AP scores are released!!! Please let me know how you did!

Be Prepared for Final Exam Portfolios and Presentations

 Remember that final exam portfolios are due at 7:30 on          Wednesday, June 6th!

1. Final copy of your children's literature (illustrated)

2. Completed Peer Editing Form

3. Typed Justification (MLA Format)

4. Be prepared to present...

(For specific "reminders" please review the portfolio assignment on our previous posting.)

 

Below are copies of the grading explanation and additional copies of your peer editing forms. See you in the morning...

-Ms. O'Donnell

 

AP Literature and Composition: Children’s Lit. Portfolio Grading

	Thoroughly Complete/Skilled	Relatively Complete/ Capable	Inconsistent/ Developing	Incomplete/ Inaccurate
Final Draft of Children’s literature (story and illustrations)	50pts. A fully completed piece of children’s literature: Engaging, insightful, well- developed writing with a sense of audience/purpose. Illustrations enhance story line, are creative and thoughtful.	40pts. A generally completed piece of children’s literature: generally well- developed writing with some sense of audience/purpose. Illustrations mesh with story line, are creative and thoughtful.	30pts. A partially completed piece of children’s literature: sporadically developed writing with some sense of audience/purpose. Basic illustrations show some creativity and effort.	20pts. An incomplete piece of children’s literature: basic development with little sense of audience/purpose. Basic illustrations show some creativity and effort.
Justification of Children’s literature-Paper (Intended message, Audience, Historical significance, etc.)	30pts. Engaging, insightful, well- developed writing with a sense of audience/purpose. Refer to essay rubric for specifics.	25pts. Well- developed writing with a sense of audience/purpose. Refer to essay rubric for specifics.	20pts. Inconsistent writing with a general sense of audience/purpose. Refer to essay rubric for specifics.	15pts. Incomplete writing with little to no sense of audience/purpose. Refer to essay rubric for specifics.
Completed peer editing form	10pts. Attentive & specific with evidence of an academic discussion & the ultimate audience/ purpose.	7pts. Some evidence of an academic discussion & the ultimate audience/ purpose.	4pts. Little evidence of an academic discussion & the ultimate audience/ purpose.	1pt. No evidence of an academic discussion & the ultimate audience/ purpose.
Presentation	10 pts. Refer to presentation rubric.	7pts. Refer to presentation rubric.	4pts. Refer to presentation rubric.	1pt. Refer to presentation rubric.

 

 

Children’s Literature: Peer Editing Sheet

Title of Piece: _______________________________

Writer's Name: ______________________   Editor’s Name:______________________

Directions: Begin this peer editing session simply by reading your partner's piece without critiquing it. After you have read through the piece once, read each of the following questions on this peer editing sheet. Keeping these questions in mind, read your partner's piece again and answer the questions as you proceed. Write your thoughts and ideas on this paper and on your partner's piece.

(1) Is your partner's piece guided by an overall theme, message or issue? Identify that here:

(2) Does your partner's story flow and make sense? Note particular examples of ideas or details that you think are really good.

(3)Are there any details or plot twists that you just do not understand? If so, make a note of them and explain why you do not understand them.

(4) Does your partner's piece contain spelling/grammar errors? (This can be done on the paper.)

(5) Who is the intended audience? (Be specific about the child’s age and reading level.)

Is this written appropriately for the intended reader? (Sentence structure, word count, illustrations, etc.)

(6)  Do you have any additional thoughts, suggestions or concerns for your write

Final Exam - Children's Literature Portfolio

Due: June 6^th

Name:__________________________

Directions:

This portfolio will count as your final exam grade.  You will be given class time to work on your writing and editing, but successful completion of the work will require significant outside work and time management.  10 points per day will be deducted from any portfolio that is submitted after 7:30 am, on June 6^th.

                                                                                                Completed (X)

Portfolio Components:
                                                                                                                                    

1. Story  Draft                                                                          ______

2. Peer Editing                                                                          ______

3. Revised Story                                                                        ______

4. Justification/explanation                                                  ______

5. Presentation                                                                           ______

Student Learning Objectives:

      Students who successfully complete this unit should be able to:

• Recognize distinctive features of the major writers, literary works, movements, trends and genres in Children's Literature from the oral tradition to the present.
• Demonstrate an understanding of these works in context, including, though not limited to, historical, philosophical, social, political, religious, psychological, biographical, artistic backgrounds.
• Employ critical thinking and college-level methods and terminology of literary analysis to reading and interpreting literature by producing well-developed, fluent writing that supports premises about literary works and which utilizes logical observations supported by textual examples.
• Demonstrate continued understanding of MLA conventions developing essays that integrate source material and incorporate standard documentation and format.

Your task:

• Write an illustrated children's story.  
• Share your illustrated draft with a peer editing partner. (Form to follow)
• Make editing adjustments and finalize your writing/illustrations. (Rubric to follow)
• Write a 500 word justification/explanation of your book. Consider target audience, intended message, specific techniques employed, historical perspective, genre, etc. Your justification should have a minimum of 3 citations & a Works Cited page. (Form to follow)
• Prepare to share your story and illustrations with the class on June 6th.

Guidelines:

• Your story should be at least ten pages long and have ten illustrations (one for each page). The amount of text you include on each page will depend on your style and message. You may exceed the minimum the pages!
• Your ten illustrations may be either (or a mix) of the following: hand-drawn illustrations (pencil, marker, paint), photographs you have taken, collages you make from magazine photos or internet pictures (see example), or any other original work. You may not simply download or paste magazine photos into this! Cut them apart to make meaningful illustrations. Be creative! There should be some of you in the artwork. Even stick figures are OK!
• Your story must contain the following basics: at least one main character, a conflict/obstacle(s), conflict development, climax, and resolution, a setting of some type, etc. You should strongly consider dialogue.
• Provide a compelling title.
• You may use any type of paper, materials, supplies, etc.

Our previous blog entry has multiple links to help you in researching children's literature from an historical perspective.  This will be critical in writing your justification/explanation, but you are not limited to these sources.  In addition, you are encouraged to do outside research from other credible academic sources.  I encourage you to go to the site (below) in order determine the appropriate target age/target audience for your book.

Determining your target audience (age):

http://faculty.deanza.edu/frasermary/stories/storyReader$325

Enjoy your final weeks of high school - you will look back fondly on these days...

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

by Dr. Seuss

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own.  And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.

You'll look up and down streets.  Look 'em over with care.
About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any
you'll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you'll head straight out of town.

It's opener there
in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen,
don't worry.  Don't stew.
Just go right along.
You'll start happening too.

OH!
THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!

You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.

You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.
You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you'll be the best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don't
Because, sometimes, you won't.

I'm sorry to say so
but, sadly, it's true
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.

You can get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You'll be left in a Lurch.

You'll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted.  But mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out?  Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

NO!
That's not for you!

Somehow you'll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You'll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,
once more you'll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you're that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored.  there are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Fame!  You'll be famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don't.
Because, sometimes, they won't.

I'm afraid that some times
you'll play lonely games too.
Games you can't win
'cause you'll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you'll be quite a lot.

And when you're alone, there's a very good chance
you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.

But on you will go
though the weather be foul
On you will go
though your enemies prowl
On you will go
though the Hakken-Kraks howl
Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.

On and on you will hike
and I know you'll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.

You'll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You'll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life's
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So...
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,
you're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So...get on your way!
 

Children's Literature Unit

Homework: Due Friday, May 18th

Bring in your favorite childhood book.  Be prepared to share "why" this book was/is a favorite.

We will be referencing the information (addressed in the links below) in our study of children's literature. 

1. http://www.randomhistory.com/1-50/024children.html

2. http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/professional-development/childlit/HistoryofChildLit/index.html

3. http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/child/

4. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1888/01/the-history-of-children-apos-s-books/6098/

5. http://www.catinthehat.org/history.htm

6. http://www.infoplease.com/spot/seuss1.html

7. http://www.npr.org/2012/01/24/145471724/how-dr-seuss-got-his-start-on-mulberry-street

8. http://history1900s.about.com/od/people/a/Seuss.htm

9. http://www.slideshare.net/mrsingram/teaching-history-with-dr-seuss

10. http://news.discovery.com/history/the-politics-of-dr-seuss-120303.html

Anonymous review

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymous-by-roland-emmerich-review.html

respond to survey!

http://www.schoolclimate.net/survey/schools/student3.asp?caseid=1121207&survey=3

AP Lit Exam- Testing Locations- May 10th

C Block will be testing in room 257 (in the main building)

Proctor: Mr. Brintle

A Block will be testing in room T211 (our normal classroom- theater building)

Proctor: Mrs. Quinn

I am not allowed in the rooms once the test starts, but I will be zipping between the rooms before the test begins to make sure you are all set...

Calculate your potential score on May 10th

http://appass.com/calculators/englishliterature

Streetcar Named Desire

Tuesday, April 10 - Homework is to complete the questions for scenes 10 & 11 of Streetcar. (Due Wednesday)

Reminder - Streetcar Test Friday

A Streetcar Named Desire

For class on Thursday, April 5th:

Answer questions for scene 4 & 5


For class on Tuesday, April 10th: 

Read and have questions answered in your packets through to the end of scene 9 of A Streetcar Named Desire.


Friday, April 13th:

A Streetcar Named Desire Test.

Upcoming deadlines...

Tuesday: Begin A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams
Thursday: AP Multiple choice question quiz
Friday: Literary Term Test


Power Point presentation from class:
http://www.gwa.com/teacher/webpages/jtaylor/main/Docs/Katie_TWilliams.ppt

Streetcar Lecture Notes:

As a one-act play, A Streetcar Named Desire differs somewhat in structure from more traditional two- or

three-act plays. In a typical three-act play, each act ends on a significant point in the plot. In A Streetcar

Named Desire, most critics agree that these “plot points” are found in Scene Three and Scene Eight.

Collectively, the plot points build toward the climax in Scene Ten. Each scene can be studied as a

contained unit, as the action rises toward the plot points and ultimately the climax. Most of the scenes

also end on a note of tension or suspense, usually reinforced by the musical score. (The blue piano

music ends seven of the eleven scenes, while the Varsouviana polka closes two.)

While, on the surface, the plot structure of A Streetcar Named Desire may appear not to follow

the most conventions of its genre, it does follow a fairly typical story arc.

• The dramatic premise—the essence of the plot—is, of course, the conflict between

Blanche, the Southern belle, and Stanley, the working-class, master of his castle.

• The dramatic situation—the circumstances surrounding the action—involve the

incompatible characters of Blanche, Stella, and Stanley being thrust together in the tiny

apartment on Elysian Fields Avenue.

• The inciting incident—the event that sets the plot in motion—is Blanche’s unexpected

arrival with the news that the family plantation has been lost.

• Plot point 1—an event that forces the protagonist to change direction or meet a new

challenge—occurs during the poker game of Scene Three. This is when Stanley’s abuse

of Stella sets Blanche squarely against him and forces Stella to choose sides. It also casts

Blanche’s situation in sharp relief: she cannot stay long on Elysian Fields Avenue.

• Obstacles—events, character traits, or circumstances that prevent the main character

from achieving his or her goal—include the fact that Blanche has no money. Most of the

obstacles she encounters, however, are emotional and of her own making.

• The first culmination—the point when success seems within reach of the main character,

just before he or she suffers a major reversal—occurs in Scene Six. Blanche is on the

verge of establishing a relationship with Mitch that could lead to marriage. In Scene

Seven, it is revealed that Stanley has destroyed Blanche’s chance at love by telling Mitch

about her sordid past.

• Plot point 2—typically, the second major pivot or turning point, which generally occurs

at the protagonist’s darkest hour—sometimes, however, leaving a suggestion that the

protagonist may yet be able to prevail—occurs in Scene Eight when Stanley “gives”

Blanche a one-way bus ticket to her home. This suggests that she might still leave the

situation without either being destroyed or destroying Stanley and Stella.

• The climax (second culmination)—the zenith of the action or the point at which the

conflict reaches its peak—occurs in Scene Ten with the final destruction of Blanche’s

delusions about herself, her past, and her future. The offstage rape physically represents

the final shattering of Blanche’s fragile state. This is also the moment when the audience

knows that Blanche has “lost,” and Stanley has “won.”

