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Streetcar Named Desire/Coles Notes [Paperback]

Tennessee Williams (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (118 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Play in three acts by Tennessee Williams, first produced and published in 1947 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama for that year. One of the most admired plays of its time, it concerns the mental and moral disintegration and ultimate ruin of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle. Her neurotic, genteel pretensions are no match for the harsh realities symbolized by her brutish brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Description

The story of Blanche DuBois and her last grasp at happiness, and of Stanley Kowalski, the one who destroyed her chance. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Product Details

  • Paperback
  • Publisher: Coles Pub Group Ltd (June 1991)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0774037938
  • ISBN-13: 978-0774037938
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (118 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #8,425,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Tennessee Williams
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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The exterior of a two-story corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs between the L&N tracks and the river. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
para los muertos, blue piano
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Belle Reve, New Orleans, Shep Huntleigh, Four Deuces, Dame Blanche
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Customer Reviews

118 Reviews
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 (68)
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 (31)
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (118 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Williams's Intense Desire, May 14, 2000
This review is from: A Streetcar Named Desire (Paperback)
Tennessee Williams's masterfully written drama explores the extremes of fantasy versus reality, the Old South versus the New South, and primitive desire versus civilized restraint. Its meager 142 page spine is no indication of the complexity and significance that Williams achieves in his remarkable work. A strong aspect of the play is Williams's amazingly vivid portrayal of desperate and forsaken characters who symbolize and presumably resolve his battles between extremes. He created and immortal woman in the character of Blanche DuBois, the haggard and fragile southern beauty whose pathetic last grasp at happiness is cruelly destroyed. She represents fantasy for her many outrageous attempts to elude herself, and she likewise represents the Old South with only her manners and pretentions remaining after the foreclosure of her family's estate. The movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire shot Marlon Brando to fame as Stanley Kowalski, a sweat-shirted barbarian and crudely sensual brother-in-law who precipitated Blanche's tragedy. He symbolizes unrestrained desire with the recurring animal motif that follows him throughout the play. A third major character, Stella Kowalski, acts as mediator between her constantly conflicting husband and older sister. She magnifies the New South in her renounce of the Old pretentions by marrying a blue collar immigrant. Conflicts between these and other vividly colorful characters always in light of the cultural New Orleans backdrop provide a reader with a lasting impression and an awe for Williams's impeccable style and intense dialogue.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Piece of America, December 5, 2002
By isaac moyer (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Streetcar Named Desire (Paperback)
Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece has been the source of controversy since it was written five decades ago. It is the story of the fallen Southern belle Blance Dubois, whose desperate illusions of grandeur are rent to shreds by her earthy and realistic brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Touching on issues of prejudice, sexual codependence, mental breakdown, and rape, A Streetcar Named Desire is at times disturbing in its brutal honesty. Readings of this sultry play have found it to be anything from a critique of the conflict between the North and South in post Civil War America, to a subtle commentary on the struggles of Williams' life as a homosexual. The image of Stanley bellowing drunkenly to his wife Stella, as well as lines such as Blanche telling how she has "always depended on the kindness of strangers" have become so much a part of the American consciousness that they are recognizable even to those who are unfamiliar with Williams' work itself.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Character Complexity in Streetcar, May 7, 2001
By Emily Powers (Arlington, TX USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Streetcar Named Desire (Paperback)
Tennessee Williams creates a strong sense of reality in A Streetcar Named Desire through the complexity of his characters; none emerge as truly good or truly bad, leaving only the contrast of strong and weak. For example, Blanche, the closest character to a heroine, literally falls apart through the course of the play, her weaknesses intensified by desire and exploited by Stanley. Although one may feel moved to pity Blanche, her collapse counters a basic character flaw of not being able to cope with reality, of preferring "a moonlight swim at the old rock quarry" to the dark house on Elysian Fields where all her problems dwell. Thus it is inevitable that Blanche should meet with tragedy. For some, it is also a just end: Blanche has led a life not deserving of much admiration, tempting young and sexually inexperienced boys, conducting notorious affairs ("everybody else in the town of Laurel knows all about her"), and at the same time still maintaining her pretensions and self-superiority. Equally complex and opposing Blanche on all fronts is Stanley, who represents the raw, survivalist animal Williams saw in people. The honest man Stanley, a poor Pole simply trying to make ends meet to support his wife and new family, senses the weakness and dependence in Blanche and recognizes it as a force completely in contrast with his own brute strength. Stanley scorns her frailties and simultaneously scorns her claims that she has been "the strong one," upholding her duty to the family by caring for her dying relatives, whereas her sister Stella fled to New Orleans with her husband. The honest man Stanley, who beats his wife almost recreationally and brings about the final destruction of Blanche, represents, then, not a true villain, but an archetype: Stanley is the survivor, the top dog in a dog-eat-dog world, stopping at nothing to preserve his own interests. His tremendous strength both complements and counters his brutality as he maneuvers (to his liking) the streetcar named Desire, whose course, for all but the uncannily strong, ends in ultimate destruction. Lastly, one must consider Stella, somewhat of a foil to Blanche, and also the least clear-cut of the main characters. For the most part, the audience knows little of Stella; most of what one can say about her is deduced. She is the closest to virtuous out of the three; she accepts her duty first as wife, hoping that her duty as sister will not interfere. Until around scene eight, she always gives those she loves the benefit of the doubt. Thus a conflict exists within her, a conflict unlike that within Stanley and Blanche. Rather than the desire versus destruction dichotomy, Stella suffers from being torn between her husband and her sister. And there is such a thing as being too trusting. In the end, Stella makes her decision not so much based on her sense of morality or even ethics, but instead on the blind faith she instills in the person closest her. Stella's greatest fault lies in her inability to trust herself and in her complete willingness to submit to those forces greater than her without the slightest hint of a fight. The final image of the play, in fact, leaves Stella weeping in her brutal husband's arms, "in [a] complete surrender to crying." Stella gives up. Her strength, though somewhat greater than Blanche's, fails her in Stanley's shadow, and certainly does not serve as a particular virtue. Rather, it keeps her going just long enough to thrust her little world into an inescapable mess. Had she been as weak as Blanche, the conflict between the doomed Blanche and the destructive Stanley would have been resolved much sooner, and with less incident. Had she been as strong as Stanley, the conflict may not have existed on such a level. Thus Stella represents a final human pattern: the regret for what might have been. Williams's characters simply reflect the different types of people he observed in what he believed was a grim life. In writing so much of these universal paradigms into his work, he lends to it a sense of reality unmatched by those seeking to portray the melodramatic conflict of good versus evil.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Abusive man alert
I'm not generally impressed with plays and movies of this era, as they portray a time when it was considered acceptable for men to treat women as property. Read more
Published 20 days ago by E. S. Charpentier

