ASND: quotes

Stella’s torment over the implications of her choice (sc11)

Sc11

• ‘I don’t know if I did the right thing’

• ‘[pressing her fist to her lips]’

• ‘Oh my God, Eunice, help me! Don’t let them do that to her, don’t let them hurt her!’

• ‘[sobs with inhuman abandon]’

quotes about Allan Grey

• Blanche was ‘unlucky’ and ‘unendurably’ in love w a homosexual, to discover this in ‘the worst of all possible ways’.

• However, B views him with tenderness and as a victim ‘all I knew was I’d failed him in some mysterious way and wasn’t able to give the help he needed but couldn’t speak of!’

• Allan: he lived in a society that forbade his sexuality, ‘in the quick sands’ (caught in a rapidly cruel and dangerous situation w no escape). Reflects how W saw the American South and their treatment of individuals who were different (including himself).

• Allan was called ‘a degenerate’ by Stella

• Blanche was ‘unable to stop myself - I’d suddenly said - ‘I know! I know! You disgust me…’

• Sc1 ‘The boy - the boy died. [She sinks back down.] I’m afraid I’m - going to be sick!’

Belle Reve loss

‘exchanged the land for their epic fornications’

‘All those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard!’

"Blanche: I'm looking for my sister, Stella DuBois. I mean - Mrs Stanley Kowalski." Sc1

Stanley’s toxic masculinity

Sc3 poker night ‘[He advances and disappears. There is the sound of a blow.]’

Sc8 ‘[He hurls a plate to the floor]’ and ‘Huey Long said - ‘Every Man is a King!’ And I am the king around here, so don’t forget it!’

• (Huey Long: a governor who abused his powers for personal gain).

Blanche’s madness

• ‘Regarded as not just different but downright loco - nuts’ (Stanley)

• Sc5 'What are you laughing at, honey?’ (Stella) ‘Myself, myself, for being such a liar!’ (Blanche about writing to Shep Huntleigh')

• Sc 9 ‘I don’t want realism. I want magic!’

Blanche’s delusion/manipulation/deceit

• Sc10 ‘There isn’t a goddamn thing but imagination!’ ‘Oh!’ ‘And lies and conceit and tricks!’ (St breaking down her persona)

• Sc9 [He tears the paper lantern off the light-bulb. She utters a frightened gasp.] …‘I didn’t lie in my heart’ (to Mitch)

Stella and Stanley’s relationship

• ‘[Her eyes go blind with tenderness]’ [He… lifts her off her feet and bears her into the dark flat]’.

• Sc11 ‘I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley’

• Sc4 Stella has an attitude of ‘almost narcotised tranquillity’, her desire for him seen as ‘insane’ by Blanche.

• Sc1 ‘When he is away for a week I nearly go wild!’

Mitch

Sc6 ‘You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be - you and me, Blanche?’

Sc9 ‘[Fumbling to embrace her]: What I been missing all summer.’ → ‘You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother’

Stanley animalism

• Sc1 ‘[red stained package]’

• Sc1: Full of ‘animal joy’ with ‘the power and pride of a richly-feathered male bird among hens.’ he is ‘the gaudy seed-bearer’

• B says to Stella in Sc4:

  • ‘There’s something downright - bestial - about him!’

  • ‘He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one!’

  • Stanley Kowalski - survivor of the Stone Age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle!’

• Stella’s berating on Poker Night Sc3 ‘Drunk-drunk-animal thing, you!’

• Mitch’s outburst in Sc11 ‘You… you… you… Brag… brag… bull…bull…bull!’

sense of predestination

Sc1 ‘They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!’

Sc11‘We’ve had this date with each other since the beginning’

light and dark

• "I don't want to be looked at in this merciless glare!" Sc1

• After Mitch tears off the lantern B cries "I don't want realism."…"I'll tell you what I want. Magic!" p86 Sc9

• "[He tears the paper lantern off the light-bulb. She utters a frightened gasp.]" p86 Sc9

• "I like it dark. The dark is comforting to me." "I don't think I ever seen you in the light." p86 Sc9

desire

• Stella: "there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark - that sort of make everything else seem - unimportant."

• Blanche: "What you are talking about is brutal desire - just - Desire! - the name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter" p46 Sc4

quotes from Sc10 (rape scene)

[… turns into the roar of an approaching locomotive.] p96

• Symbolism for B's mental state

• Increasing, gaining 

"You think I'll interfere with you? Ha-ha!" p96

• Challenge 

"We've had this date with each other from the beginning!" p97

• Inevitability/inexorability of fate

[He picks up her inert figure and carries her to the bed.] p97

• Power, dominance, surrender

[The hot trumpet and drums from the Four Deuces sound loudly.] p97

• Plastic theatre, sound effects, symbolism

• Sex, desire

 

plastic theatre

sc10 "approaching locomotive" "inhuman jungle voices rise up" "the hot trumpet and drums from the Four Deuces sound loudly"

sc11 "The 'Varsouviana' is filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle'"

Stanley’s Polish heritage

• Sc2 "Oh, I guess he's just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume, but maybe he's what we need to mix our blood now that we've lost Belle Reve."

• B repeatedly calling him a ‘polack’

• Sc4 "I suppose in some kinds of people some tenderer feelings have had some little beginning! That we have to make grow! And cling to, and hold as our flag! In this dark march toward whatever it is we're approaching.... Don't—don't hang back with the brutes!"

• Sc8 "I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it."