A Streetcar Named Desire Quotes

A corresponding air is evoked by the music of negro entertainers at a bar-room just around the corner. In this part of New Orleans you are practically always just around the corner, or a few doors down the street, from a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers. This "blue piano" expresses the spirit of life which goes on here.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. The opening setting of the play describes the music of the black entertainers in New Orleans. This is used to portray the vibrancy of the city and the happy life the people in this part enjoy. But there is also an underlying suggestion of sadness with the reference to the piano being "blue." The motif of music is used throughout the play to set the mood and reflect the inner lives of its characters.

STANLEY: Catch!
STELLA: What?
STANLEY: Meat!
[Be heaves the package at her. She cries out in protest but manages to catch it; then she laughs breathlessly. Her husband and his companion have already started back around the corner.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Stanley is the 20th century version of the primitive caveman hunter gatherer, as depicted in this opening scene with his wife Stella. He is portrayed as the dominant one in the marriage. And she the submissive one who catches the meat he throws to her to cook for them. The way Stanley "heaves" the package of meat to Stella is symbolic of the sexual relationship between them.

[Her expression is one of shocked disbelief. Her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district. She is about five years older than Stella. Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. On arrival to Stella Kowalski’s apartment and its working class setting in New Orleans, Blanche DuBois is shocked at how her sister has come down in the world. Blanche is dressed in elegant clothes and jewelry looking very much the Southern Belle. A simile compares her appearance to that of someone arriving to a summer party in the garden district. The white of her suit and gloves reflects an image of purity and chastity, but this will be later shown as ironic when her past sins and promiscuity are exposed. Her appearance is described as being out of place in this lower class community. In a metaphor she is compared her to a delicate and fragile moth that must avoid strong light. Moths tend to fly around artificial light sources, often dying as a result. When Blanche is later exposed to the strong light of reality, it leads to her demise as a character, which is foreshadowed here. Her description as "delicate" hints at her mental instability, which will see her committed to a mental institution.

They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at – Elysian Fields!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. There is much situational irony, symbolism and classical allusion in Blanche DuBois’s description of the journey she takes to get to Stella and Stanley’s apartment in New Orleans. Important themes of mortality and sexual desire are contained in her words to Eunice. Foreshadowed is her tragic journey to her eventual mental destruction and the fatal desire that drives her actions and those of the other characters. The streetcars Desire and Cemeteries referred to by Blanche are real and Elysian Fields is also an actual street. There is important metaphorical meaning in the three names used. In Greek mythology Elysian Fields was the final resting place for heroes and the virtuous, a heavenly reward from the gods after they died. But for Blanche it will bring no such comfort and will be the place of her emotional and mental downfall. Her trip on the streetcars symbolizes the journey of her own life to her degradation and ruin.

She showed me a picture of your home-place, the plantation… A great big place with white columns.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Eunice, speaking to Stella, appears fascinated with the grandness of Belle Reve. This is after Blanche shows her a picture of the family’s plantation. Belle Reve comes from the French and means "beautiful dream." But it is an illusion that hides an ugly truth, the dream is beautiful only to those who owned the plantation. Belle Reve is a fantasy version of the Old South, symbolizing privilege and wealth that was built on the cruelty of the slave trade.

And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche doesn’t want to be seen in the light and tells Stella to turn it off. She is trying to hide her age and dark past and doesn’t want her true self and appearance revealed. The light is personified here as a cruel and malign force glaring at her. Dark and light are important symbols in the play, one representing fantasy and the other reality, which Blanche is constantly trying to hide from.

I thought you would never come back to this horrible place! What am I saying? I didn’t mean to say that. I meant to be nice about it and say – Oh, what a convenient location and such – Haa-ha!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche reveals her two-faced nature when she speaks to sister Stella at the beginning of the play. She meant to say complimentary things about her apartment in one of the poorer areas of New Orleans. But Blanche’s mask of gentility slips and the snob comes out as she criticizes her sister’s choice of home as "horrible."

Open your pretty mouth and talk while I look around for some liquor! I know you must have some liquor on the place Where could it be, I wonder? Oh, I spy, I spy!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche lies to Stella about not knowing where the liquor is kept. But we know that she had already discovered a bottle of whiskey in the closet before Stella arrived and helped herself to a half tumbler. This is an example of dramatic irony. Blanche deludes herself into believing that she doesn’t have an alcohol problem. The reality is she covers up the extent of her drinking by lying about it to other people.

