Allan Gray Quotes

These are love-letters, yellowing with antiquity, all from one boy…Poems a dead boy wrote. I hurt him the way that you would like to hurt me, but you can’t! I’m not young and vulnerable anymore. But my young husband was and I – never mind about that! Just give them back to me!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 2. Blanche is horrified when Stanley grabs personal papers from her trunk, including her late husband Allan Gray’s love letters, and rifles through them. What is evident here is Blanche’s guilt over the death of her husband, who shot himself. She is also aware of the danger Stanley poses to her when she observes that he would like to hurt her. This is foreshadowing of Stanley’s mental destruction and rape of Blanche later in the play.

He came to me for help. I didn’t know that. I didn’t find out anything till after our marriage when we’d run away and come back and all I knew was I’d failed him in some mysterious way and wasn’t able to give the help he needed but couldn’t speak of! He was in the quicksands and clutching at me – but I wasn’t holding him out, I was slipping in with him! I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything except I loved him unendurably but without being able to help him or help myself.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 6. Blanche uses the metaphorical language of quicksand to convey her own self-destructive nature and the desperation and hopelessness she and Allan Gray faced when they wed. Both were dragged down by society after she married the young homosexual in the 1940s homophobic and patriarchal America.

[Polka music sounds. In a minor key faint with distance.]
We danced the Varsouviana! Suddenly in the middle of the dance the boy I had married broke away from me and ran out of the casino. A few moments later – a shot!
[The polka stops abruptly.]
[Blanche rises stiffly. Then, the polka resumes in a major key.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 6. The polka music of the Varsouviana often comes back to haunt Blanche, reminding her of the night she danced to it with her young husband before he shot himself. It represent the guilt she feels over Allan Gray’s suicide.

He’d stuck the revolver into his mouth, and fired – so that the back of his head had been – blown away! [She sways and covers her face.] It was because – on the dance-floor – unable to stop myself – I’d suddenly said – "I saw! I know! You disgust me…"

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 6. Blanche recounts to Mitch the events of the terrible night her young husband Allan shot himself after she told him he disgusted her. She said this to him because she found him in bed with another man. Blanche carries a great weight of guilt over the death and feels like she was the one who pushed Allan to kill himself.

And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this – kitchen – candle.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 6. Using a searchlight metaphor, Blanche explains to Mitch about the terrible impact the tragedy of her husband’s suicide has had on her. Despite her disgust at Allan’s homosexual affair, Blanche loved him deeply. The searchlight symbolizes the love that is gone from Blanche’s world with the only light left one of ugly truths and reality.

But when she was young, very young, she married a boy who wrote poetry…. He was extremely good-looking. I think Blanche didn’t just love him but worshipped the ground he walked on! Adored him and thought him almost too fine to be human! But then she found out… This beautiful and talented young man was a degenerate.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 7. Themes of sexual desire and dependence on men are found in this speech by Stella providing context for Blanche’s past. A young Blanche married a boy that she worshipped and then discovered he was a "degenerate." Her husband Allan Gray – like the author Tennessee Williams – was a gay man in a 1940s America that criminalized same sex sexual activity.

BLANCHE: That – music again…
MITCH: What music?
BLANCHE: The "Varasouviana"! The polka tune they were playing when Allan – Wait! [A distant revolver shot is heard. Blanche seems relieved.] There now, the shot! It always stops after that. [The polka music dies out again.] Yes, now it’s stopped.
MITCH: Are you boxed out of your mind?

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. Blanche’s auditory hallucinations intensify, as she hears the polka music that was playing when her husband Allan shot himself. Mitch begins to realize that she is losing her mind.

Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan – intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with… I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection – here and there, in the most – unlikely places – even, at last, in a seventeen-year-old boy but – somebody wrote the superintendent about it – "This woman is morally unfit for her position!"
[She throws back her head with convulsive, sobbing laughter. Then she repeats the statement, gasps, and drinks.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. In order to feel alive and desired after her husband’s suicide, Blanche admits to sleeping with strangers. She confesses to having sex with a teenage student, which results in her losing her teaching job. Blanche’s deteriorating mental state shows here as stage directions describe her throwing back her head with "convulsive, sobbing laughter" and consuming more alcohol.
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