Sunday, 17 April 2016

English Literature I A Streetcar Named Desire "The Death Speech"

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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