This essay will examine both the polarity and unity within the mental suffering of the characters and voices in A Streetcar Named Desire (“Streetcar” ) by Tennessee William and Sylvia Plath. Collected poems, focusing specifically on the extent to which they suffer because of their imagination and whether or not this is a more frequent commodity than the times they suffer because of reality. The dichotomy and duality of Plath and Williams will explore their texts, chronicling the suffering of the playwright and poet themselves and how this was attributed to their own work. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay It seems that in Plath's Ariel collection and Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, the suffering of the protagonists is the result of their placement in situations that they believed would rid them of aspects of their past that were causing misery, however, we see this result in them being subjected to more suffering of another form. Crucially, both writers convey elements of themselves through the characters and voices they portray. Williams himself admitted that his work was emotionally autobiographical[1] and with Plath it is possible to detect a parallelism with his work of fiction and that of his diaries; it is symptomatically demonstrated and contextually proven that she suffered from an unspecified (although arguably manic or endogenous) form of depression. With Williams, we can interpret both the contribution of Elia Kazan (the director of many of Williams' plays who was greatly attracted to the freedom and mobility of his work[2]), and Williams' confession, himself, to base Tom and Laura Wingfield's character in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on himself and his sister Rose, that he represented elements of Rose in Blanche by making her reflect Rose's qualities. After all, as Kazan said, "Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life." »[3] Considering this, we can establish that, as with Rose, the disorder that Blanche potentially suffers from is schizophrenia. It is therefore important to note: Blanche's debaucheries do not define her. They are symptomatic of his disorder and not attributable to his personality. It is this misunderstanding that causes the characters around her to confuse her words and actions with what they are not, hence the suffering she is forced to endure after scene 11. Having now established Both feature individuals with disorders, so I'll look at how their works show them trying to solve this problem, while also avoiding the consequences. Watzlawick's theory[4] works well to explain this. It assumes that miscommunication occurs because not all communicators speak the same language, which occurs because people have different views on how to speak.[5] This is clearly seen in Streetcar through the portrayal of Blanche's character. Her inability to make herself understood by those around her is ultimately what led to her suffering, as it meant that she was unable to receive help from them in the correct way. Williams himself was considered an outcast at school due to his diphtheria; his weakened heart prevented him from doing what others do. This is presented through the character of Blanche and the marginalization that her illness causes her. Plath shares this ostracism caused by people's inability to understand. In “The Moon and the Yew”, wewe see her refer to herself as a planet and to the people around her, her children, as planets as well (in “The Night Dances”). The mention of receiving a gift from the sky could refer to the rest of the matter around it, matter that is both smaller and stuck in the same place (as the sky would refer to the sky of a planet). In this way, she could be emphasizing how narrow-minded the people around her are and how they are not big enough to reach the universe or other planets, but are simply limited to one worldview . His suffering is thus due to the parochialism of the people around him. This is a theme that is vaguely alluded to in her poems since in "Little Fugue" she talks about how "the deaf and dumb // point out the blind and are ignored" and in "Years" she talks about how of which "they freeze and are", once again addressing their limitations and the fact that she does not share this vision, hence the following phrase "O God, I am not like you". She also talks about being "unable to lick clean" because she obviously can't cure herself of her illness, but this is not something that is understood by those around her. Stella informs us that “there are things about her. sister [that she doesn't approve of] – things that have caused grief at home. She was always… flighty! … “very young, she had an experience which – killed her illusions! raising the idea that the deterioration of her mental health began at a young age and that she was always predisposed to it; the death of Allan (and others close to him) and Stanley's aggressive actions only triggered the onset of his condition, causing a drastic behavioral decline. Arguably, Blanche's imagination might be what led to her reality, although, I often think in Streetcar, when we refer to Blanche's imagination, we do so in a way that is synonymous with his illness because it can be difficult to differentiate between the two once the disorder has consumed the individual behaviorally. This is one of the problems with schizophrenia; this changes the individual's perception, blurring the boundaries between reality and imagination. Thus, determining whether an individual actually perceives what we would call imaginative thought as their reality