• The denouement—the wrapping up of loose ends or the calm after the storm of the

climax that precedes the ending—occurs at the beginning of Scene Eleven, as Stella tells

Eunice about their plans for Blanche and her rejection of Blanche’s allegation of rape.

Nothing in what is said or occurs in this scene has an impact on the outcome of the play.

That was determined in the climax.

• The catastrophe—the denouement or ending of the action, usually arousing a sense of

fear and pity in a tragedy—occurs at the end of Scene Eleven when an utterly destroyed

Blanche is taken from the apartment to an insane asylum where she will undoubtedly

spend the rest of her life.

THE DRAMATIC PRODUCTION

As with any drama, Williams uses costumes, music, and scenery to communicate his intentions

and meanings in both subtle and direct ways.

COSTUMES

Blanche first appears on stage dressed in a ruffled white suit, hat, and gloves, as though attired

for a summer garden party. She looks—and is—out of place in the ramshackle neighborhood

of small frame houses. Her incongruous appearance underscores the conflict between Southern

gentility (good manners, pretensions, lost plantations, etc.) and the rough masculinity of urban

society (bare-chested men, loud poker players, coarse language).

Stanley seizes upon Blanche’s wardrobe as evidence that she spent money intended for Belle

Rêve on herself: “Look at these feathers and furs that she comes here to preen herself in! What’s

this here? A solid-gold dress, I believe. And this one! What is these here? Fox pieces… Where

are your fox pieces, Stella? Bushy snow-white ones, no less!”

The finery emphasizes Blanche’s pretensions and her tenuous hold on reality. As her situation

becomes more desperate and her mental condition begins to deteriorate, her costumes become

increasingly frayed and farcical. By Scene Ten, she “has decked herself out in a somewhat soiled

and crumpled white satin evening gown and a pair of scuffed silver slippers with brilliants set

in their heels.” On her head is a rhinestone tiara. Stanley ridicules her get-up as a “worn-out

Mardi Gras outfit, rented for fifty-cents from some rag-picker.”

The men wear strong, loud colors, silk bowling shirts in bold, primary colors. Stanley, upon

first meeting Blanche, takes off his tight, white T-shirt—with blatant disrespect—to show off

his powerful chest. Stanley’s red pajamas are left lying across the bedroom doorway after a night

of sex with Stella. And significantly, Stanley is wearing these same pajamas (his wedding night

attire, his flag of conquest to wave when his son is born) when he rapes Blanche.

Stella and the other women wear softer, muted pastels. Blanche tells Stella, “I never was hard or

self-sufficient enough. When people are soft—soft people have got to shimmer and glow—they’ve

got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a paper lantern over the light.”

SETTING, SCENERY, AND SET DESIGN

The play is set in the Faubourg Marigny district of New Orleans. Williams, who lived for a time

in New Orleans, describes the Marigny as poor but with a “raffish charm.” The neighborhood’s

Creole cottages appear on stage as “mostly white frame, weathered grey, with rickety outside

stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables.”

While Williams uses actual street names and streetcar lines in his dialogue, there is an indisputably

symbolic value to the setting of the play. The Kowalskis live on Elysian Fields Avenue. The Elysian

Fields are, of course, where the heroes of Greek mythology found their final rest and spent their

afterlives. The street name is ironic since the Kowalskis’ home is far from “heavenly,” but it is the

place to which Blanche hopes to escape from the ruins of her life in Laurel, Mississippi.

The symbolic irony is intensified, however, and the primary theme of the play introduced,

when the confused Blanche tells Eunice in Scene One, “They told me to take a street-car named

Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian

Fields!” “Desire” leads to “Cemeteries” (death), which takes one to the “Elysian Fields.” In

Scene Four, during Blanche and Stella’s argument, the sisters use the name of the streetcar line

both literally and metaphorically:

BLANCHE: What you are talking about is brutal desire…the name of that rattle-trap street-car

that bangs through the Quarter…

STELLA: Haven’t you ever ridden on that street-car?

BLANCHE: It brought me here—

Given the context of their argument, both Blanche and Stella have arrived “here” by riding on

the literal and the metaphoric streetcar named desire.

Here, of course, is the two-room Kowalski apartment. According to the stage directions, the

apartment itself is squalid and sparsely furnished, with a bed and vanity in one room and a

convertible sofa and a kitchen table in the other. In addition to the physical conditions of the

apartment, however, Williams uses lighting and music to evoke the sensuality of New Orleans

and signal key shifts in the plot and character development.

Lighting—particularly dimmed lights—and shadows are used throughout the play to create

mood. Blanche arrives at night and throughout the play eschews the bright light, placing a

paper lantern over the naked ceiling bulb, going out for dates with Mitch only after sundown.

The external light shifts with the time of day—gentle for morning, bright for afternoon—

creating the sense of the passage of time. The poker game is harshly lit by a hanging lamp

with a “vivid green shade.” The kitchen-turned-gambling-den, “now suggests the sort of lurid

nocturnal brilliance” of Van Gogh’s famous painting of a billiard-parlor at night.

In Scene Ten, as Blanche tries vainly to escape Stanley with her pretense of a soon-arriving suitor,

shadows and “lurid reflections move sinuously as flames along the wall spaces,” representing

both her increasing turmoil and the advancing threat.

Williams’s directions also indicate how lighting, and the use of scrim transparencies, indicate

setting changes that allow him to show action outside of the apartment as well as inside—at

times simultaneously.

The opening scene of the play and at least one instance when Blanche and Mitch are returning

from a date take place on the street outside of the building. The interior of the apartment is

hidden behind a screen, and the audience sees the exterior of the building. When Blanche and

Eunice first enter the apartment, the lights change so that the apartment becomes visible for the

first time, and the exterior details fade into darkness.

Similarly, in Scene Ten, immediately before the rape, the back walls of the apartment become

transparent so that the audience can see the seedy goings-on on the street as well as the violence

within the apartment.

Thus, Williams uses lighting and shadow, not only to establish mood, but also to indicate shifts

of location while maintaining a continuous flow of action.

MUSIC

Williams uses thematic music to very specific ends in Streetcar. The Varsouviana polka begins

to play whenever Blanche is reminded of her first husband the night of her discovery, and his

suicide haunts her and becomes a vital element in her psychological deterioration and ultimate

destruction. As her distress grows, the increasing intensity of the polka music clearly portends

the hastening approach of her mental collapse. The blues piano, which Williams describes

as “a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers,” is the sound of

New Orleans and “expresses the spirit of life” that occurs on Elysian Fields Avenue. The “Blue

Piano” is used both to create ambience and to punctuate scenes with its mournful notes. Seven

of the eleven scenes end with Blue Piano music. The “hot trumpet and drums,” an intensified

version of the Blue Piano, blare out Stanley’s conquest of Blanche at the end of Scene 10. (A

“hot” trumpet is one played with a mute.)

THEMES

Two major themes underpin the plot of A Streetcar Named Desire.

• The Old South cannot survive in an industrialized modern world

Blanche and Stanley, even more than specific personae, are largely symbols or archetypes.

Blanche, who clings to some highly-fantasized version of her past with her deceptions and

pretensions of gentility, is Williams’s personification of the Old South—a place of faded grace

and deep flaws, ruined by the “epic fornications” of its ancestors and its own refusal to let

go of that ruinous history. The brutal and sometimes violent Stanley represents an insatiable

industrialized urban society that must crush its rivals to survive.

The onstage conflict between Blanche and Stanley personifies this central theme, as Stanley gradually

strips away Blanche’s pretenses before destroying her.

• Desire leads to sorrow, loneliness and death:

With her opening lines, Blanche articulates the notion that desire inevitably leads to death.

Asked if she is lost, Blanche responds, “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then

transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields!”

As the audience will gradually learn, Blanche has followed her desires, with their seductions,

losses, and addictions, to her own destruction. Physically, she finds herself in a grim little

apartment on Elysian Fields Avenue. Emotionally and spiritually, she is as bankrupt as the lost

Belle Rêve plantation.

Stella, who makes love to Stanley after he hits her, and chooses not to believe her sister’s

accustation of rape in order to be able to stay with her husband, is also trapped by her desires,

and the play ends on the ambiguous note of whether Stella’s choice will lead to her happiness

or her own destruction.