You sit down, now, and explain this place to me! What are you doing in a place like this?… Oh, I’m not going to be hypocritical, I’m going to be honestly critical about it! Never, never, never in my worst dreams could I picture – Only Poe! Only Mr. Edgar Allan Poe! – could do it justice! Out there I suppose is the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche is shocked when she sees the rundown apartment her sister Stella is living in. She compares it to something out of the imagination of horror writer Edgar Allan Poe. Blanche’s references to Poe in the play reflects her own descent into madness. Poe struggled with depression and his stories and poems were preoccupied with madness and death.

Just water, baby, to chase it! Now don’t get worried, your sister hasn’t turned into a drunkard, she’s just all shaken up and hot and tired and dirty!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. One of the first things Blanche reaches for when she shows up at her sister’s home is the whiskey bottle, treating herself to a large helping from it. When Stella returns home, Blanche has another glass. But she attempts to conceal her alcoholism from her sister by playing down her drinking. The audience already knows about Blanche’s over-fondness for drink, an example of dramatic irony.

I was so exhausted by all I’d been through my – nerves broke. [Nervously tamping cigarette] I was on the verge of – lunacy, almost! So Mr. Graves – Mr. Graves is the high school superintendent – he suggested I take a leave of absence.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche explains to Stella why she is no longer working as a teacher. She speaks about being on the edge of lunacy, foreshadowing the end of the play when she is committed to an insane asylum. There is also death imagery here with her school superintendent being named Graves.

I don’t like a bed that gives much. But there’s no door between the two rooms, and Stanley – will it be decent?

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche learns that she will sleep in a folding bed in the room next to Stanley and Stella’s bedroom, with no door between the two. The close proximity of the beds and Blanche’s question to Stanley about whether this is decent foreshadows the sex between the two later in the play and revelations that Blanche has shared a bed with many men in her time.

I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can’t be alone! Because – as you must have noticed – I’m – not very well… [Her voice drops and her look is frightened.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche’s fear of madness is hinted at in the very first scene when she speaks of not being very well and has a frightened look on her face. Her dependency on other people is also shown, telling Stella that she can’t stay in a hotel and needs to be close to her sister.

I can hardly stand it when he is away for a night… When he’s away for a week I nearly go wild!… And when he comes back I cry on his lap like a baby.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. From Stella’s comments to her sister Blanche about husband Stanley, we can deduce that their marriage is built upon sexual passion. In a simile she compares herself to crying like a baby when he returns after being away, showing her dependence on her husband. This reflects a societal gender power balance very much in favor of men at the time and place of the play.

But you are the one that abandoned Belle Reve, not I! I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche struggles with the loss of her ancestral home Belle Reve. She is jealous and resentful of Stella’s life with Stanley, despite thinking of herself as a class above him. She admonishes her sister for having abandoned her and the family home. Moments before this Blanche criticized Stella for taking off to New Orleans to look out for herself, while Blanche had to remain at Belle Reve to try to hold it all together.

BLANCHE [slowly]: The loss – the loss…
STELLA: Belle Reve? Lost, is it? No!
BLANCHE: Yes, Stella.
[They stare at each other across the yellow-checked linoleum of the table. Blanche slowly nods her head and Stella looks slowly down at her hands folded on the table. The music of the "blue piano" grows louder. Blanche touches her handkerchief to her forehead.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Stella learns from Blanche that their ancestral home Belle Reve is lost to the family. The great plantation is a major part of the sisters’ past and there is an intense sense of shock and sadness at the family’s loss. The "blue piano" music reflects this mood.

I, I, I took the blows in my face and body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! So big with it, it couldn’t be put in a coffin! But had to be burned like rubbish! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths – not always. Sometimes their breathing is hoarse, and sometimes it rattles, and sometimes they even cry out to you, "Don’t let me go!"

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche’s mental deterioration has clearly been triggered by the deaths in her family, including the loss of her parents and her husband’s suicide. Using the metaphor of physical injury, she describes to Stella how she took these blows to her body. We get the sense that all of these deaths triggered Blanche’s descent into madness.
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