme: DUPLICITY

- Motif / prop of the paper lantern (used to mask her past, diffusing stark light shows how she can only temporarily get rid of the problem / past - but never goes away, as shown in the end with the "lurid reflections" "Varsouviana" "You want the lantern?" - "cries out as if the lantern was herself")

- Motif of song ("Paper Moon" shows her cloaking reality = fantasy vs reality)

Quotes for ASND - Theme: FANTASY & REALITY

- "[fearfully] Light? What light? What for?"

- Costume

- "next door to glass"

- "Varsouviana continues playing" "rising with sinister rapidity" "rapid "feverish"

Techniques for ASND - Theme: FANTASY & REALITY

Blanche has this fantasy she can escape death and remain young, but in reality she has lost her mind

- Motif of Shep Heffley (we never see him - representing Blanche's desperate desire for her glamorous past again and an escape from her harsh reality)

- Motif of Light & Prop of paper lantern (light represents truth, and shadows symbolise the things that people want to remain concealed. Blanche's constant need for the paper lantern show her manipulating her reality to be what she wants)

- Motif of rhinestone tiara (looks priceless, but actually is worthless - like Blanche. She gives the appearance of being wealthy, to hide the fact she slept with numerous men to stay afloat in society after plantation failed. Now, like the rhinestone, she is in actuality worthless to society)

- Non-diegetic sound of the Varsouviana (represents Blanche's loss of innocence. The suicide of the young husband Blanche loved dearly was the event that triggered her mental decline. Since then, Blanche hears the Varsouviana whenever she panics and loses her grip on reality)

- Song ("paper moon" - represents inner fantasy, song is about a paper world that becomes a reality through love - represents Blanche's attempt to do so)

Quotes & Techniques for ASND - Theme: INTERNALISED PREJUDICE

Blanche = being "old" and "dirty"

Shames Stanley for being like an animal (dehumanising), but he shames her right back considering being essentially a pedophile and representative of Old America

- Zoomorphism

- Costume

- "Polack" (SLUR) "Merci" (constant french)

Quotes & Techniques for ASND - Theme: SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS

Blanche = to think of herself as old and dirty for sleeping with other men and not being young anymore

- "storm - all storm" (pathetic fallacy)

- "put a paper lantern over the light"

- "You've got to be soft and attractive (italicisation - scared of losing beauty, because scared of society's rejection)

Quotes & Techniques for ASND - Theme: DESIRE

For sex and power

- First line "Red hots! Red hots!

- Temporal setting is getting hotter ("fanning herself with a palm leaf" - represents both the situation getting more tense and irritable, but also connotes sex and lust)

- "epic fornications" (links sex to destruction)

- "Streetcar Named Desire" (title used to represent Blanche's demise - going to "elysian fields" represents her desire to be young, and desired by others, leading her to her death)

Quotes & Techniques for ASND - Theme: SHAME & GUILT

- Alan Grey (his name symbolises the half-life many gay men had to live and how such lives lacked colour as a result)

Foil Character in ASND

Blanche & Stella

- Blanche clings to the faded aristocracy and illusion, while Stella embraces a raw, sensual life with Stanley in New Orleans, highlighting contrasts between refinement and primal existence, sanity and perceived madness, and past vs. present.

Blanche & Stanley

- Marxist interpretation:

• Blanche = old america

• Stanley = new america

also they hate eachother and represent everything the other despises. they both are eachother’s oppressor, stanley as a man and blanche as “upper class” and prejudiced towards stanley (being working class + an immigrant)

Setting in ASND

- Elysian Fields (allusion to Greek mythology for the afterlife of heroes. From the start, Blanche doesn't fit "raffish "poor" place. This incongruity emphasises the themes of Streetcar: the clash of the rural Old South aristocracy with the industrial New South / New America; the past's inevitable yielding to the present; the decline of illusion and magic in the face of reality)

- getting hotter ("fanning herself with a palm leaf" -> stage directions for Blanche)

Symbol in ASND

- The streetcar (desire + hamartia)

- The varsouviana (past + not being able to escape it + guilt)

- the paper lantern and paper moon song (deciet + fantasy vs reality)

- alcohol (used for blanche is an addiction to cope)

