Analysis Of Tennesse William's Thirty Notebooks

Improved Essays
In the article, “Between the Lines,” the author was asked to read and edit all of Tennesse William’s thirty notebooks that he has written in the duration of writing his plays, poems and other pieces. The thirty notebooks are the behind the scenes of Tennesse Williams as in what he felt or why did he deceide to write that play or name it that specific way. In these notebooks, it consists of Williams talking about his feelings about each of every piece he has ever written. When the author was given the notebooks, it was out of order with missing dates and the author had to do several research in order to put the notebooks in order and to make sense. It was a task for the author, Thorton. In this article, she talks about her experience in where …show more content…
The author, Ellen Dowling begins the article by mentioning the critics of the film version by every reviewer. She summarizes what most of the viewers thought of the film which were positive reviews, but there was one critic, Manny Farber who did not like the film. Dowling starts to compare the play version and the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire. She mentions and finds evidence to wear the film version left some parts out from the original version. In the article, Dowling quoted the director admitting to excluding some of Williams qualities in the play but continued to film the play lacking some important plots of the story. Also, in the film, the director made Blanche look less sexual as a person meanwhile in the play she flirt and kiss other men. The author provides evidence of how different the role Blanche plays in the film and the original play by Willams. There is a character difference with Stanley as well where in the film he is shown to be much more aggressive and brutal to Stella than he really is in the play. The article is based on showing the comparison of the film and the original play made by Tennesee Williams. Dowling points out and shows evidence on what changes the director in the film version made. To summarize the article, Dowling says that the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire was “an undeniably great

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Great Job of John Erman’s Version of A Streetcar Named Desire John Erman had done a great job on filming the play, A Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee William, into movie, which was released in 1984. The classical music, lighting, and the representation by the actors were all blended together perfectly to express the play—I even think it is more engaged than the play. From the beginning to the end, Erman shortened scenes that are relatively insignificant to allow the main plots to “shine”.…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Prompt: How is the theme of appearance versus reality dealt with differently in A Streetcar Named Desire and Blue Jasmine? “Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.” However simple these words may seem, this is perfectly epitomized by Tennessee William’s theatrical masterpiece, ‘A Streetcar named Desire’ to the modern adaptation ‘Blue Jasmine’ directed by Woody Allen. A streetcar named Desire and Blue Jasmine touch on the same themes and consequently share multiple similarities and scant differences between Blanche Dubois from ‘Streetcar named Desire’ and Jasmine from ‘Blue Jasmine’.…

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    “All of us grow up in particular realities-a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we’re brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it”(Chaim Potok). The definition of a relationship between man and women has adjusted with our ever changing society, while some people are able to adapt with societies modifications, others are too intune with the ideals they grew up with. In Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar…

    • 1343 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Blanche Dubois Allusions

    • 1214 Words
    • 5 Pages

    A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is a play about a former high school teacher, Blanche Dubois, who moved in with her sister and husband, Stella and Stanley. Blanche Dubois has been through many difficulties in order to fulfill the emptiness that is within her. Her young husband, Allen Gray committed suicide, she lost Belle Reve, and she lost her stature in Laurel. The driving force behind these actions were the empowerment of her desires. Williams uses allusions to develop the theme of desire as seen in Blanche and those allusions are Arabian Nights, My Rosenkavalier, and Elysian Fields.…

    • 1214 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Tennessee Williams wrote his play A Streetcar Named Desire in a time where women were heavily oppressed by the patriarchal society in which they lived. While men were seen as the superior gender, women were constantly undermined and expected to stay at home to raise their family rather than go out and pursue their own jobs or independent lifestyles. Throughout the play, the reader can observe the downfall of a character like Blanche DuBois who was nothing like the idealistic conservative female that society expected her to be. Living in the household of the aggressive Stanley Kowalski, who was used to controlling everything around him, her feelings of inferiority were only intensified. By Williams representing both genders like this, it helped…

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The storyline of Tennessee Williams's famous play paints a powerful image of the blurred lines that can form between relationships built on true love, pure physical attraction, or simple necessity. A Streetcar Named Desire revolves around the struggle between the rugged, irrational Stanley Kowalski and his anxious, uptight sister-in-law Blanche DuBois as well as the conflicted position this puts his wife in as she is pulled between two different worlds. The greater meaning of the story lies in the implications behind these relationships and the way that they conflict each other. Conflicting character traits are a key aspect of the play as a whole and come to encompass various discrepancies between people's financial backgrounds, mental states, and general personalities. However, the most important of these differences is how…

