A Streetcar Named Desire - Essay

In A Streetcar Named Desire, has Tennessee Williams created a happy ending or a sad ending? Discuss with close reference to the play.

The ending of a novel, a book or a play is often difficult to interpret since there are many different aspects that have to be taken in consideration. Another reason for this difficulty is that the line that separates happy and sad endings isn’t as outlined as we usually might think, because for example a happy ending for one character might turn out as sad ending for another one and in fact it is quite rare that every character of the novel, play or book gets what really would make him happy in the end.

In “A Streetcar Named Desire”, a play of the 1940s written by american playwright Tennessee Williams, the ending seems to be sad, for  inattentive readers that don’t stop thinking in detail about each and every character involved in it.

The evidence for it to be a sad ending is actually quite difficult to be unseen: the main character Blanche DuBois, a fully grown woman that refuses to look at reality as it is, gets led away to an insane asylum after being raped by the husband of her sister, Stanley, and refused by the man she was supposed to marry, Mitch. The reader is initially disappointed, since until the very ending one hopes that Blanche will find her way to her well deserved happiness, through marrying Mitch, finally getting rid of her dark past. Thinking about it more carefully the reader gets to ask himself if a woman which way of thinking is described by the quote “I don't want realism. I want magic!” would have been able to actually be involved in a happy marriage, to find work again, to care about Mitch’s mother or even to eventually have a child with him, without falling into depression or worse consequences.

That Blanche urgently needs help and is deeply unhappy is clear since the reader or the viewer is half through the play noticing her frequent baths, her poorly hidden drinking problem, her way to dismiss every form of solid reality and especially her obsession with youth and her looks.

For Blanche’s sister Stella it is a heartbreaking view to see her sister willingly follow the doctor without saying goodbye to anyone in the end, however she will be able to properly look after her newborn child and ale care of her husband without having to look after her sister and without having to deal with the daily big fight or discussions between Blanche and Stanley, which if they had been continued over the years would have probably led to a separation of the two sisters or a divorce.
Mitch seems to have completely lost his feelings towards Blanche in the final part, where he discovers her past, her sexual relationships with strangers and how because of an involvement with a teenager she lost her job as a teacher, but in the very last scene, while the doctor and the nurse are trying to convince her to leave with them, he starts to cry thinking of the future that is waiting for her in the insane asylum. This shows that he actually really cared about her, helping the reader to forgive him for having tried to rape Blanche while being drunk as he was fighting with her because he just had discovered her past thanks to Stanley. Mitch has however still a chance to find a proper wife now that Blanche has left, allowing him to start over his life again.
Stanley has made many mistakes in his marriage with Stella while Blanche has lived with them, so for him there is now a chance to hopefully make up for them with his newborn child and his wife.

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