4.2.2

Fantasy & Reality

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Fantasy and Reality

Throughout the play, there is a blurring of fantasy and reality. This is seen most of all in Blanche DuBois. Blanche is a fantasist and is unable to cope with reality.

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Blanche's fantasy world

  • Blanche makes an allegorical journey in the streetcar called Desire at the very beginning of the play.
  • The car passes through the cemeteries (which could represent Blanche’s prior life of alcoholism and promiscuity) to end up at the Kowalski’s at Elysian Fields.
  • Elysian Fields has the sound of wonder about it – that a heavenly state has been reached.
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Harsh reality for Blanche

  • However, Blanche finds that in reality, Elysian Fields is not a heavenly state. She cannot even properly reach death.
  • There will be several years of mental torment and suffering before that happens. In the end, Blanche enters the mental institution because she clearly cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
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Avoiding reality

  • All the way through the play, the audience sees that Blanche does not want reality. She is a creative and poetic soul constantly seeking fantasy, escape, Bohemia and fantasy.
  • Part of this might be derived from her "Southern Belle" upbringing, which may have distanced her from the realities of life. This is the reason why Blanche is rarely seen in full light. She constantly escapes to the shadows so that she is not fully exposed to reality or exposing her true soul to reality.
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Blanche's fate

  • Because she will be locked away from the rest of society, her punishment will be more extreme than death.
  • In the mental institution, Blanche will have to face the reality of herself; something the audience knows will be tortuous.
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Blanche and Mitch

  • Blanche has a fantasy about the world she has with Mitch but the reality is much different.
  • Mitch is a fantasist about how things might be with Blanche but when Stanley reveals the truth, reality dawns on him. But by the end, Mitch seems to have resorted back to a fantasy of him being with Blanche and somehow saving her. The tragedy is that he has already had his chance.

Jump to other topics

1Context & Overview

2Scene Summaries

3Character Profiles

4Key Ideas

5Writing Techniques

6Critical Debates

7Ideas About Tragedy

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