is both difficult to decipher and impossible to measure. Whereas it is the occipital lobe that is responsible for our imagination and many studies have found a correlation between obvious changes in the volume of gray matter (and white matter) in the occipital lobe in people with schizophrenia[ 6]. For this reason, it seems clear that Blanche's imagination, as a mentally ill character, might actually be her reality, so which of the two she is suffering from is debatable. More deeply, his auditory hallucinations would have started within his temporal lobe, a lobe also associated with schizophrenia (because when the volume inside the lobe decreases, schizophrenia becomes symptomatic). Therefore, given that this is the reality of the mentally ill, it can be argued that it is their own reality that they suffer from, and not the alternative. Similar principles apply to Plath and her posthumous writings. Critics, such as Alvarez[7], claim that Plath wrote primarily with death in mind. However, I argue that his writings were an attempt to rid himself of his suffering, not his entire life. Although Plath later committed suicide, I believe that her pessimistic attitude was simply characteristic of her disorder and not a warning she was sending. Plath's depression was identified throughmany critical and psychological interpretations of her work, although it became established fact when she was interned for it in the 1950s.[8] In her last written poem "Edge", for example, she describes two children (presumably hers) as "snakes", indicating that they poisoned her, but she does not specify what they poisoned her with. This could perhaps be happiness as in various other poems she feels joy around them and shows a lot of worry and concern regarding their well-being. In “The Night Dances”, for example, she tells how Nicolas danced at night. Nicholas, her son, also suffered from depression and committed suicide in his late 40s. Plath almost foreshadows this in her poem by focusing, in the first stanza, on her irremediable smile and, in the second stanza, how the answers will become clear in the future. Here Plath's suffering may seem illogical, however, she wisely fears what the illness will do to her, and rightly so, as it can be assumed that Otto passed on her faulty genes to Plath and she also passed on hers to Nicholas. In her poem “Little Fugue”, she says that “the dead cry over it”. As the dead cannot actually cry, his suffering due to paranoia (i.e. his imagination) is emphasized here. Digging deeper into this, the relationship with the dead (i.e. Otto, the dead person closest to his life) begs the question: Was Otto suffering? of his imagination too? The subject of the poem is incongruous with the facts because there is no evidence that Otto was a soldier, but the poems suggest that anyway. For this reason, the poem may be alluding to the fact that Otto passed on his faulty genes, which would well explain Plath's fear that her children would become ill like her too. The paranoia surrounding his children is visible in "Death & Co". where she says, “Look in their hospital // Cooler.” The fact that she calls the incubators an icebox is obviously a torture of her imagination, because she perceives a perfectly protective environment as a threatening device. His paranoia that they will become ill, mentally ill, is further heightened by the midwives who wear "death robes." Furthermore, the idea that Blanche's character and Plath's singer both suffer from an illness to which they were predisposed emphasizes that their suffering is caused by their harsh realities. Giddens' [9] absence of ontological security in voice that comes through in Plath's poems and Williams' character Blanche emphasizes the lack of meaning in the lives of both. It refers to the consistency of events in an individual's life. Meaning, as stated by Elias (1985), is found in the absence of anxiety and chaos in life, allowing an individual to experience positive and stable emotions; we must operate in opposition to Beck's cognitive triad[10]. Violating this threatens ontological security. Focusing specifically on Blanche, ontological security is often threatened by death. We know that (as in the case of Williams and Hazel[11]) Blanche lost Allan to suicide and so, as Philip A. Mellor stated, this causes people to "question the meaning and reality of social frameworks in which they participate, breaking their ontological security”[12] Catharine from Suddenly Last Summer is also attributable to this; all individuals characterizing Williams' schizophrenic sister, Rose. Arguably with Plath, one can interpret that her ontological security was shattered by the death of her father. Despite her euphemisms in her diary, it seems clear that Plath refrains from talking about him and creates alternative fantasies to convince herself to hate him, becauseadmitting that someone she loves is gone would just be too painful to bear. Mental suffering in Streetcar is presented in a societal manner through Blanche's characterization and has been used to justify changes in later psychiatric treatments. For this reason, it can be argued that the text itself contributed to the anti-psychiatry movement of the time, given its promotion of the same idea that psychiatric treatments are often more harmful than helpful to patients. Blanche's hesitation in the face of the unjust methods that are used to treat her in the 1940s highlights the suffering that we can assume she is experiencing at the end of the play. When Stella asks: “Shall we go, Blanche?” » and Blanche replies: “Shall we go through this