A Streetcar Named Desire - First Impressions
A Streetcar Named Desire – Our First Impressions
In the opening two scenes of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams, the audience has its first and generally most important impressions formulated on characters, the plot and the mood and tone of the play overall.
The first scene opens overlooking the setting of the play, post WW2 New Orleans. New Orleans as a city was the biggest city in ‘the South’ at the time, a place where the industry of the Second World War had boomed, creating jobs for the working class in the factories and yards that sprang up all over the city – of course this is where Stanley, Mitch and the other male characters in the play, as working class men, all are employed. Additionally New Orleans was a cultural haven, the place where jazz was born and this music helped the city earn its nickname – ‘The Big Easy’. So called because of its laid-back relaxed and carnival atmosphere that made the city into such a desirable place for the lower classes to live which is something we see from Williams’ description of the city as having ‘a raffish charm’. The audience would be quite taken in and intrigued by the setting as there is always something going on, in both fore and background, whether it be the ‘blue piano music that expresses the spirit of life which goes on here’ or just the physical description of ‘the sky of peculiarly tender blue which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully annuates the atmosphere of decay.’
Furthermore, Tennessee Williams has linked into this urban environment a number of hints toward more ethereal underlying motifs that he has woven into the play. The name of the district that the play opens in and also where Stanley and Stella live is Elysian Fields – which in Greek mythology is the final resting place for the souls of the heroic and virtuous, ruled by Hades. Also, when Blanche arrives, she says has travelled on successive streetcars, one named Desire, the other being called Cemeteries.
In the opening two scenes of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams, the audience has its first and generally most important impressions formulated on characters, the plot and the mood and tone of the play overall.
The first scene opens overlooking the setting of the play, post WW2 New Orleans. New Orleans as a city was the biggest city in ‘the South’ at the time, a place where the industry of the Second World War had boomed, creating jobs for the working class in the factories and yards that sprang up all over the city – of course this is where Stanley, Mitch and the other male characters in the play, as working class men, all are employed. Additionally New Orleans was a cultural haven, the place where jazz was born and this music helped the city earn its nickname – ‘The Big Easy’. So called because of its laid-back relaxed and carnival atmosphere that made the city into such a desirable place for the lower classes to live which is something we see from Williams’ description of the city as having ‘a raffish charm’. The audience would be quite taken in and intrigued by the setting as there is always something going on, in both fore and background, whether it be the ‘blue piano music that expresses the spirit of life which goes on here’ or just the physical description of ‘the sky of peculiarly tender blue which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully annuates the atmosphere of decay.’
Furthermore, Tennessee Williams has linked into this urban environment a number of hints toward more ethereal underlying motifs that he has woven into the play. The name of the district that the play opens in and also where Stanley and Stella live is Elysian Fields – which in Greek mythology is the final resting place for the souls of the heroic and virtuous, ruled by Hades. Also, when Blanche arrives, she says has travelled on successive streetcars, one named Desire, the other being called Cemeteries.