Lesser themes explored in the play include:

• Fantasy and reality are incompatible. Blanche lives in a world of her own creation in

which she is still beautiful and pure, where her past indiscretions either never happened

or can be ignored. When Mitch accuses her of lying to him, she insists, “Never inside, I

didn’t lie in my heart….” Ultimately, however, reality will overcome the fantasy. Blanche

cannot escape the Varsouviana playing constantly in her mind. Her past follows her to

New Orleans, and both Mitch and Stanley confront her with the truth of who and what

she is. This confrontation between the truth and “what ought to be the truth” ends in

Blanche’s emotional and psychological destruction.

• Human beings are animals. The men of Streetcar are louts, coarse, brutish creatures who

pursue their desires, as Blanche says, like apes, “in front of the cave, all grunting like

him and swilling and gnawing and hulking.” Stanley, the most brutish of all prevails. He

is the successful hunter who brings home the bloody meat and ruthlessly destroys the

threat to his home.

By the same token, however, the women are no less animals. Stella’s primary attraction to

Stanley is sexual, from the moment she lewdly suggests to Blanche that what distinguishes

him from other men “is not on his forehead and … is not genius.” Even after Stanley beats her,

and she retreats to Eunice’s apartment, she returns to him “with low, animal moans.” The next

morning, she lingers in bed, her face serene, her hand resting on her rounding belly. Blanche,

too, for all her pretensions, finds her comfort in physical pleasures—long, hot baths, alcohol,

and sex. She will not let Mitch see her in the daylight because she is afraid that, beyond her

fading beauty, she has nothing with which to attract him. It is significant that the moment of

her destruction is not the revelation of her deceptions but a physical assault.

MOTIFS

Light. Blanche avoids the light, just as she avoids scrutiny of her past. Her “delicate beauty

must avoid a strong light,” and so, just as she hangs a paper lantern over the naked bulb,

she tries to obscure her sordid past. Mitch complains that he has never had a “good look” at

Blanche. Light, here, comes to represent revelation and truth.

The moth. The playwright compares Blanche to a moth with her uncertain manner and white

clothes. She flutters and flits in her gauzy white dresses, like a moth. She is nocturnal, like the

moth. Her desires draw her, like the moth to the flame, into destructive traps. (“The moth to

the flame” is, after all, the cliché used to describe ultimatly fatal, yet irresistible, attraction.)

Bathing. Blanche’s frequent baths represent her efforts to cleanse herself of her past and to wash

off a distasteful present. She soaks in the hot tub to ease her nerves, an ironic metaphor for the

hot water she finds herself in. The baths are also practical devices that remove Blanche from

center stage and give the other characters the opportunity to discuss her. In Scene One, Blanche

tells Stella that she cannot be scrutinized until she has bathed. Scene Two begins with Blanche

in the bathroom, preparing for a night on the town. Blanche warbles from the bath, “If you only

believe in me,” from “A Paper Moon,” ironically as Stanley is telling Stella of her sordid past.

Even the final scene opens with Blanche in the bath, preparing for what she thinks will be a

vacation but is instead a one-way trip to the insane asylum.

Drinking. Blanche and Stanley are both hard drinkers. She tipples from his bottle in the first

scene and then denies it, symbolically encroaching upon his territory while also revealing her

dependence on alcohol. Blanche drinks to escape; Stanley drinks to celebrate his masculinity.

Too much alcohol and Blanche becomes pathetic; too much booze and Stanley turns mean and

violent. In this, as in all other aspects, the protagonist and antagonist are polar opposites.

first game defines the masculinity of Stanley and his pals and introduces Mitch to Blanche. In

Scene Four, Blanche decries the poker players as “this party of apes,” a slur Stanley overhears.

In the final scene, as Blanche is being led away by the kindly doctor, the men resume their

poker game at the Kowalski apartment, witnesses to Stanley’s triumph and Blanche’s humiliating

collapse. The final line of the play—“The game is seven-card stud”—punctuates Stanley’s

masculine conquest. The “stud” wins.

SYMBOLISM AND IMAGERY

Symbolism employs concrete objects, characters, colors, and music to represent abstract concepts.

Imagery uses descriptions and figures of speech to paint a picture. Both literary techniques are

used to convey meaning.

