Preview

A Clockwork Orange And The Human Condition Analysis

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1111 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A Clockwork Orange And The Human Condition Analysis
The human condition is full of contradictions, a state of mystery which involves the joyous aspects of life, as well as the sorrowful. The play 'A Streetcar Named Desire,' written by Tennessee Williams, represents this paradox that is capable of inspiring us or swiftly casting us down into the depths of depression. Stanley Kubrik's film 'A Clockwork Orange' contrastingly examines the concept of free-will and the effects of its intervention, while Marko Bok's 'Woman on Bondi Beach' celebrates life's beauty, criticizing society's attitudes of discrimination and broadening our understanding of the human condition.
A Streetcar Named Desire, employs its protagonist Blanche to signify, the sorrow individuals can feel when confronted by harsh reality, resorting to elements of fantasy to overcome this distress. In an attempt to conquer the potential of the human psyche to bring us down, Blanche portrays her life as a fantasy, as she self- explains, 'I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.' Williams employs the
…show more content…
Whereas Blanche derides passion in her derogatory tone, 'What you are talking about is brutal desire - just - Desire!,' Stella metaphorically values that Streetcar. The connection lust enables is seen in the description of Stella's 'narcotized glow' after lovemaking. Williams however, shows the complexity of human behaviour as he links passion with violence and sorrow, 'Oh so you want rough-house? All right lets have some rough-house.' Violence and sorrow in this play is fraught with sexual passion, depicted by Stanley's occasional brutality and Steve's relationship with Eunice. Sorrow is a tool that many exercise to deal with the pressures of the human condition, as shown in Kubrik's Clockwork

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Streetcar named desire was a play set in the 20th century, 1951 written by Teneesse Williams. This extrct from scene 10 is significant section of the play as it depicts the most important part of the play with the implied rape on Blanche by Stanley. Williams uses dramatic techniques and symbols which illustrate Stanley's violent and aggressive behavoiurs, displaying him in negative light and as a villian and through the use of violence and animal imagery. Also allowing us to see Stanley as an angonist to the actions he persued on Blanche. Teneesse Williams also uses the settings and motifs such as insanity to protray Blanche as a victim.…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I believe the primary theme of A Streetcar Named Desire is madness as the result of a disconnect between idealism and reality. The main character of the play, Blanche DuBois, refuses to face reality, keeping her past mistakes and losses hidden from those around her by hiding in the shadows of madness and deception. She wishes nothing more than to escape from who she is, avoiding the interrogation lamp of life at all costs to conceal her depressing past and frightening present. In doing so, she falls more and more away from what was genuine as she wanted to live in a world of magic where none existed, forcing her into a pit of insanity and depression as her past finally catches up with her. A significant rhetorical strategy employed by Tennessee…

    • 328 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche refuses to accept reality and tries to resuscitate her idealized past through memory. She allows desire to conduct the way she lives and as a matter of fact is ultimately destroyed by the pursuit of her sexual desires. The correlation between death and desire is a prominent aspect that Williams explores in A Streetcar Named Desire. Throughout the play, death and desire are frequently and consistently entwined on many levels, particularly in the connotation of sexual desire inevitably leading to death or extreme wreckage of some kind and vice versa.…

    • 1196 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Everyone wants to live a life they do not have. Some people want to be rich, while others want to travel the world and never work a day in their lives. In order to live the lives they do not have, many people create their own fantasies. Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire depicts Blanche and Stella’s lives as lies, while revealing how they do not wish to face their own realities, for they will never to able to live the life they have always hoped for.…

    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Streetcar Named Desire is a play founded on the premise of conflicting cultures. Blanche and Stanley, the main antagonists of the play, have been brought up to harbour and preserve extremely disparate notions, to such an extent that their incompatibility becomes a recurring theme within the story. Indeed, their differing values and principles becomes the ultimate cause of antagonism, as it is their conflicting views that fuels the tension already brewing within the Kowalski household. Blanche, a woman disillusioned with the passing of youth and…

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire, audiences discussed the explicit tension between reality and illusion developed by the theme of isolation. By situating at a time of transition in America where the modernism transcended the classical values, the isolation of Blanche due to her disparate semblances and adherence to delusions is represented as her loss of conformity. The arrival of modernist era leads to Blanche’s irreproachable deceiving of herself, illustrating illusions that eventually begets her discretion. This is demonstrated in the stage direction as “Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light…as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.” Blanche’s beauty is conspicuous in an environment like New Orleans,…

    • 261 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Disturbing behavior is clearly shown throughout both The Wasp Factory and A Streetcar Named Desire with representations of how the outside world effects and distorts the human mind through characters Blanche, Stella and Stanley in A Streetcar… and Frank, Eric and their father in The Wasp Factory. I aim to explore and compare the two depictions of the disturbed mind by finding similar themes within the play and the book, such as obsession, alcoholism and the ultimate disconnection with reality.…