room?” her hesitation highlights that there may be something wrong with what Stella is doing, thus creating doubt in the audience's mind. Although the subject of their conversation is how to reach the Doctor and Matron who are waiting outside without meeting the other characters, Williams' intention was perhaps to emphasize Blanche's disapproval of the method. treatment that Stella chose for her. She establishes earlier in this scene that “this place is a trap!” » The emphasis on the abstract noun “trap” designates a situation in which she has unknowingly found herself, but from which she can no longer escape. In the production notes for A Glass Menagerie, Williams wrote: "To escape a trap, he must act mercilessly. »[13] Blanche did not escape the trap because of her complacency with the Doctor and the Matron. She wasn't ruthless enough to disrupt Stella's life further; she did not project her suffering onto others, never intentionally. This is evident through stage directions such as “she lets herself be pushed into a chair”. We see at the end that she has acquiesced in his trouble and therefore in her cooperation since even when the Matron lets go of her arm, she still follows him. Stella's involvement in the play's denouement is of great importance, particularly when she cries, "Don't let them do this to him, don't let them hurt him!" Oh, God, oh, please, God, don't hurt him! What are they doing to him? What are they doing? [She tries to break away from Eunice's arms.]” Williams deliberately uses repetition in the final sentences to emphasize people's lack of awareness of mental illness, hence their ineffective actions in deciphering how to help cure it. The character of Blanche is both a visual and dialogic representation of everything that is wrong with psychiatric treatments used in the 1900s; the other characters in the play are only there to accompany and emphasize the subject. Considering that Streetcar was published in 1947, it can be considered one of the most powerful texts of its time due to the contribution it made to the movement. Williams' piece was particularly important in the 1940s because of societal research. for stability after nuclear attacks and general fear of the government[14]. The universality of his plays and the themes they contained allowed new Americans to connect with them during the post-Depression and World War II era. The nuances of the play struck a chord with audiences as it drew attention to the victimization of women, highlighting their role in a male-dominated society (this was done through the expression of female characters – Stella choosing Stanley and settling down). with him, Blanche and her public debaucheries). This allowed the public to see the result of the fact thatreality did not coincide with an individual's imagination and also when an individual's societal perceptions deviate from those of their true self. As Williams himself said, all of his plays “had at least subliminally – a lot of social content.” Another movement of the 19th century was Romanticism; one critic[15] claimed that "Blanche [was] literally a conduit for romanticism." The presentation of her as an embodiment of an individual's inspiration, subjectivity, and primacy may not have been intentional on Williams' part, but it is linked to the progression of the anti-psychiatry movement of the time because, although Blanche's speech questioning the path to the The Doctor and Matron were waiting for her at the door, which also reflected her boisterous personality. As Robert Bray says in the introduction to “Old Carr? ", "Williams's semi-tropical resettlement marked the beginning of an artistic awakening to a period of vigorous self-discovery. A manifestation of this, Williams said, “She might have been pretty well now if they hadn't performed that damn operation on her; she would have returned to the surface”[17] (the operation being a prefrontal lobotomy). This element of guilt is present in Williams's plays; In The Glass Menagerie, Williams' character Tom (which is actually Tennessee's real name!) says "Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind, but I'm more faithful than I am." intended to be!” After Rose was institutionalized, Williams made it his mission to get Rose out of there after seeing what the lobotomy had done to her; he claimed[18] that aside from some work, getting Rose out was one of the best things he ever did. Regarding the form of Williams' text, he explained that American theater productions did not do this. have the public support that other forms of literature, elsewhere, receive. In an interview with The New York Times, Williams said that "the audience is not conditioned to have the patience to allow them (the characters) to develop as artists." It is not surprising that Blanche was misunderstood by those around her, just as she was by contemporary audiences. RDLaing[19], in fact, studied the coercion of psychiatric treatments towards patients. His research focuses on the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1970s. Laing's research actually indicates that delusion is self-deception in its most absolute form. An illusion, he argues, is not so deceptive as the whole being is not deceived and, therefore, it would not be considered a total act of deception. Mutuality within self-deception is an essential element since collusion is thought to be an interpersonal process. Collusive entrapment is when, symptomatically, individuals begin to express their feelings of estrangement and depersonalization. Additionally, individuals are depicted as capable of functioning