• Sexual symbols

Williams is well known for his repeated use of phallic and sexual symbols in his work. In the

opening scene, the raw meat tossed by Stanley to a laughing Stella symbolizes his “stone-age”

masculinity. Her laughing catch symbolizes her willing acceptance. To guarantee that his audience

will not miss the innuendo in this act, Williams has Eunice and the Negro woman emphasize it

with their laughter. In Scene Four, Blanche continues the raw meat motif, when criticizing Stanley,

she says, “Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is—Stanley

Kowalski—survivor of the stone age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! And

you—you here—waiting for him! Maybe he’ll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you!”

Critics also see phallic symbols in the white columns of Belle Rêve. (Stanley boasts of pulling

Stella down from those self-same columns.) The final line of the play, “This game is seven-card

stud,” is an overt comment on the domination of the stud, or sexual male.

• Animal imagery

Stanley has “animal joy in his being, implicit in all his movements.” He is “a richly feathered male

bird among hens.” Blanche disparages him as an ape, as a beast and as a sub-human creature. “He

acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits. He eats like one, moves like one.” Together, Stanley

and his poker pals are “a party of apes,” grunting, snatching, growling. Even the semi-sensitive

Mitch dances like a bear. When Stanley menaces Blanche, moving in for the rape, the audience

hears “inhuman jungle voices.” As he rips the broken bottle out of her hand, he calls her a tiger.

The women, too, are closely associated with animals. When Blanche first enters Stella’s apartment,

the offstage screech of a cat accompanies her furtive drink of whiskey. When Stanley is ransacking

Blanche’s trunk and examining her clothing, he comments on the “feathers and furs that she come

here to preen herself in!” After losing her home, she retreats to The Flamingo hotel. When Stella

returns to Stanley the night after the poker game, they “come together with low, animal moans”;

and when Blanche is taken away at the end of the play, Stella “sobs with inhuman abandon.”

• White

Williams did not choose the name Blanche for his protagonist at random. According to the

Oxford English Dictionary, blanche or blanch (derived from the Latin blancus) means “white,”

especially as a verb “to make white.”

White, ironically, is associated with purity. While Blanche herself is far from “pure,” she would

like to believe—and to convince Mitch—that she is. She tells Mitch that her name in French

means “white wood,” and she compares herself to a blossom-covered orchard in springtime.

Literally, however, the verb to blanche means to “make white” by heat or by chemical bleaching—

thus the sense of taking something dark and giving it the appearance of whiteness. To blanche

also means to make pale from an emotion like fear. The OED also includes a usage of blanche as

an intentional suppression of the truth. Thus, Blanche DuBois represents the stained soul with

the lurid past, trying to reclaim at least the appearance of wholesomeness and purity.

When a Coke fizzes up and spills on her white skirt, the stain symbolizes the fact that she will

not be able to hide the truth of her past for too long. By the same token, Blanche’s frequent

baths emphasize her futile attempts to blanche, or whiten, herself and her past.

THE TITLE

The title has both a literal and a metaphoric meaning. Blanche arrives at the Kowalski apartment

via the streetcar line “Desire,” but it is what Blanche calls “brutal desire” that propels all of the

characters toward the ultimate tragic conclusion.

In a New York Times essay, “On A Streetcar Named Desire,” published in 1947, four days before the

play opened, Williams recalls that he set out to write a play about a poker game, which he wanted

to title “The Poker Night.” That work evolved into A Streetcar Named Desire, but perhaps in tribute

to the original idea, Williams titled Scene Three—the only scene to be titled—“The Poker Night.”

Williams experimented with other titles on earlier versions of the play, including “The Moth”

and “Blanche’s Chair on the Moon,” as National Public Radio’s Debbie Elliott reported in a 2002

“Present at the Creation” episode about A Streetcar Named Desire.

THE PLAYWRIGHT

A Streetcar Named Desire, like most of Tennessee Williams’s work, contains bits and pieces of the

writer, references to his past and character traits drawn from family members. As much as any

playwright of the twentieth century, Williams mined his tumultuous youth and dysfunctional family

for inspiration, even as he recreated a world that was both gentler and more vicious than his own.

