Not far from Belle Reve, before we had lost Belle Reve, was a camp where they trained young soldiers. On Saturday nights they would go in town to get drunk… and on the way back they would stagger onto my lawn and call – "Blanche! Blanche!" – The deaf old lady remaining suspected nothing. But sometimes I slipped outside to answer their calls… Later the paddy-wagon would gather them up like daisies… the long way home.
– Tennessee Williams
A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. As he talks to Mitch, Blanche simultaneously lives in the present and past, showing her deteriorating mental stage. She reminisces about a camp of soldiers stationed near the Belle Reve family plantation. She speaks about how she found comfort pleasuring the soldiers. As one might expect from an English teacher, Blanche frequently uses figurative language. In a simile she talks of the paddy-wagon picking up the drunken soldiers "like daisies."