Symbolism In A Streetcar Named Desire

Although many essays written about A Streetcar Named Desire concerns the "social attitude and psychological constitutions of its characters,"(61) and the author, Tennessee Williams', purpose in using of symbolism and imagery, Leonard Quirino instead intents to examine and emphasize the use of symbolism and how Tennessee Williams uses it in order to construct his marvelous play, A Streetcar Named Desire. Instead of focusing in terms of its theatrical presentation, Quirino sets out to reveal how two ordinary symbols in the play, the cards and the voyage of experience, transcend beyond just theatre but to the main intent and purpose of Williams’ tragic work.
Quirino states that the ultimate aim of symbolism in the play is to emphasize and to demonstrate the proper sphere of A Streetcar Named Desire as “the realm of the tragic-universal,” not a “socio-clinical one.”(63) According to Quirio, one of the themes of A
Tennessee Williams, according to Quirino, “portrays the roles that fate and luck play in existence primarily in images of gaming.”(70) Quirino justifies this idea by using the example of a scene from The Poker Night, in which the cards can be seen as a metaphor of Blanche DuBois's history, with Stanley Kowalski, "the powerful master of Elysian Fields against Blanche DuBois," (62) as the winner and the master of the poker game, who "chaps his winnings by raping her."(62) As Blanche’s presence rattles Stanley's world, he “systematically allays his own fears at the expense of aggravating Blanche’s.” (71) The card game in general can be seen as a symbol of fate in A Streetcar Named Desire. The Poker Night scene clearly exhibits Williams’ masterful use of symbolic and mythic imagery to “orchestrate both the ‘moral’ of the play as he is reported to see it and the wider context.”