He was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, to Cornelius

Coffin Williams, a traveling shoe salesman, and Edwina Estelle Dakin, a true Southern belle by

all accounts. With his father on the road most of his early life, the young Tom—the second of

three children—lived with his mother and siblings at the home of his grandfather, an Episcopal

minister. This life of refinement in the Deep South came to an unhappy end when Cornelius

Williams stopped traveling, went to work in a shoe factory, and moved the family to St. Louis,

Missouri. Biographers generally characterize the years following the move as poor and unhappy.

Williams’s father was overbearing, his mother pretentious and controlling. His beloved older

sister, Rose, was lovely and intelligent but mentally fragile. Dakin, whom Tennessee Williams

called “my improbable little brother,” would ultimately be the steady one and remain actively

involved in his brother’s tumultuous life and career until his own death at age 89 in 2008.

In St. Louis, Williams’s father forced the young Tom to work in the shoe factory, a job he

loathed and one that drove him almost to a nervous collapse. At the shoe factory, Williams

worked with a young, apparently heterosexual man named Stanley Kowalski. Donald Spoto,

one of Williams’s biographers, theorizes that Williams was attracted to Kowalski but maintains

that he found no evidence the two were lovers.

After a checkered academic career, Williams graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938

(at the age of 27). About the time of his college graduation, Williams changed his name to

Tennessee. Some critics have speculated that he wanted to distance himself from his earlier

works, which he considered inferior, while other biographers have surmised that he chose the

name because Tennessee was the home of his father’s family.

Throughout his early years, Williams wrote poetry and plays and won small awards. His

breakthrough came with the 1944 Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie, his most

autobiographical work. (Acknowledging that the controlling mother Amanda Wingfield was

so thoroughly based upon his own mother, Williams gave half of the profits from The Glass

Menagerie to “Miss Edwina,” as Dakin told The Mississippi Quarterly in a 1995 interview.)

The Glass Menagerie earned Williams the Drama Critics’ Circle Prize and the Sidney Howard

Memorial from the Playwrights Company and brought him overnight fame and wealth.

Four days before A Streetcar Named Desire debuted on Broadway, The New York Times published

an essay by Williams in which he mused about his sudden stardom and all the changes that had

come with it, some not for the better. In the essay, Williams wrote of his emotional rise and fall,

describing what modern psychiatrists would label a classic depression in which he lost interest

in almost everything and “felt too lifeless inside” to ever create another masterwork.

“Security is a kind of death, I think, and it can come to you in a storm of royalty checks beside a

kidney-shaped pool in Beverly Hills or anywhere at all that is removed from the conditions that

made you an artist, if that’s what you are or were or intended to be,” Williams wrote.

Williams would wrestle with his dark side and the trappings of fame for the rest of his life. Like

many of his characters, he drank and used drugs to excess and teetered precariously at times

on the edge of mental collapse. (Dakin drew the everlasting wrath of his older brother when

in 1969 he committed Tennessee to a mental hospital in St. Louis, most likely saving his life.)

Williams was openly homosexual at a time when most gay men and women lived closeted

lives to avoid public censure. Several of his plays include both oblique and overt references to

homosexuality. In Streetcar, Blanche’s young husband kills himself after she catches him in a

tryst with an older man and tells him, “I saw! I know! You disgust me…”

In Blanche’s pretentious Southern belle, critics and biographers see suggestions of Williams’s

own mother. However, in the 2002 NPR interview with Debbie Elliott, Dakin insisted, “Blanche

is Tennessee.” Comparing his brother to his infamous protagonist, Dakin said, “If Tennessee

would tell you something, it wouldn’t be necessarily true… And so, everything in Blanche was

really like Tennessee.”

Williams was one of the most prolific playwrights of the twentieth century, publishing more than

three dozen plays, movie scripts, and books, including short fiction and a memoir. His work

won numerous awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes for A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a

Hot Tin Roof (1955). Fifteen of his plays were made into movies. Among the most successful and

enduring of his dramas, in addition to the aforementioned, were The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real,

Summer Smoke, Orpheus Descending, Sweet Bird of Youth, and Night of the Iguana.

He choked to death on a medicine bottle cap, alone in a hotel room, after a night of drinking

and drugs, in February 1983, at the age of 71.