on their own but dramatically incapacitated when the scene changes and they find themselves in the company of others. It is suggestive that being alone caused her less pain than being in the presence of those who interfere greatly but understand very little (hence Blanche being alive and apparently in good health upon her arrival at the Champs Elysées). The work of Laing and Watzlawick actually worked jointly on this issue, condemning the fact that the study of the pragmatic effects of disturbed human behavior is a communicative reaction to the situation in which the individual finds himself, as opposed to to his illness itself. Plath's Streetcar and Ariel collection, as we see it,Blanche, although destroying herself and others in the process, was functioning satisfactorily on her own and it wasn't until she came to Stella and was in the presence of individuals like Stanley for an extended period of time. that she became more and more incapable. This is also seen in Plath's poems. For example, focusing on "Tulips," Plath initially felt good about her other poems from her hospitalization, but her husband's invasion and the tulips she brought him made her extremely conflicted and unwell. at ease. Her poems are extremely paradoxical in this sense, for we see throughout the collection that she sometimes asserts, "I am too pure for you or anyone else," only to then contradict it by stating, "This They are the ones who own me.” There are implications of rape in Streetcar as Stanley "picks up [Blanche's] limp figure and carries her to the bed", emphasizing that this was a real event and not something Blanche imagined. Similarly, it has been assumed[20], from "Daddy", one of Plath's poems which profoundly highlights Freud's Electra complex, that there was an incident of rape. Although figurative, sticking to this speculation (because the poems are polysemous), we can interpret that to move beyond and out of these memories, Plath must face them to end her suffering, hence her awareness of them as they become unrepressed. . Plath in "Little Fugue" states "I was seven years old, I knew nothing...I have a lame memory", providing an opportunity to explore why she sometimes chooses imagination over reality (because we does not remember reality). This may not be a selective choice, as his imagination may simply be filling up due to such large-scale repression that there are now significant gaps in his mind as to where to go. found these memories originally, hence the decision of his conscious mind to resort to imagination. In both texts, the situations occurred, thus emphasizing that the cause of their suffering is due to their reality. On the communicative level, we mainly saw Blanche's husband, Allan, to whom she spoke but he, of course, did not understand her and committed suicide as a result. . We also saw Blanche seek help from Stella, the only remaining member of her family that we know of, and that too ended disastrously as there was the involvement of Blanche's brother-in-law, a person which most certainly had an outsider's point of view, and the results. were once again disastrous. Ultimately, it seems that Watzlawick's interactional view could help explain why Blanche was so misunderstood by those around her and why this led her to suffer more. The lack of real treatment of Blanche's disorder throughout the play could perhaps be what led her condition to decline significantly towards the end of the play, leaving her vulnerable to Stanley (hence the events of the 'rising action of the plot). The tram also evokes rape, as we see in scene ten where "she sinks" and Stanley "picks up her limp form and carries her to the bed." We were primarily aware that Blanche was not receptive to Stanley's behaviors, however, this action only triggered the denouement of the play where we see Blanche's plot come to an end and her suffering turn into a complete loss of reason and identity. She can also potentially suffer from the reality of motherhood. Or, on the contrary, she may be suffering from her imagination and motherhood may have been her salvation. The half-rhymed couplet of lines 21 and 22 forms a tonesoothing; smooth enjambment introduces this. She also refers to her children as lamps. This imagery of light is seen in Streetcar in a very different way as we see Blanche constantly in the dark, hiding from the light as much as possible and when Mitch asks to see her she is reluctant to let him and Stanley remove definitely paper. the lantern is a huge contribution to the outcome of the play. Plath, in the majority of her other poems, is shrouded in darkness, so describing her children through the concrete noun "lamps", although perceptibly derogatory, is considered positive imagery. In Streetcar we see that it is quite the opposite as Blanche hides from the light, disguising her age by only allowing the visibility of darkness to form her appearance. The happiness that Plath receives from her children interferes with her suicidal thoughts, hence her desire to put them back into her body. In “Edge,” she recounts how “she folded them into her body in the form of petals.” She also describes herself as the "Jug of Milk, now empty", feeling that she has fulfilled her duty (to breastfeed them, that is, to fulfill a duty towards them that only she can do) , her emptiness indicating that after doing this, she is now of no use to them. Following this, the use of an inanimate object ("petals") to describe them insinuates her feeling that the children are not real, as that is what she needs to believe in order to die with minimal difficulty . In this