A Winless Battle Essay, Research Paper

Sometimes in life, there are times when you are faced with a struggle and often times, no matter how hard you try to get yourself out of this struggle, you just can’t and you end up feeling as though you have lost the battle. In “A Streetcar Named Desire,” by Tennessee Williams, there are four characters that really display this situation. Blanche, Stanley, Stella, and Mitch are the four characters that display this situation. In Tennessee Williams play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” there are no victors, only victims.

In this play, Blanche is the older sister of Stella and she comes to Elysian Fields to live with her sister because she has nowhere else to live because she was asked to leave the last town that she was living in because of the life that she was choosing to live there. Blanche also lost her family’s estate, Belle Reve. Therefore, she had to go to the last place that she could think of and that was the house of her sister, Stella. From the start of the play, it is imminent that Blanche is the victim of her own life, and not a victor. She first lost her husband when she was a very young girl because of the fact that she found out that he was gay. She was in love with this man and when she found out, she was just heartbroken. However, she didn’t want to tell him that she knew about his secret so she kept it a secret for a while. But then, one night while they were dancing, she all of sudden just came out and told him what she knew. He was so embarrassed by this that he ran out of the room and shot and killed himself. That is one of the battles that she was the victim of. Then when she loses Belle Reve and is forced to live in a town called Laurel, she chooses to live a life that she doesn’t want to. She forces herself into prostitution because she has no other way of making money to help support herself. During this time, she is living in a hotel called the Flamingo and many men are coming up to her room every night. This disturbs the peace within the hotel and when the hotel and the town of Laurel figure out what she is doing in the hotel, they tell her to leave the hotel and also the town because they don’t want anyone like her to be there. No she has nowhere to live and she is desperate. So she decides to go and stay with her sister, Stella for a little while. Blanche’s visit comes as a total surprise to Stella and her husband, Stanley. From the very beginning, Stanley and Blanche do not get along very well. Stanley feels that Blanche is invading their privacy and he wants her gone. Blanche tries her best to be liked by Stanley and the rest of the occupants of Elysian Fields, but sometimes she just causes too much trouble for them. In the end, Stella and Stanley arrange for Blanche to be sent to a mental hospital because they want her to be gone. So, for the rest of her life, she will be living in the mental hospital. Therefore, you can see how Blanche is not a victor at all throughout this play, but in every aspect she is the victim.

In this play, Stanley is the husband of Stella. He is a big and tough guy. He is the head of the house and he seems to have everything under control. However, when you really dig into his character you kind find out that he has a lot of faults about him. Stanley has an aura to him that shows people that he is totally under control and that nothing about him is at fault. On the outside, he may seem like he is the only ultimate victor in this play, but in actuality, he is a victim just like everyone else. For one, he has lost the trust of his wife. Blanche told her that while she was in the hospital giving birth to their child, Stanley raped Blanche. Stella chooses to deny to Blanche, but deep down inside, she knows that Stanley was capable of doing it and she knows that more than likely, he did do it to her. However, she chooses to just ignore it, because if she admits to herself and to everyone else, she will lose everything that she has lived for. She just wants to have a husband to support her and have a good life. But deep down inside, she knows that Stanley is at fault for this and she has almost lost that trust that she has for him. Stanley also has a very bad temper. He gets mad at every little thing and when things don’t go the way that he wants them to go, he does things that hurt himself and the people that he truly cares about. For example, when he gets drunk he often hurts Stella physically and she gets scared of him, but she knows that she can’t leave him because they both need to have each other in their lives. That’s how you can tell that Stanley is not a victor in this play, but a victim.

Furthermore, you can see how Stella is a victim in this play. Throughout this play, you can see how Stella always seems to be stuck in the middle of everything. No matter how hard she tries to make things right between everyone, she just can’t seem to get anything right. Stella is in the middle of all of Blanche and Stanley’s arguments and she just can’t get the two of them to get along. No matter how hard she tries to talk to each one of them one on one, she can’t get them to see things in the same way. This causes a lot of problems between Stella and Stanley and Stella and Blanche. Stella and Stanley are always bickering because Stanley doesn’t like Blanche very much and he wants her out of their house. And then, Stella and Blanche are always fighting because Blanche doesn’t like the lifestyle that Stella is living. Stella and Blanche are so used to living like queens, that when Blanche comes along, she can’t believe that Stella is living like this. Blanche constantly tells Stella that she can get them away from that dump and they can go and start their lives anew and live the perfect life that they once used to have. However, Stella likes the way that she is living and she just can’t get Blanche to believe that this is the way that she wants to live and there is nothing that Blanche can do to get Stella to leave the life that she is living now. That is how Stella is a victim in this play and not a victor.

Finally, Mitch is a character in this play that is also a victim. Mitch is one of Stanley’s friends. They always play poker together. Mitch also gets together with Blanche sometime during the play. This poses a problem because Stanley doesn’t like Blanche very much and he doesn’t want his friend to get involved with her because Stanley knows that Blanche is just trouble and she is not worth his time. However, Mitch doesn’t really care what Stanley has to say because he really likes Blanche and he really wants to be with her. Mitch also has a very sick mother and she wants more than anything before she dies, to see her son settled and happy. Mitch wants to make his mother happy and he thinks that he has found the perfect wife in Blanche. The two of them grow close and there is even talk that Mitch was going to ask Blanche to marry him, until he hears the stories about her life that she used to have in Laurel, and he doesn’t want to be involved with someone who is like that. Blanche plays around with Mitch a lot. Mitch is very na?ve and Blanche knows what buttons to press on him to make it seem like she is really a sweet and innocent person, when in actuality she is a very manipulative person. Mitch just doesn’t know what is going on until it is too late. Blanche lied to him so much that when he finds out the truth about her, he is just so disgusted by her behavior. That is how Mitch is a victim in the play.

In conclusion, you can see how each of the four characters is ultimately a victim in this play. They may seem like the victors at times, but in the end they are all victims. Between the four characters there was a lot of manipulation and lying going on. Each individual character was trying to be the best out of everyone and come out as the victor. But in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” there were no victors, only victims.