Response to journal:
“And so it was that I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.” – The Broken Tower, by Hart Crane
In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams, develops the idea that desire can consume a naive individual, when one has lost what they once had, ultimately resulting in heartbreak and madness. Blanche is the protagonist in the play A streetcar Named Desire, she is attention seeking and very over dramatic. At first we see Blanche as a naive, innocent young woman but we later find out who she truly is by uncovering the truth throughout the play. She shows up to New Orleans to see her sister, Stella, and there she meets her brother-in-law Stanley. The readers can see that there is something off putting about Blanche in that she is very peculiar. Signs that we see is that she does not like the light, she tells everyone to turn it off or put a lantern over it. She talks very fast and sometimes rambles, showing she is nervous about something. Lastly she is manipulative as we see her lie about her age, how she lost her teaching job, and why she truly came to New Orleans. Blanche is not mentally stable, she creates illusions to make her seem okay to the people around her including herself. In the end we learn she is broken by losing her past love and her only desire.
The quote above is in the epigraph of the play which suggests themes and context to what may come in A streetcar Named Desire. The first part of the quote, “And so it was that I entered the broken world”, portrays her mind set when travelling on the streetcar named Desire to Elysian Fields. She is riding on this streetcar because of what desire has done to her. Blanche’s desire for love caused her to be shunned out of her hometown. In the play we learn that her past love is a boy that was in high school, Blanche is 30 years old and he dies before he even gets to live his life. This leaves Blanche heart broken as she did truly love this boy. Travelling to New Orleans to visit her sister is really a cry for help and she wants to be saved from this heartbreak and misery. “… visionary company of love, its voice An instant in the wind”, is the second part in which I believe translates to Blanche’s true desire is love and that it always tends to leave her quickly just like the boy that died.
We can also see this in Blanche and Mitch’s relationship in which it was short ended. “(I know not whither hurled)”, seems to be insignificant as it is in brackets but I believe it shows the way that Blanche puts her heart out into the world but in the end it gets denied and adds to her suffering. When Mitch doesn’t show up for dinner she seems deeply saddened and we see that she truly did in some way love Mitch and the connection she had with him. Blanche makes many desperate decisions and becomes manipulative in which did not only deceive Stella, her sister, but her own self, demonstrated in the part, “ But not for long to hold each desperate choice.” Her desperate choices were the lies she told to deceive others. Blanche is broken. This is made very clear through her actions, but as she keeps putting on the facade she keeps hurting herself. This results in her madness in the end. Blanche flirts dramatically with every man she encounters, the paperboy, Mitch, and Stanley. Demonstrating that her one true desire was love with men or boys, the one thing that she had lost and left her broken.
Being broken can be portrayed in many ways and that is what I believe Tennessee Williams the author was trying to portray. He could relate to this as he did not feel like he belonged himself and believed that his sister was broken because of her insanity. People can be broken physically, mentally, and emotionally but all that matters is how we deal with the setbacks of pain and heartbreak. Everyone can relate to this story in different ways as I believe we all have desires and have experienced heartbreak. Not necessarily love heartbreak, but a heartbreak of something we have lost that we cherished.
Dear Kayah,
Your blog is so insightful and it was able to really dig deep into the story! I really like how you used quotes to guide your writing since it helped keep a nice flow and structure. The part, “Her desperate choices were the lies she told to deceive others. Blanche is broken. This is made very clear through her actions, but as she keeps putting on the facade she keeps hurting herself.” truly highlights the crucial turning points in Blanche’s character.
One suggestion that I would recommend is perhaps adding a personal element to your writing. This will help make your writing well-rounded and will allow for an even deeper insight into the story.
To conclude, your post was so deep and the analysis of quotes allowed for your writing to be even more insightful! I look forward to reading more of your blogs Kayah!
Sincerely,
Polina
Dear Polina,
I appreciate you taking the time to read my blog post! I will definitely add a personal element to my writing next time as you said. I think I was too general with connecting the ideas of my writing to my experiences in my concluding paragraph and will definitely take the time to go more in depth in my next blog. Thank you again for reading my blog and letting me know what I need to improve on!
Sincerely,
Kayah
Dear Kayah,
I found your analysis to be very well done. The points you made were solid, with ample evidence from the play to support it. Something that I found quite interesting was that some of your interpretations of the prompt matched, or were very similar to my own thoughts. Also, nice catch with the “I know not whither hurled” interpretation. When I read the poem, I initially dismissed it as nothing more than just flavour text, but your analysis helped me to see it in a new light.
Some advice I would give you would be to pay a little more attention to those GUMP whatchamacallits. The instances were very few, but they did distract quite a bit from the text itself. Get those in check, and I think that you’ll be golden!
All in all, great execution! I can’t wait to read more from you.
Sincerely,
Jearrynce
Dear Jearrynce,
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog as well as give me advice! I appreciate the feedback you have given me and I will surely use it to improve my writing going forwards. From now on I’ll review my GUMPS more in depth instead of quickly going over it so that it doesn’t take away from my text. I’m very glad that you learnt something new from my blog and I thank you again for reading it!
Sincerely,
Kayah
Dear Kayah,
I loved the in depth analysis you gave of A streetcar named Desire. I especially loved how you connected the theme of the novel to the universal experience of “love and loss” that we all go through. It is very clear that you are very knowledgeable of the book and really understand the message Tennessee Williams was trying to portray through the novel!
One area for growth in your writing is to further connect your writing to your own thoughts, feelings, experiences related to the novel or the theme. The connection to the universal truth of this theme was amazing it just lacked a little bit of personalization from you.
I very much enjoyed reading this blog thank you for the insight
Sincerely, Phillip
Dear Phillip,
Thank you very much for the kind feedback and the time you took to read my blog! For my next blog I will definitely add my own experiences and feelings and connect them to the universal truth. I also believe that this could further improve my writing. I am glad that you enjoyed my writing and I thank you again for reading and giving me advice!
Sincerely,
Kayah