    • 860 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Her past is revealed only through flashbacks, which come as her own confession to Mitch and through what Stanley finds about her (O'Shea 12). The play is divided into three significant seasonal periods over which it takes place: the spring of Blanche’s arrival, the summer of her hope of a second chance, and the fall of her exposure, defeat, and removal to the mental institution (Abbotson51). Williams, in his play, presents many themes which are relevant to psychological and social problems in his time. First of all the theme of violence; the problem of domestic violence was ignored in American society. Wife-beating was regarded a family matter rather than a crime or a critical social issue.…

    • 1132 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Blanche Dubois is a wealthy, up-scaled, classy woman, at least that is what she wants people to believe when she visits her sister in New Orleans. Blanche, a character in Tennessee Williams’ play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, has gone through many tough trails in life. Although she would like nothing more than to forget her past and start fresh, she makes decisions that end up hurting her rather than helping. Throughout the play Blanche’s sanity slowly fades away as she finds turning her fantasy into a reality more difficult than she once believed.…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    To communicate the truths of history is an act of hope for the future-Daisaku Ikeda. The influence of history greatly affect literature and how we view it compared to other times. By using the historical/topical theory we bring to light how the major issues, circumstances that produced it, and main aspect of the book were influenced by the time period it was wrote in. The major issue in “a streetcar named desire” is the idea of sexuality.…

    • 807 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Blanche DuBois was already deeply-damaged emotionally and economically vulnerable seeks hope and her own hero in this new setting, but in a cruel twist of fate, she suffers a full-blown mental breakdown at the hands of Stanley Kowalski. Violence mainly occurs within Stanley’s behaviour and Blanche’s past, but he does not restrict violence to just the physical sort, as he manifests brutality in emotional and psychological violence. Williams uses the motif of violence to emphasise conflict within the play through Stanley and Blanche and to highlight issues in society between the genders and different…

    • 1854 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Gender equality has been debatably the most pressing issue for the last century. Unfortunately for many this equilibrium between the rights of men and women has yet to be reached. Throughout the play A Streetcar Named Desire, it becomes clear that characters conform to gender roles, which have been set forth in our history. More specifically in the way men treat women and how women expect to be treated. These gender roles have been changed over time, but many examples of these events can still be found today.…

    • 1059 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    From the first scene the audience learns that Blanche and Stella were brought up on a plantation and that Stanley and his friends are poor and uneducated. In the first scene the two families come together in a scruffy environment, it is therefore Blanche who must adjust to the situation. When Stanley exposes Blanche's past and when he rapes her, he turns her ‘upper-class’ upbringing (of which she is very proud) into something without any meaning. The conflict, therefore, is bigger than Stanley vs. Blanche or even male vs. female, it is the Old South vs. the new ind ustrial age and the upper-class life vs. the ‘common’ life. With Blanche, it is not only her sinful ways that causes her misery, it is her upper-class upbringing and clinging to the past that is one of the reasons for her downfall - a tragic end for a tragic character.…

    • 1478 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The characters of the play like Stanley, Blanche, Stella, and Mitch build's up to the aspect of feminism as we read on, which show the readers the way men are treating the women during the time period in which it is written.…

    • 998 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Progressively, the play culminates to a point of climactic sexual violence, wherein it is inferred that Stanley rapes Blanche. He “grins as he knots the tasselled sash about his waist”: a malevolent, inverted smile that recalls the same smirk that he gives at the end of Scene IV after listening to Blanche’s speech concerning his primitivism. As the tension heightens, the once “barely audible” blue piano starts to “drum up louder... into the roar of an approaching locomotive”. Williams uses sound and music to…

    • 1140 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Williams, in writing this story, takes a very detached, objective approach to storytelling. The characters are understood as a result of their own words and behaviors (Newlin 149). There are no internal monologues, no moments of great character insight. Rather, the story unfolds as it would in front of a silent observer of the scene (Newlin 149).…

    • 1629 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays