Streetcar Named Desire Long Days Journey Night

¶ … Streetcar Named Desire Long Days Journey Night ( Scenes Acts Correspondigly- Introduction-role Stage Directions-themes-character Development-setting-structure -- Dramatic

A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night"

Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Eugene O'Neil's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" both deal with the physical and mental difficulties that people encounter partly as a result of being unwilling to accept their condition and partly because of the set of problems that they come across. Williams focuses on the character of Blanche Dubois as she vainly struggles to ignore her troubled past in order to create a dreamlike future while O'Neil deals with the Tyrone family as it is severely affected by the fact that each of its members has proved to be a failure. Although the Tyrones appear to be heading toward the same route as Blanche, they seem to be stronger and better prepared to accept their problems, even with the fact that they have little to no success in solving them.

The first three scenes in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and the first two acts in "Long Day's Journey Into the Night" are quite similar, considering the two central characters in each of the plays enter a male-dominated territory with the certainty that they are perfectly able to control the situations that they come across. Blanche arrives from Laurel, Mississippi, at her sister's place in the French Quarter of New Orleans and takes on a pretentious and authoritarian attitude with the purpose of hiding her defects and the fact that she has experienced traumatizing events in the recent years. Mary, James Sr.'s wife, arrives home from having attended drug rehabilitation meant to have her abandon her morphine addiction. Similar to Blanche, Mary tries to pretend that everything is fine, despite the fact that she is still addicted. Mary is apparently unwilling to accept her condition and insists that her family is perfect, as she is particularly reluctant to acknowledge the fact that her son Edmund is in a critical health state.

Both Blanche and Mary have experienced failure in trying to improve their lives in Laurel, and, respectively, in the rehabilitation institute. The two women put across cheerful attitudes and certainty regarding their healthy physical and mental states. However, while it is apparently initially possible for Blanche to hide her problems by posing into a woman interested in embracing a urban lifestyle, Mary has great difficulties in trying to act as if everything is alright, with her husband being worried about the social status of their two sons and her son Edmund putting across symptoms displaying tuberculosis. While this is one of the first signs that the Tyrone family is going through difficult times, conditions become clear in the case of Blanche as she reveals the fact that she has lost the family fortune.

The setting that Blanche comes across in her attempt to find Stella's home is disturbing, as the southern woman is struck with the low-level appearance of the neighborhood. Similarly, Mary arrives in a setting containing a distressed James Sr., a spiteful James Jr., and an obviously sick Edmund. While Blanche is unwavering about telling her sister that she lives in terrible conditions, Mary expresses her lack of interest in discussing her family's desperate state and actually relates to how each of the Tyrones is in a perfect condition, emphasizing her improving health state and the fact that the Tyrone family is undergoing a thriving period. Both the people that Blanche comes across and the ones that interact with Mary express their lack of confidence regarding the two women's overconfidence.

From the very first moment when she arrives at her sister's home, Blanche shows that she has an affinity for alcohol, as she is unhesitant about pouring herself a glass of whiskey and then asking her sister for another drink. She actually relates to the fact that she is not an alcoholic, even with the fact that no one implies that she is one. While Mary has better success in initially hiding her addiction by referring to the fact that she had just gained weight, she too has trouble in posing in a healthy person, particularly considering that the critical condition of each member in the Tyrone family makes them less certain that change is possible.

Stella is aware that Stanley's character might seem too extraordinary from the men that Blanche has been accustomed with and somewhat prepares her sister for what she is about to experience. Although James Sr. is acquainted with Edmund's physical state, he is reluctant to inform Mary concerning her son's situation and both he and Mary continue to lie to each other with the presumed purpose of getting attention away from the most pressing problems that the family is experiencing.

Stanley is relatively similar to Jamie when considering the fact that they are both determined to hold on to reality and actually want the people around them to accept their situation as it is. Stanley contrasts Blanche just as Jamie contrasts his father and his mother in particular, as both secondary characters focus on having people realize that it is essential for them to embrace reality, even if this means that they have to recognize the fact that they are in a desperate state.

The continuous fight between reality and the imagined world is one of the main themes in both stories, with Blanche and Mary being determined to refrain from accepting their lives as it is in reality. One might be inclined to believe that it is better for them to live in a fantasy world, as having to accept their fate would actually have terrible repercussions on their personalities.

It is basically impossible for the two women to recover from the state that they are in. Blanche cannot possibly move on as if nothing happened, as she actually lost everything that she valued about her life. In contrast, Mary's addiction is the one that prevents her from moving on with her life, as she is unable to break free from it. While one might consider that it would be easier for Mary to move on, the respective person needs to realize that she too had problems,

In spite of the fact that Stanley and James Sr. are initially inclined to support Blanche and Mary in living their fantasies, they gradually feel that it is impossible for them to continue and become determined to have the two women admit the fact that they are in a critical state. Edmund himself tries to convince his mother that he suffers from "consumption" and that it is possible for him to even dies as a result of the disease. His mother is however reluctant to accept reality and tries to combat it through administrating more morphine, until she eventually reaches a point where she can no longer recognize her husband and her sons.