way, perhaps her imagination is her savior, as opposed to the cause of her suffering, because it allows her to achieve what she intended to do, without the interference of reality; the poem began with the statement "Woman is perfect" and so Plath committed suicide a week after finishing this poem. Although Blanche's context is completely different, she also euphemizes the reality of the situations that cause her pain and has instead created a desired version of the truth. We see her admit it in scene nine when she admits, "I'm not telling the truth." I'm telling what should be the truth. Arguably, downplaying the reality of their situation and succumbing to balls of forgetfulness may be what prevents them from healing the cause of their suffering. Overall, Plath tends to focus more on individualism in mental suffering, which differentiates her somewhat from Blanche when it comes to mental suffering's outlook and approach to treatment. This is because they suffer from different types of mental illnesses that Plath believes she can overcome on her own, but Blanche seeks help. In the title poem of Plath's Ariel collection, we see Plath embarking on a journey toward recovery in which, although she fails, she strives to achieve it independently. The individualism highlights the polarity between the two writers, but even within that there is a duality because, just as with Blanche, the voice in Plath's poem, Ariel, has striven to reestablish herself but landed in the wrong place. In her diaries, Plath mentions death. from her father, stating that she would live "a happy life anyway, despite her face".[21] All of this works in conjunction with the journey undertaken in "Ariel", a poem which could be compared to Blanche's entire journey to Champs Elysées. The voice of Plath's poem leaves on a horse, like an arrow destined to get rid of the past, that is to say, of her repressed memories of her father, just as Blanche leaves for the Champs Elysées to start again and forget her past ( her memories of Allan and his suicide) but she finds herself in the wrong place. This unwanted destination works for both Ariel's voice andfor Williams' character, Blanche, because she thought she would end up better off with the support and stability of Stella who is, presumably, her only living close relative. The singer in Plath's poem also thought it would be a journey that would allow her to escape from her past, but instead she loses control of the horse (i.e. the situation she finds herself in, or perhaps the men around her because of the masculine imagery associated with the stallion (the horse that Ted Hughes confirmed she was riding) brought her to the wrong place. Thus, both characters, in. an attempt to get rid of their suffering, lose control of their current situation and end up suffering regardless The "red" that the singer sees in "Ariel" could be related to the shade of red that one sees when closing. eyes after seeing the light. It could mean many things, blood, danger but especially hell. Regarding Streetcar, the package that Stanley throws to Stella at the beginning of the play shares this same color. might indicate the beginning of both, the suffering voice in Plath's poem and Blanche's too, both further emphasized by the poetic undressing of "Ariel" and Blanche's character arc. An interesting observation that coincides with this unification of texts is John Gassner's remark that in Streetcar, "poetic drama becomes psychological reality." In Plath's poem, The Bee Meeting, she uses bees to characterize her disorder. She comes face to face, realizing it's there and it's going to wreak havoc. Present and intrusive, it stings and she accepts that it is now a part of her. The speaker then asks the following question in the next poem focused on bees (The Arrival of the Bee Box): "How can I let them out?" Blanche also sought help to get rid of her disorder, but as it was established, it was not possible to stop herself. As in Blanche's case, the speaker of Plath's poem then concludes that "the box is only temporary" (the box representing the entrapment accompanying disorder). Blanche was although blindly ambitious, adamant that everything would be fine once she was with Shep Huntleigh and had his financial support. Plath, too, perceived the box/disease as only temporary, as her metaphorical journey in the poem Ariel was meant to free her from that which holds her back. It's debatable whether these are strong female characters or unconsciously sick protagonists who can't see beyond the self-created limits of their imagination. The indistinctness of the actual disorder appears later in the poem, in Plath's linguistic decision to use a pronoun rather than a noun: "I have to live with it all night // And I can't get away from it . // There's no window, so I can't see what's // inside. The disorder is not identified but the awareness of it and the recognition that it will cause her pain is present. In Stings, Plath describes herself and the "man in white" as being "bare-handed." Regarding Streetcar, this highlights that Blanche but also Stanley (or perhaps even Mitch), who proposes an ineffective solution, have nothing in their hands, no ideas or solutions to resolve the suffering. For Plath, that extra person unable to help her might be Ted Hughes. We also see in the poem Tulips that the main reason Plath felt conflicted with her surroundings was due to him and what he had given her, similar to how Blanche reacted to Stanley; his actions make her feel uncomfortable. Her actions make her suffer more. "Stings" emphasizes that despite all these