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best 20th century plays
"A Streetcar Named Desire" is one of Tennessee Williams' signature plays that has propelled his reputation and made him into a household name. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Bojan Tunguz

5.0 out of 5 stars Book Review: A Streetcar Named Desire
"A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams is one of the most poignant and psychologically warped plays in creation, tackling harsh realities of life we like to tuck into... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Paul A. Tooker

4.0 out of 5 stars odered the book
These folks did a great job. I ordered it, they confirmed it and I had it within a week. The book is in excellent condition. No issues!
Published 5 months ago by Donald Smith

4.0 out of 5 stars Scott Barnett
In the nihilistic social commentary entitled A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the author constructs a tale of old and new south, wealthy and impoverished peoples,... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Laurie Barnett

5.0 out of 5 stars A Streetcar and a Broken Tower
In the published edition of his masterwork, "A Streetcar Named Desire", Tennessee Williams uses as an epigraph the following stanza from "The Broken Tower", probably the final... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Robin Friedman

5.0 out of 5 stars Houseguest from Hell
Blanche Dubois is the houseguest from hell. She arrives at her sister Stella's cramped New Orleans apartment and showers contempt on the humble surroundings. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Stacy Saunders Hartog

4.0 out of 5 stars "A winnig play" Hm...spell check, please?
Obviously, A Streetcar Named Desire is a world-famous play that, along with The Glass Menagerie, made Tennessee Williams a household name (at least in the literary ones). Read more
Published 17 months ago by Austin Somlo

4.0 out of 5 stars Start of a new era
This was a very passiont film from the south drenched with liquior, romance, and confrontation. By far the best actress in the movie was blanch. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Brian Hayes

2.0 out of 5 stars no good choice
The choice of copies of _The Streetcar Named Desire_
(required reading for high school academic English
this summer) seemed to narrow down to ones with
lurid... Read more
Published on July 9, 2008 by C. Scott

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