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A Streetcar Named Desire- Names

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Edexcel English Language and Literature A Level: A Streetcar Named Desire. This mindmap involves the analysis of Blanche, Stanley, and Stella's names, including context and alternate interpretations. If you choose to use any of the interpretations in your essay, be careful to remember that they may not have been Williams' explicit intentions; some are more relevant to a contemporary audience.
Grace Fawcitt
Mind Map by Grace Fawcitt, updated more than 1 year ago
Grace Fawcitt
Created by Grace Fawcitt over 6 years ago
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Resource summary

A Streetcar Named Desire- Names
  1. Blanche DuBois
    1. French
      1. Hints at her sophistication and aristocracy
        1. Link to French Huguenots
          1. Blanche mentions first ancestors in Scene 3
        2. 'Blanche'= white
          1. White typically connotes purity
            1. Ironic considering Blanche's sexual promiscuity
          2. 'DuBois'
            1. Woods
              1. 'White woods' creates skeletal and surreal imagery
                1. Link to Southern Gothic's death imagery
                  1. Ghostly
                    1. White trunks are like Antebellum plantation columns
                      1. Decay of Old South links to decay of Blanche herself
              2. Stella Kowalski
                1. 'Stella'= star
                  1. Vibrant and bright
                    1. Contrasts death imagery for Blanche
                    2. Suggests distance from reality
                      1. Otherworldly
                        1. Naivety of Stella
                      2. French/Polish
                        1. Kowalski
                          1. Polish
                            1. Link to Stanley in Scene 8- 'I pulled you down off them columns'
                              1. Multiculturalism- typical of New Orleans
                            2. Euphonic phonemes in 'Stella' jar with the consonance of 'Kowalski'
                            3. Stanley Kowalski
                              1. Stanley sounds like 'manly'
                                1. Link to his vitality and masculinity
                                2. Kowalski
                                  1. Multiculturalism and diversity
                                  2. Stanley means 'stone wood'
                                    1. Link to 'concrete jungle', and therefore to the industrialisation of the New America
                                      1. More appropriate for a contemporary audience than the audiences in 1947
                                    2. France betrayed Poland in the Polish Defensive War, 1939
                                      1. Link to Stanley's distrust of Blanche e.g. trunk scene

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