- poker (deception)

- light (deceit + truth)

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: PURITY

Geraldine

- Obsession with staying clean and hatred of sex

- "might wonder again, for the six hundredth time, what it would be like to have that feeling (italic) --> hyperbole emphasises lack of happiness that stems from lack of physicality / desire

Soaphead

- Worship of whiteness, internally he is dirty and outward he is clean

Viewing others girls as 'ruined'

Pecola

- drinking milk

- viewing whiteness as purity

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: ALIENATION

Pecola is alienated by both white and black society

- "Ever since I got my blue eyes, she look away from me all of the time. Do you suppose she's jealous too?" (tragic irony + rhetorical question highlights Pecola's fractured perception of reality and intensifying the reader's sense of pity)

- "blackish blueberries" (underlying connection between Blackness and a mess)

- "Crazy fool" vs "Hush, baby, hush" (Pauline's voice to Pecola is like "rotten pieces of apple" and to the white girl it is "like honey" - visual imagery emphasises Pecola's isolation)

Claudia is free from this alienation

- "counteract the universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals (use of these symbols highlights how Claudia doesn't idolise whiteness like Pecola)

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: CONFORMITY & REBELLION

Claudia actively rebels against white beauty standards

- "six-finger-dog-tooth-meringue-pie" (use of names to feel powerful, as it takes away the power that Maureen Peal's identity (as a 'high yellow girl') has)

- "I had only one desire: to dismember it" (symbol shows how she is aware of what society breeds in children + dismembering of white hegemony. Only to find a "mere metal roundness")

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: EXPLOITATION

Pecola's insecurity of being black are exploited by white society in making her crave and essentially worship whiteness

- "he did not see her, because for him there is nothing to see"

- "to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane" (repetition)

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: FANTASY & REALITY

Pecola has the fantasy she has blue eyes, in reality she has lost her mind

- "bluer than.." ('bluer' indicates comparison - shows how Pecola still craves a sense of belonging by questioning whether she is 'equal to' others now or more so because of her blue eyes)

- repetition emphasises how she still seeks reassurance and love, as it is not enough to just HAVE blue eyes but for others to notice)

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: LOSS OF INNOCENCE

Cholly

- as a kid

- "hated her" "hard, long, and painfully" (juxtaposition with describing previously him "giggling" and "smiling")

Pecola

- from her father

- motif of silence ("a hollow suck of air at the back of her throat")

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: INTERNALISED PREJUDICE

Pecola = being black

- motif of dandelion ("They are ugly. They are weeds" - italicisation highlights how Pecola agrees with society's already established view of black people)

Pauline = being black

- Nickname ("Polly")

- "Crazy fool" "crazy" vs "hush, baby, hush". Shows how she has hatred for her own daughter compared to the white child = Pauline is idolising whiteness just like everyone else and hating her own race

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS

Pecola = to hate herself for being black, and never be accepted by society

- "They lived in the house because they were black and ugly"

- Symbol of dandelion

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: DESIRE

For belonging

- Symbol of Mary Janes and milk

For rejecting

- Symbol of white dolls given to Claudia ("only had one desire: to dismember it")

- Symbol of marigolds (symbolises innocence and new potential / growth in the children, unless grown in the wrong 'soil' - like Pecola)

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: LOVE

Claudia to Pecola

Mrs. Breedlove's lack of love compared to her initial

- Semantic field of colour "streak of green" "lemonade yellow" "purple from the berries" (imagery emphasises destruction of privileging whiteness suggesting a vibrant colour is a stronger image for happiness - than sterile white)

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: RELIGION

Soaphead Church

- promotes his self-denial and encourages a dangerous, delusional righteousness

Quotes & Techniques for BE - Theme: SHAME & GUILT

Shame for being black by all the characters

- "I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly!"

Setting in BE

Temporal setting

- the seasons do not align with the tragedy within the story. For example, spring is a season representing new birth and it is when Pecola is raped. And Pecola's baby dies in autumn, a season for harvesting (used to underline unnatural misery of her characters)

- "stayed there because they believed they were black and ugly" (highlights cyclical nature of internalised prejudice)

Foil Character in BE

Claudia to Pecola