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Passion and Death in A Streetcar Named Desire Essay

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In Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire, he creates a philosophy of passion and death. In the beginning of the play we are introduced to this philosophy. The directions that Blanche was told to get to her sisters house reveals this. She is told to take a streetcar named Desire, which would be the passion, and then take a streetcar named Cemeteries, which would be the death.

Blanches fear of death is obvious in the play. She has fears of aging and losing her beauty. She refuses to tell anyone her true age or to let anyone look at her in the light, because they will be able to see her true self. Throughout the play, Blanche says that the opposite of death is desire. Blanches lifelong pursuit of her sexual desires has led to her eviction from Belle Reve, her separation from Laurel, and, at the end of the play, her removal from society. Blanche has passion and believes that she needs someone else. She seems to believe that by continually asserting her sexuality, especially toward young men, she will be able to avoid death and return to the world of teenage harmony she experienced before her husbands suicide. She does not like the desire offered by Stanley, even though she knows that it is sexual passion that makes Stanley and Stella so fully alive in a way that Blanche is not. Passion or sex is the center of Stanleys life.

Blanche is associated with death- the death of her relatives in Belle Reve, and the death of her husband, which still haunts her. She keeps having things come up to remind her about death in the play, like the inscription on Mitchs cigarette case and the Mexican women. The Mexican woman appears selling flowers for the dead, Blanche is terrified because the woman announces Blanches fate. Her fall into madness can be seen at the end because of her dual flawsher inability to act appropriately on her desire and her desperate fear of human mortality. Passion and death are complicated and fatally linked in Blanches experience throughout the play.

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