The Importance of this speech in the play:
Blanche’s death monologue halfway through scene one is significant
to the play. This is the audience first contact with Blanche’s feelings and
background, the reason Belle Reve is lost and why she is visiting.
The speech sets the idea of the complicated relationship between the
sisters. Blanche displays her resentment of Stella leaving Belle Reve (which
ironically means “Beautiful Dream” ) by first declaring “I stayed and
fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it.”. Her
monologue starts with the same feeling of resentment.
The speech is the greatest peak of dramatic tension in scene one,
and is one of the highest in the play. The bitterness in the words and the
emotion in them help the audience realise Blanche’s emotional instability and
neuroses.
The use of personal pronouns “I” emphasises her self-pity and her intention
to be shown as a victim. Blanche is foreshadowing deaths and future financial
problems, along with the illusion to the “Grim Reaper”. She uses brutal
language to describe death in a very heart-lighted manner. The noun, “rubbish “in, “had to be burned
like rubbish”, is cruel and gruesomely realistic. Then
“when they cried out, Hold me! “And “struggle
for breath and bleeding” show how the deaths were slow,
tortuous and ugly. This is the brutality of life. It shows a realistic aspect
of life, a theme that will go through the play. Blanche realises that
“Funerals
are quiet, but deaths not always”, this shows
internal confrontation with herself, I think she is suffering from all that she
has seen, and she holds that against her sister because she needed somebody to support
her, but she will accuse her for staying with Stanley because she doesn’t want
to be shown too weak or too vulnerable, even to her own sister. The audience
knows that Blanche speaks with clarity when she wants to; she chooses her
words, so in the death speech she surprises us with her words, as her feelings
are all over the place.
At this point Blanche has already taken two glasses of whiskey, so
her dramatic monologue could be affected by her drinking. We know that her
drinking problem is to void her past and forget the lost. She refuses to show
her real self completely and instead creates the illusion of what “ought
to be”. She does not want to see things clearly
but wants all ugly truths covered over with the beauty of imagination and
illusion. Blanche’s out bursting and direct unpredictable speech gets the
audience intrigued and passionate about her. With all that she has been through, the audience can almost
be comprehensive towards her.
Looking deeper in the death speech; the tone is angry and sad
already telling us much about Blanche’s personality. Her facial expressions are
important as we can see her exaggerating and on the border of crying. Stella
here is surprised and confused, she tries to get away maybe because she was
feeling attacked or ashamed but Blanche grabs her forcing her to listen. It
already sets an idea of who of the two sisters has the power.
Blanche has an inability to tell the truth and normally tells the
things as she wishes them to be. This makes it hard for us to really believe in
her, as this could be exaggerated or even she could’ve done things to pay of
the debts and she won’t admit them. Blanche is in a neurotic state.
This speech setting is both of them sat around a table looking at
each other, and loud background music of the ‘blue piano’. This makes it uncomfortable,
as there is a distance between them that will set a physical barrier between
them setting a accusing and defending position above the emotional barrier that
already exists. It would be different if instead they would be next to each
other being more comprehensive and warming. In the film of 1951 this is acted
with them standing up next to the staircase. There is not much lighting in the
scene.
I have watched other versions apart from the original film, to
capture different senses from different interpretations. For example in : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJA-r0hUnKQ A
Broadway version from March 1992. The actress that plays Blanche shows an
accusation and aggressive tone. The level of her voice goes up towards the end
and she talks about “your Polak” in a disgusted sense. Instead on a theatrical representation
I also watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJtlu7BIl0o (minute 12:50 to 14:26), it
made me get a different sensation to it, there was a
tone of sadness and contained anger. Blanche shows she needed and needs moral support;
she needed someone there to help her deal with all the deaths. Here she grinds
her teeth showing how she could be containing herself because she may not want
to show the real horrors she is remembering herself. The mood is more defensive
and of begging for forgiveness.
The monologue occurs in a dim light to foreshadow the fear of light
connected to Blanche. This relates to the death of her first husband and her
fear of being examined too closely, the world of reality. Blanche is a
character that prefers illusion and a world of semi-darkness.
In conclusion Blanche’s life is in decline while the world of Stella
continues. This leads her to burst in anger and resentment therefore; the
importance of this speech is that Williams has set a dramatic tense tone for
the conflicts to follow, for these future conflicts to be sat upon a start
point. Setting that Blanche is unstable, and she has contempt towards Stanley
and resentment towards Stella.
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