Thomas Lanier Williams, known as Tennessee Williams, was a man of contradictions and clashing passions, so were his short fictions and plays. “A Street Car Named Desire” was one of his most successful and most performed plays. The title of the play has relations with the specific location; New Orleans is actually served by streetcars named “Desire” and “Cemetery”. The action might be summed up as Blanche’s (the main character of the play) emotional journey from desire to madness. The play is consisted of eleven scenes and scene by scene Blanche is approaching her doom.
The play can be summarized as Blanche Du Bois visits her sister, cannot get on well with her sister Stella’s husband Stanley, then falls in love with Stanley’s best friend Mitch, tells about her past but all of the things she says are full of controversies, Stanley learns the truth, punishes her, and finally Blanche is taken away from them by the doctor. So focusing on the last parts of the play, when Blanche is leaving the house is fundamental. Because it symbolizes Blanche’s fall, precipitated in part by her desperate flight from reality towards an illusionary refuge. And this event reminds that humans are emotional beings. Emotions are affecting every aspect of our lives, like in this play; they are invading every scene. All the characters of the play felt pride, guilt, love and hate, shame and sorrow. All their relationships will never be the same again. All these emotions reach their climax point as Blanche is leaving Kowalski family.
The last scene starts while Stanley was winning the poker game. Stanley has been losing poker games in the previous scenes but at that time he was winning. The game was the symbol of his authority in the house, he has been losing since Blanche came. Long before, Blanche and Stanley had begun to see each other as a threat. As Londre explained “ This conflict between Blanche and Stanley is an externalization of the conflict that goes on within Blanche between illusion and reality”(60). Blanche was living in her imaginary world, she was behaving as somebody else and was feeling much more worse after hearing Stanley’s opinions about her because he knew how she was in real world. This conflict ended when he managed to defeat Blanche by raping her. “She could not escape the reality of her imprisonment in the small flat with Stanley and her dreams about Shep Huntleigh(a rich man from Blanche’s past) succumbs to physical reality after Stanley raped her” says Londre.(60)
Stella is packing Blanche’s belongings while Blanche was bathing. Stella has said that she has made arrangements for her sister and Blanche has taken this mean that Shep was coming for her. But the incoming “people” were the doctor and the matron. They rang the bell, Blanche got excited and asked if it was the man that she was expecting, Eunice (Kowalskis’ neighbor) lied her. When she learnt that Shep was not at the door, she ran back to the room. Finally she decided to leave with the doctor.
When the doctor smiled and saw her as an individual, Blanche extended her hands towards him and she said “Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”, “Blanche is correct in perceiving the doctor as a gentleman who knows how to treat a lady with respect.”(61) stated Londre. While Blanche was running to the room Stanley taunted her cruelly and tore the lantern. Blanche cried out as if the lantern was herself. “In symbolic terms, this may pinpoint Blanche’s definitive retreat from reality into her world of illusion.”(61) Londre explained this situation. Stella blamed herself. She always believed that the reason of Blanche’s depression and her lying are those rude men. And now she is sending her sister away with doctor. Mitch also felt so depressed. His “going to be” wife was not as clean as he thought and he felt much sorrow. And he will never see her again. After losing their love at a young age and all those years passed Blanche and Mitch are both good opportunity for each other to have a new family. It is definitely certain that Stella and Mitch have been irrevocably changed by Blanche’s passage; perhaps they will find it in themselves to stand up against the hegemony of “apes”. “Stanley has also lost, in that the relationships he values most – those with his wife and his best friend. Things will never be the same!
When all the things above are taken into consideration, it is clearly understood that people can hurt someone mentally. Although Blanche was woman of contradictions it cannot be denied that she was full of feelings. She has been hurt by men as Stella said in the play, shecreated herself an imaginary world,

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