    • 891 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Within the play Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee Williams, the lives and relationship of Blanche DuBois and Stella Kowalski are plotted out in a scene of events that depicts astute betrayal and out of the ordinary family matters. Based on the time period of this play, that being of the Old South conservative dominated region of New Orleans with local and national aristocracy still in heavy play, the traditions play out in a way that involve a simple family dispute turning in to Blanche being carried out by the psychiatric ward. Blanche’s forthcomings predicted by her misfortune are carried along to the Kowalski family. These misfortunes are stifled as much as possible and are avoided at the cost of the integrity of Blanche herself.…

    • 1323 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Streetcar named Desire

    • 1291 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Life is an uphill battle that is full of challenges. It’s full of many uncertainties. Blanche is known as a pathological liar who lives in the past and gives into desire. Based on her inability to control her desires, Blanche is to blame. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams describes Blanche Dubois as a neurotic central character who lives in a fantasy world of old south chivalry but cannot control her desires. Although Blanche is to blame for herown demise, society did play a role in the person she became. The story is about the fading and desperate Blanche DuBois and how her sensuous and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, pushes her over the edge. The story takes place in a working-class neighborhood in New Orleans during the late 1940s. When times get rough, who is to blame for your downfall, yourself or the ones around you?…

    • 1291 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    By psychological definition, people affected with antisocial personality disorder (also known as "sociopaths" or "psychopaths") have incredible manipulation skills. They fail to conform to social norms, are deceitful and aggressive, and seek to destroy with little remorse. Sex, cruelty, and dominance define parts of antisocial personality behavior, and also perfectly define the odd, near-antithesis of a hero, Alex, in A Clockwork Orange who exists as the "beloved" psychopath in this story. He religiously ventures out on nightly rampages with his band of "droogs" after consuming some type of spiked beverage, tearing down what society has morally built and ripping holes into the reasoning of random citizens.…

    • 1523 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Blanche’s absence of love and acceptance leads her down the path of insanity. This was shown boldly in Tennessee William’s play The Streetcar Named Desired. Through the lost of love is seen clearly with her losing Mitch and her past fiance. Then the lost of trust from her sister drives her to lose touch with reality.…

    • 734 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Stella has embraced him with both arms, fiercely, and full in the view of Blanche. He laughs and clasps her head to him. Over her head he grins through the curtains at Blanche.” (Williams 73) A Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee Williams exemplifies the theme of a struggle to attain happiness. The play not only portrays this theme in its characters and setting, but through the literary devices of Foil, Imagery, and Intertextuality. Williams took great care in applying each of these literary device techniques to the theme as he presents an intriguing contrast between Blanche and Stanley, vivid images both animalistic and broken, and imploring the use of the Odyssey to further deepen his characters. Each of these devices though varied in style combine effortlessly in this tragedy.…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On the other hand, although many may look for acceptance in society, some people end up sacrificing all they have for the wrong things they value. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the author gave his audience an insight on what it looks like for a person to give up his or her responsibilities in the quest to find passion. Blanche, Williams’, the main protagonist in this play, gave up absolutely everything for passion and desire. She also had no choice but to deal with internal and external conflicts as consequences for her bad decision-making. Tennessee Williams’ main focus seems to revolve around showcasing the fact that not all sacrifices are worth making when the values are not as beneficial as one thought. After losing the love of her life, Blanche felt empty and felt the necessity to go in search for passion, desire, and comfort. However, after possibly finding the man she’s always dreamed of being with, all her past responsibilities she sacrificed came after her to ruin all possible illusions she had left. “Yes,” she says, “I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan-…

    • 615 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    a gothic short story

    • 1759 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Why do people want to live in a perfect world? Everyone wants to live in their own fantasy world because that is where all their dreams are able to come true. No one wants a world of grief and sorrow. Life should be lived to its fullest. It should not be wasted. It should be embraced. When we are faced with agony, we must either make a choice between accepting it or hiding from it. In the play “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, the author mainly focuses on Blanche Dubois, a woman who moved to her sister’s house due to the loss of Belle Reve, her family home. She is a deceptive and selfish person, who cannot accept the occurrence of agony in her life. She mentally deteriorates due to the lost and rejection of love, and due to her selfishness. She chooses to hide from the truth. When an individual hides from reality, it will only result in them hurting themselves.…

    • 1759 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    “The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future too. We all try to lie out of that but life won’t let us”(882). The character of Mary Tyrone declares this quote and poses an ominous thought; the state of time is merely irrelevant in life. It does not matter whether one resides in the present, the past can hauntingly resurface; the hope for the future can consume and blur what occurs currently. The main characters of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Days Journey into Night, struggle with events in their past that drive them to act in certain ways in the present and taint what will occur in their futures. Mary Tyrone and Blanche are both complicated women whose past affect their present and in return, affects the chances of achieving their goals in the future. Based on the women’s actions in the present, the characters of each play are much too influenced by the past to alter their current predicaments and by virtue, save their future.…

    • 1419 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays