American Literature books summary

of the checks Caddy sends. Quentin tells Jason that she would tear off any

dress that he paid for and grabs the neck of her dress as if she will tear

it. Jason has to stop the car and grab her wrists to stop her. He tells her

that she is a slut and a bad girl, and she replies that she would rather be

in hell than in his house. He drops her off at school and drives on to his

job at the farm goods store.

At the store, old Job, a black worker, is unloading cultivators, and Jason

accuses of him of doing it as slowly as he possibly can. He has mail; he

opens a letter with a check from Caddy. The letter asks if Quentin is sick

and states that she knows that Jason reads all her letters. He goes out to

the front of the store and engages in a conversation with a farmer about

the cotton crop. He tells him that cotton is a "speculator's crop" that "a

bunch of damn eastern jews" get farmers to grow so that they can control

the stock market (191). He goes to the telegraph office, where a stock

report has just come in (Jason has invested in the cotton crop) - the

cotton stock is up four points. He tells the telegraph operator to send a

collect message to Caddy saying "Q writing today" (193).

He goes back to the store and sits at his desk, reading a letter from his

girlfriend Lorraine, who is basically a prostitute he keeps in Memphis. She

calls Jason her "daddy." He burns her letter, commenting "I make it a rule

never to keep a scrap of paper bearing a woman's hand, and I never write

them at all" (193). Then he takes out Caddy's letter to Quentin, but before

he can open it some business interrupts him. He recalls the day of his

father's funeral; he remembers saying that Quentin wasted his chance at

Harvard, learning only "how to go for a swim at night without knowing how

to swim," Benjy is nothing but a "gelding" that should be rented out as a

circus sideshow, Father was a drunk who should have had a "one-armed strait

jacket," and Caddy is a whore (196-197).

Uncle Maury patted Mother's arm with expensive black gloves at the funeral,

and Jason noted that the flowers on the grave must have cost fifty dollars.

He also remembers the day that Father brought baby Quentin home; Mother

would not let her sleep in Caddy's old room, afraid she will be

contaminated by the atmosphere in there. She also declares that nobody in

the house must ever say Caddy's name again. On the day of the funeral,

Caddy appeared in the cemetery and begged Jason to let her see the baby for

just one minute, and she would pay him fifty dollars; later she changes

this to one hundred dollars. Jason smugly remembers how he took the baby in

a carriage and held her up to the window as he drove past Caddy; this

fulfilled his agreement to the letter. Later she showed up in the kitchen,

accusing him of backing out of their agreement. He threatened her and told

her to leave town immediately. She made him promise to treat Quentin well

and to give her the money that she sends for her.

Jason's boss, Earl, comes up to the front of the store and tells Jason he

is going out for a snack because they won't have time to go home for lunch;

a show is in town and there will be too much business. Jason finally opens

Caddy's letter to Quentin, and inside is a money order for fifty dollars,

not a check. He looks around in the office for a blank check; every month

he takes a fake check home to mother to burn and cashes the real check. But

the blank checks are all gone. Quentin comes in and asks if a letter has

come for her. He taunts her, then finally gives her the letter, without the

money in it. She reaches out for the money order, but he will not give it

to her. He tells her she has to sign it without looking at it. She asks how

much it is for, and he tells her it is for ten dollars. She says he is

lying, but he will not give it to her until she agrees to take ten dollars

for it. She takes the money and leaves, upset.

Earl returns and again tells Jason not to go home to lunch; Jason agrees

and leaves. First he goes to a print shop to get a blank check. The print

shop doesn't have any, and finally Jason finds a checkbook that was a prop

at an old theater. He goes back to the store and puts the check in the

letter, gluing the envelope back to look unopened. As he leaves again, Earl

tells him not to take too much time. He goes to the telegraph office and

checks up on the stock market, then goes home for lunch. He goes up to

Mother's room and gives her the doctored letter. Instead of burning it

right away she looks at it for a while. She notices that it is drawn on a

different bank than the others have been, but then burns it. Dilsey is not

ready with lunch yet because she is waiting for Quentin to come home;

finally she puts it on the table and they eat. Jason hands Mother a letter

from Uncle Maury; it is a letter asking her to lend him some money for an

investment he would like to make.

Jason takes Mother's bankbook with him and returns to town. He goes to the

bank and deposits the money from Caddy and his paycheck, then returns to

the telegraph office for an update; the stock is down thirteen points. He

goes back to the store, where Earl asks him if he went home to dinner.

Jason tells him that he had to go to the dentist's. A while later he hears

the band from the show start playing. He argues with Job about spending

money to go to a show like that. Suddenly he sees Quentin in an alley with

a stranger with a red bow tie. It is still 45 minutes before school should

let out. He follows them up the street, but they disappear. A boy comes up

and gives Jason a telegram: the market day closed with cotton stocks down.

He goes back to the store and tells Earl that he has to go out for a while.

He gets in his car and goes home. Gasoline gives him headaches, and he

thinks about having to bring some camphor with him when he goes back to the

store. He goes into his room and hides the money from Caddy in a strongbox

in his room. Mother tells him to take some aspirin, but he doesn't. He gets

back in his car and is almost to town when he passes a Ford driven by a man

with a red bow tie. He looks closer and sees Quentin inside. He chases the

Ford through the countryside, his headache growing by the second. Finally

he sees the Ford parked near a field and gets out to look for them; he is

sure they are hiding in the bushes somewhere having sex. The sun slants

directly into his eyes, and his headache is pounding so hard he can't think

straight. He reaches the place where he thinks they are, then hears a car

start up behind him and drive off, the horn honking. He returns to his own

car and sees that they have let the air out of one of his tires. He has to

walk to the nearest farm to borrow a pump to blow it back up.

He returns to town, stopping in a drugstore to get a shot for his headache

and the telegraph office; he has lost $200 on the stock market. Then he

goes back to the store. A telegram has arrived from his stockbroker,

advising him to sell. Instead he writes back to the broker, telling him he

will buy. The store closes, and he drives home to the sounds of the band

playing. At home, Quentin and Mother are fighting upstairs, and Luster asks

him for a quarter to go to the show. Jason replies that he has two tickets

already that he won't be using. Luster begs him for one, but he tells him

he will only sell it to him for a nickel. Luster replies that he has no

money, and Jason burns the tickets in the fireplace. Dilsey puts supper on

the table for him and tells him that Quentin and Mother won't be coming to

dinner.

Jason insists that they come unless they are actually sick. They come

down. At dinner, he offers Quentin an extra piece of meat and tells her and

Mother that he lent his car to a stranger who needed to chase around one of

his relatives who was running around with a town woman. Quentin looks

guilty. Finally she stands up and says that if she is bad, it is only

because Jason made her bad. She runs off and slams the door. Mother

comments that she got all of Caddy's bad traits and all of Quentin's too;

Jason takes this to mean that Mother thinks Quentin is the child of Caddy

and her brother's incestuous relationship. They finish dinner, and Mother

locks Quentin into her room for the night. Jason retires to his room for

the night, still ruminating on the "dam New York jew" that is taking all of

his money (263).

Analysis of April Sixth, 1928:

Jason's section appears more readable and more conventional; its style,

while still stream-of-consciousness, is more chronological in progression,

with very few jumps in time. It reads more like a monologue than a string

of loosely connected events, like Benjy's and Quentin's sections were.

Critics have claimed that the book progresses from chaos to order, from

timelessness to chronology, from pure sensation to logical order, and from

interiority to exteriority as it travels from Benjy's world of bright

shapes and confused time through Jason's rigorously ordered universe to the

third-person narrative of the fourth section. This third section represents

a shift into the public world from the anguished interiority of Benjy and

Quentin, and a shift into "normal" novelistic narrative as Jason recounts

the story of the events of the day.

The first sentence of each section reveals a lot about the tone and themes

of that particular part; this is especially true with Quentin's and Jason's

section. In Quentin's section, the first sentence draws the reader into his

obsession with being caught "in time" and includes two of the most common

symbols in the section: time and shadows. Jason's section begins "once a

bitch always a bitch, what I say," introducing both Jason's irrational

anger not only toward his sister and her daughter, but toward the world in

general, and also the rigorous logic that runs through this section (180).

Jason's world is dominated by logic. Once a bitch, always a bitch; like

mother, like daughter. Caddy was a whore, so is her daughter. He is furious

at Caddy for ruining his chances at getting a job, and the way she ruined

his chances was to bear an illegitimate daughter; therefore the way he will

get revenge on her and simultaneously recoup the money he lost is through

this same daughter. Caddy should have gotten him a job, but instead she had

Quentin; therefore it is his right to embezzle the money she sends to

Quentin in order to make up for the money he lost when he lost the job.

Jason's logic takes the form of literalism. Caddy is responsible for

getting him money, no matter where it comes from. She sends money each

month for Quentin's upkeep; he keeps Quentin clothed, housed and fed, so

the money should go to him. He himself claims that he "make[s] it a rule

never to keep a scrap of paper bearing a woman's hand," and yet he keeps

the money from the checks Caddy sends him; this act fits into his system of

logic because he cashes the checks, literally getting rid of her

handwriting while keeping the money. He allows his mother to literally burn

the checks she sends, but only after he has cashed them in secret. When

Caddy gives him 100 dollars to "see [Quentin] a minute" he grants her

request to the letter, holding the baby up to the carriage window as he

drives by, literally allowing Caddy only a minute's glimpse (203-205). When

Luster can't pay him a nickel for tickets to the show, he burns the tickets

rather than give then to him (255). All of these acts fit into a rigid and

literally defined logical order with which Jason structures his life.

Some readers see Jason's logic as a sign that he is more "sane" than the

rest of his family. He is not retarded like Benjy or irrationally

distraught like Quentin. He is able to live his life in a relatively normal

way, with a logical order to both his narrative and his daily activities.

However, Jason is just as blind, just as divorced from reality as his

brothers. Like them, he tries to control his life through a strictly

defined order, and when this is disrupted he collapses into irrationality.

Benjy's system of order is the routine of everyday life, disrupted on a

grand scale when Caddy leaves and on a small scale when Luster turns the

horses the wrong way or changes the arrangement of his "graveyard."

Quentin's system of order is the honor and purity he saw in himself and

Caddy when they were young, disrupted when Caddy loses her virginity and

leaves him. Jason's system of order is the rigidity of his logic, most of

which has to do with money, and with this he tries to control the world

around him. This system is disrupted when he loses his job opportunity

(Quentin gets a career boost in going to Harvard, so should Jason get a

career boost from Herbert Head), and again when Quentin refuses to come to

dinner, skips school, or runs away with his money. For each brother, the

systems he has established help to control everyday life, and the way they

do so is by controlling Caddy. As long as she is motherly to Benjy,

virginal to Quentin, and profftable to Jason, their worlds are in order.

But these controlling mechanisms are inflexible, breaking down entirely as

soon as Caddy or her daughter defies them.

Each brother remains irrationally connected with the past, particularly

with memories of Caddy. Benjy relives his memories of Caddy all the time,

making no distinction between the present and the past. Quentin goes

through the routines of life washed in a sea of memories of Caddy. And

Jason, for all he seems to have cut himself off from her entirely by

refusing to mention her name, is perhaps the closest of all to her. Not

only is he surrounded by reminders of her in the shape of her daughter and

her money, but he is also constantly reminded of her in his anger. It has

been eighteen years since she lost him his job opportunity, and yet he

remains as angry with her as he ever was. Certainly this is no way to

forget her, nor is it any more "sane" than his brothers.

Nor is Jason even a particularly good businessman, for all he obsesses

about money. In the course of this one day he loses $200 in the stock

market, for example; he has been warned that the market is in a state of

flux and yet he leaves town on a wild goose chase when he should be

watching the market and deliberately defies his broker's advice by buying

when he should sell. He is rude and spiteful to his boss, which is

certainly not the best way to succeed in business. He buys a car even

though he knows that gasoline gives him headaches. And perhaps the clearest

indication of his bad business sense is the fact that when Quentin steals

his savings in the fourth section, she steals $7000. This is the money that

he has been embezzling from Caddy and Quentin, and Caddy has been sending

him $200 a month for fifteen years. By this point he should have amassed

upwards of $30,000; where did it all go? Even though he thinks of little

else besides money, he is not capable of handling it properly.

Mrs. Compson spends much of the novel telling Jason that he is different

from Quentin and Benjy, that he is a Bascomb at heart. And yet, underneath

the sadism, money-grubbing and isolation, Jason is surprisingly similar to

his brothers. He is just as obsessed with Caddy as they are, and her

sexuality shatters his world just as much as theirs.

Summary of April Eighth, 1928:

The section opens with Dilsey standing on the stoop of her house in her

church clothes, then going back inside to change into her work clothes. It

is raining and gray outside. Dilsey goes into the kitchen and brings some

firewood with her; she can barely walk. She begins to make breakfast and

Mrs. Compson calls her from upstairs; she wants her to fill her hot water

bottle. Dilsey struggles up the stairs to get the hot water bottle, saying

that Luster has overslept after the night's reveries. She goes outside and

calls Luster; he appears from the cellar looking guilty and she tells him

to get some firewood and take care of Benjy. He brings in a huge armful of

firewood and leaves. A while later, Mrs. Compson calls her again, and she

goes out to the stairs. Mrs. Compson wants to know when Luster will be up

to take care of Benjy.

Dilsey begins to slowly climb the stairs again, while Mrs. Compson

inquires whether she had better go down and make breakfast herself. When

Dilsey is halfway up the stairs, Mrs. Compson reveals that Benjy is not

even awake yet, and Dilsey clambers back down. Luster emerges from the

cellar again. She makes him get another armful of wood and go up to tend

Benjy. The clock strikes five times, and Dilsey says "eight o'clock" (274).

Luster appears with Benjy, who is described as big and pale, with white-

blonde hair cut in a child's haircut and pale blue eyes. She sends Luster

up to see if Jason is awake yet; Luster reports that he is up and angry

already because one of the windows in his room is broken. He accuses Luster

of breaking it, but Luster swears he didn't.

Jason and Mrs. Compson come to the table for breakfast. Although Mrs.

Compson usually allows Quentin to sleep in on Sundays, Jason insists that

she come and eat with them now. Dilsey goes upstairs to wake her. Mrs.

Compson tells him that the black servants are all taking the afternoon off

to go to church; the family will have to have a cold lunch. Upstairs Dilsey

calls to Quentin, but receives no answer. Suddenly, Jason springs up and

mounts the stairs, shouting for Quentin. There is still no response and he

comes back down to snatch the key to her room from his mother. He fumbles

at the lock and then finally opens the door. The room is empty. Jason runs

to his own room and begins throwing things out of the closet. Mrs. Compson

looks around Quentin's note for a suicide note, convinced that history is

repeating itself. In his room, Jason finds that his strongbox has been

broken into. He runs to the phone and calls the sheriff, telling him that

he has been robbed, and that he expects the sheriff to get together a posse

of men to help him search for Quentin. He storms out.

Luster comments that he bets Jason beat Quentin and now he is going for the

doctor. Dilsey tells him to take Benjy outside. Luster tells her that he

and Benjy saw Quentin climb out her window and down the pear tree last

night. Dilsey goes back to her cabin and changes into her church clothes

again. She calls for Luster and finds him trying to play a saw like one of

the players did at the show last night. She tells him to get his cap and to

come with her; they meet up with Frony and head to church, Benjy in tow.

Dilsey carries herself with pride among the other blacks, and some of the

children dare each other to touch Benjy. They take their seats as the mass

starts.

The sermon will be delivered by a visiting preacher, Reverend Shegog. The

preachers process in, and Reverend Shegog is so slight and nondescript as

to attract no attention. But when he speaks, he holds their attention.

First he speaks without accent "like a white man," describing the

"recollection and the blood of the Lamb," then when this doesn't have much

of an effect, he modulates into black dialect and delivers the same sermon

again, describing the major events of Jesus' life and his resurrection.

When he finishes, Benjy is rapt with attention and Dilsey is quietly

weeping. As the leave the church, she states "I've seed de first en de last

. . . . I seed de beginning, en now I sees de endin" (297).

They return to the house. Dilsey goes up to Mrs. Compson's room and checks

on her; Mrs. Compson, still convinced that Quentin has killed herself, asks

Dilsey to pick up the Bible that has fallen off the bed. Dilsey goes back

downstairs and prepares lunch for the family, commenting that Jason will

not be joining them.

Meanwhile, Jason is in his car driving to the sheriff's. When he gets

there, nobody is prepared to leave as Jason requested. He enters the

station, and the sheriff tells him that he will not help him find Quentin,

because it was her own money she stole and because Jason drove her away.

Jason drives away toward Mottson, the town where the traveling show will be

next. He begins to get a headache and remembers that he has forgotten to

bring any camphor with him. By the time he gets to Mottson he cannot see

very well; he finds two Pullman cars that belong to the show and he enters

one. Inside is an old man, and he asks him where Quentin and her boyfriend

are. The man becomes angry and threatens him with a knife.

Jason hits him on the head and he slumps to the floor. He runs from the

car, and the old man comes out of the car with a hatchet in his hand. They

struggle, and Jason falls to the ground. Some show people haul him to his

feet and push him away. One of the men tells him that Quentin and her

boyfriend aren't there, that they have left town. Jason goes back to his

car and sits down, but he can't see to drive. He calls to some passing

boys, asking if they will drive him back to Jackson for two dollars; they

refuse. He sits a while longer in the car. A black man in overalls comes up

to him and says that he will drive him for four dollars, but Jason refuses,

then eventually acquiesces.

Back at the house, Luster takes Benjy out to his "graveyard," which

consists of two blue glass bottles with jimson weeds sticking out of them.

Luster hides one of the bottles behind his back, and Benjy starts to howl;

Luster puts it back. He takes Benjy by the golf course and they watch the

men playing. When one of them yells "caddie," Benjy begins to cry again.

Frustrated, Luster repeats Caddy's name over and over, making him cry even

louder. Dilsey calls them and they go to her cabin. Dilsey rocks Benjy and

strokes his hair, telling Luster to go get his favorite slipper. When he

begins to cry again, Dilsey asks Luster where T. P. is (T. P. is supposed

to take Benjy to the graveyard as he does every Sunday). Luster tells her

that he can drive the surrey instead of T. P., and she makes him promise to

be good. They put Benjy into the surrey and hand him a flower to hold, and

Luster climbs into the driver's seat.

Dilsey takes the switch away from him and tells him that the horse knows

the way. As soon as they are out of sight of the house, Luster stops the

horse and picks a switch from the bushes along the road, then climbs back

into the driver's seat, carrying himself like royalty. They approach the

square and pass Jason in his car by the side of the road. Luster, carried

away in his pride, turns the horse to the left of the statue in the square

instead of to the right, breaking the pattern that Benjy is used to. Benjy

begins to howl. As his voice gets louder and louder, Jason comes running

and turns the horse around. When the objects they pass begin to go in the

right direction again, Benjy hushes.

Analysis of April Eighth, 1928:

Readers commonly refer to this section of the novel as "Dilsey's section,"

although it is narrated in the third person. Dilsey plays a prominent role

in this section, and even if she does not narrate this section, she serves

a sort of moral lens through which to view the other characters in the

section and, in fact, in the novel as a whole. The section contrasts

Dilsey's slow, patient progress through the day with Jason's irrational

pursuit of Quentin and Mrs. Compson's self-centered flightiness. As we

watch Dilsey slowly climb up the stairs as Mrs. Compson watches to tend to

Benjy, only to discover halfway up that he isn't even awake yet, we begin

to sympathize with this wizened old woman. As we see her tenderly wiping

Benjy's mouth as he eats, we come to see her as the only truly good person

in the book. Even Caddy, the object of Benjy and Quentin's obsessions, was

not as selflessly kind or as reliable as Dilsey. Throughout the course of

the section, she is witness to any number of the Compson family's flaws,

yet she never judges them.

The only statement she makes that resembles a judgement is her concern that

Luster has inherited the "Compson devilment." Instead she stands calmly in

the midst of the chaos of the disintegrating household, patiently bearing

what she is dealt "like cows do in the rain" (272). Unlike any of the

Compson family, Dilsey is capable of extending outside herself and her own

needs. Each of the brothers is selfish in his own way; Benjy because he

cannot take care of himself and relies on her to, Quentin because he is too

wrapped up in his ideals, Jason because of his greed and anger. Mrs.

Compson is even worse, passive-aggressively manipulating the members of the

family as she lies in her sickbed. And Miss Quentin is too troubled and

lonely to sympathize with anyone else. Dilsey, however, in her kindness,

ungrudgingly takes care of each family member with tenderness and respect.

In her selflessness, Dilsey conforms to the Christian ideal of goodness in

self-sacrifice; therefore it is not surprising that the section takes place

on Easter Sunday. This section of the novel resounds with biblical

allusions and symbols and revolves around the sermon delivered by Reverend

Shegog at Dilsey's church. The sermon profoundly affects Dilsey, who leaves

the church in tears. Perhaps this is because the sermon seems to describe

perfectly the disintegrating Compson family. Benjamin is the youngest son

described as being "sold into Egypt" in the Appendix to the novel; here

Shegog lectures on the Israelites who "passed away in Egypt" (295).

Matthews notes that Jason is a "wealthy pauper" (11), fitting Shegog's

description: "wus a rich man: whar he now, O breddren? Wus a po man: whar

he now, O sistuhn?" (295). He has embezzled thousands of dollars from his

sister, yet he lives like a poor man. Even Mrs. Compson, Matthews claims,

is described in Shegog's sermon: "I hears de weepin en de lamentation of de

po mammy widout de salvation en de word of God" (296). Matthews even

suggests that Quentin is implied in the voice of one congregation member

that rises "like bubbles rising in water" (11).

Much has been made of the religious symbolism in this chapter. Aside from

Shegog's sermon there is Benjy's age: he is 33 years old, the age Christ

was when he died. Like Christ, or like a priest, he is celibate. And he

seems to be one of the only "pure" members of the family, incapable of

doing anything evil merely because of his handicaps. But he is not the only

Christlike member of the family. Quentin, the daughter of the woman whose

brother wanted to remember her as both virginal and motherly, has an

unknown father, just as Christ, the son of the Virgin Mary, had no earthly

father.

Like Christ, Quentin suffers a misunderstood and mistreated existence. But

most compelling is the fact of her disappearance on Easter Sunday. Just as

the disciples found Christ's tomb empty, the wrappings from his body

discarded on the floor, Jason opens Quentin's room to find it empty: "the

bed had not been disturbed. On the floor lay a soiled undergarment of cheap

silk a little too pink, from a half open bureau drawer dangled a silk

stocking" (282). If Quentin is a Christ figure, however, she seems to have

a very un-Christlike effect on her family. Whereas the pure and virginal

Christ's disappearance signaled the end of death and the beginning of new

life in heaven, the promiscuous Quentin's disappearance signals the

destruction of her family.

Other elements of the section seem more apocalyptic: there is Shegog's

name, for instance, which sounds much like the Gog and Magog mentioned in

the Book of Revelation. There is the story's preoccupation with the end of

the Compson family: Jason is the last of the Compsons, and he is childless,

his house literally rotting away. And finally there is Dilsey's comment

that she has seen the first and the last, the beginning and the end:

although the meaning of this statement is unclear, she seems to be

discussing the end of the Compson family as well as her life, and perhaps

the end of the world. Dilsey has borne witness to the alpha and the omega

of the Compson family.

Nevertheless, none of this religious symbolism is particularly well-

developed. It is impossible to tell who, if anyone, is the Christ figure in

this Easter story. It is impossible to know what will happen to Quentin, or

if the family will really dissolve as Dilsey seems to think it will. Nor is

it particularly clear why Reverend Shegog's sermon has such an effect on

Dilsey or what his actual message is; he has seen the recollection and the

blood of the Lamb, but why is this important? What should the congregation

do about it? What can they do in order to see this themselves?

The problem with this last section is that it doesn't satisfactorily bring

the story of the Compson family to a close. The reader is left with a

glimpse of the family's psychology and slow demise, but no real answers, no

redemption. We don't know what will happen to the family or its servants:

will Jason send Benjy to Jackson? Will Dilsey die? Will Quentin get away?

John Matthews has pointed out that the story doesn't really end but keeps

repeating itself.

This is partially due to its nature as a stream-of-consciousness

narrative; none of the three brothers' sections is purely chronological,

therefore when the story ends their memories continue on. Matthews claims

that the fourth section does not "[complete] the shape of the fiction's

form" or "retrospectively order" the rest of the book; in fact it does not

have much to do with the first two sections at all (9). The Compson clock

ticks away toward the family's imminent demise, but it chimes the wrong

hours, mangling the metaphor. Reverend Shegog's sermon does not have the

intended effect, so he modifies it and tells it again: it "succeeds because

it is willing to say, and then say again" (12). The story doesn't end; its

loose ends are not tied together. Instead it constantly repeats. Faulkner

himself said that the novel grew because he wrote the story of Caddy once

(Benjy's section), and that didn't work, so he wrote it again (Quentin's

section), but that wasn't enough either, so he wrote it again (Jason's

section), and finally wrote it again (Dilsey's section), and even this

wasn't good enough. The story of Caddy and the Compsons does not end, but

repeats itself eternally in its characters' memories.

The Streetcar Named ”Desire”

Context

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus,

Mississippi, in 1911. Much of his childhood was spent in St. Louis. The

nickname Tennessee' seems to have been pinned on him in college, in

reference to is father's birthplace or his own deep Southern accent, or

maybe both.Descended from an old and prominent Tennessee family, Williams's

fatherworked at a shoe company and was often away from home. Williams lived

with mother, his sister Rose (who would suffer from mental illness and

later undergo a lobotomy), and his maternal grandparents.

At sixteen, Williams won $5 in a national competition for his essay, "Can a

Wife be a Good Sport?," published in Smart Set. The next year he published

his first story in Weird Tales. Soon after, he entered the University of

Missouri, where he wrote his first play. He withdrew from the university

before receiving his degree, and went to work at his father's shoe company.

After entering and dropping out of Washington University, Williams

graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938. He continued to work on

drama, receiving a Rockefeller grant and studying play writing at The New

School in Manhattan. During the early years of World War Two, Williams

worked in Hollywood as a scriptwriter.

In 1944, The Glass Menagerie opened in New York, won the prestigious New

York Critics' Circle Award, and catapulted Williams into the upper echelon

of American playwrights. Two years later, A Streetcar Named Desire cemented

his reputation, garnering another Critics' Circle and adding a Pulitzer

Prize. He would win another Critics' Circle and Pulitzer for Cat on a Hot

Tin Roof in 1955.

Tennessee Williams mined his own life for much of the pathos in his drama.

His most memorable characters (many of them complex females, such as

Blanche DuBois) contain recognizable elements of their author or people

close to him. Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness in search

of purpose, and insanity were all part of Williams's world. Certainly his

experience as a known homosexual in an era and culture unfriendly to

homosexuality informed his work. His setting was the South, yet his themes

were universal and compellingly enough rendered to win him an international

audience and worldwide acclaim. In later life, as most critics agree, the

quality of his work diminished. He sufiered a long period of depression

after the death of his longtime partner in 1963. Yet his writing career was

long and prolific: twenty-five full-length plays, five screenplays, over

seventy one act plays, hundreds of short stories, two novels, poetry, and a

memoir. Five of his plays were made into movies.

Williams died of choking in an alcohol-related incident in 1983.

Characters

Blanche { Stella's older sister, until recently a high school English

teacher in Laurel, Mississippi. She arrives in New Orleans a loquacious,

witty, arrogant, fragile, and ultimately crumbling figure. Blanche once was

married to and passionately in love with a tortured young man. He killed

himself after she discovered his homosexuality, and she has sufiered from

guilt and regret ever since. Blanche watched parents and relatives{all the

old guard{die off, and then had to endure foreclosure on the family estate.

Cracking under the strain, or perhaps yielding to urges so long suppressed

that they now cannot be contained, Blanche engages in a series of sexual

escapades that trigger an expulsion from her community. In New Orleans she

puts on the airs of a woman who has never known indignity, but Stanley sees

through her. Her past catches up with her and destroys her relationship

with Mitch. Stanley, as she fears he might, destroys what's left of her. At

the end of the play she is led away to an insane asylum.

Stella Kowalski { Blanche's younger sister, with the same timeworn

aristocratic heritage, but who has jumped the sinking ship and linked her

life with lower-class vitality. Her union with Stanley is animal and

spiritual, violent but renewing. She cannot really explain it to Blanche.

While she loves her older sister, and pities her, she cannot bring herself

to believe Blanche's accusation against Stanley. Though it is agony, she

has her sister committed.

Stanley Kowalski { Stanley is the epitome of vital force. He is a man in

the ush of life, a lover of women, a worker, a fighter, new blood{a chief

male of the ock, with his tail feathers fanned and brilliant. He is loyal

to his friends, passionate to his wife, and heartlessly cruel to Blanche.

Mitch { An army buddy, coworker, and poker buddy of Stanley. He is the

sensitive member of that crowd, perhaps because he lives with his slowly-

dying mother. Mitch and Blanche are both people in need of companionship

and support. Though Mitch is of Stanley's world, and Blanche is off in her

own world, the two believe they have found an acceptable companion in the

other. Mitch woos Blanche over the course of the summer until Stanley

reveals secrets about Blanche's past.

Eunice { Stella's friend and landlady. Lives above the Kowalskis with

Steve.

Steve { Poker buddy of Stanley. Lives upstairs with Eunice.

Pablo { Poker buddy of Stanley.

A Negro Woman { Two brief appearances. She is sitting on the steps talking

to Eunice when Blanche arrives. Later, in the 'real-world-struggle-for-

existence' sequence, she ri es through a prostitute's abandoned handbag.

A Doctor { Comes to the door at the play's finale to whisk Blanche off to

an asylum. After losing a struggle with the nurse, Blanche willingly goes

with the kindly-seeming doctor.

A Nurse { Comes with the doctor to collect Blanche and bring her to an

institution. A matronly, unfeminine figure with a talent for subduing

hysterical patients.

A Young Collector { A young man (seventeen, perhaps), who comes to the door

to collect for the newspaper. Blanche lusts after him but constrains

herself to irtation and a passionate farewell kiss. The boy leaves

bewildered.

A Mexican woman { A vendor of Mexican funeral decorations who frightens

Blanche by issuing the plaintive call: Flores para los muertos. The Mexican

woman later reprises this role in the underrated comedy Quick Change

(1990), starring Bill Murray and Geena Davis.

Summary

Stanley and Stella Kowalski live on a street called Elysian Fields in a run-

down but charming section of New Orleans. They are newly married and

desperately in love. One day Stella's older sister, Blanche DuBois, arrives

to stay with them, setting up the drama's central con ict: an emotional tug-

of-war between the raw, brute sensuality of Stanley and the fragile,

crumbling gentility of Blanche. Truth be told, it is not an even match, for

Blanche is already sliding down a slippery slope. Blanche and Stella are

the last in a line of landed Southern gentry. Stella has renounced the worn

dictates of class propriety to follow her heart and marry an uncultured

blue-collar worker of Polish extraction. Meanwhile, Blanche has played

nursemaid to the old guard on its deathbed and watched the family estate

slip through her fingers into foreclosure. Her professed values are those

of an older South, of charm and wit and chivalry, gaiety and light,

appearance and code.

Blanche claims she has been given a leave of absence from her high school

teaching job to recover from a nervous breakdown. She settles in with the

Kowalskis but things do not go smoothly. Her disapproval of Stanley and the

station in life her sister Stella has chosen is obvious, though she strives

to be polite. Her feelings against Stanley are galvanized when she

witnesses him strike Stella in a fit of drunken rage. Stanley's feelings

for her are similarly hardened when he overhears her describe him as animal-

like, neolithic, and brutish. Blanche's imposition, her airs, and her

distortions of reality infuriate Stanley. He begins to chip away at her

thin veneer of armor.

Of Stella's and Stanley's friends, one seems to stand above the rest in

sensitivity and grace. This is Mitch, who works at the same factory as

Stanley, and lives with his sick mother. He has no refinement, but his

native gentleness and sincerity inspire Blanche to return his afiection.

The two seem to need each other They see a great deal of one another as the

summer wears on, but Blanche places strict limits on their intimacy. She

has old-fashioned ideals and morals, she tells him. Meanwhile, Stella's

first pregnancy progresses and Stanley continues his subtle campaign of

intimidation against Blanche.

Blanche's past catches up with her. When she was younger, she fell in love

with and married a man whom she later caught in bed with another man. When

she confronted him, he killed himself for shame. This knocked the

foundations out from under her, and the subsequent poverty and emotional

hardships were too much for her. She sought solace or oblivion in the

intimacy of strangers; apparently many intimacies with many strangers, and

a disastrous afiair with a seventeen- year-old student at her high school.

Blanche departed Mississippi in disgrace and arrived in New Orleans with

nowhere else to go. Stanley discovers this sordid account. He tells Mitch

and efiectively ends the budding relationship. For Blanche's birthday,

Stanley presents her with a one-way bus ticket back to Mississippi. And

then, while Stella is in labor at the hospital, Stanley rapes Blanche.

Stella cannot believe the story Blanche tells her about the man she loves.

And Blanche's grasp on reality is otherwise shattered. So, with supreme

remorse, Stella has Blanche committed. In the final scene of the play,

Stella sobs in agony and the rest look on indifierently as a doctor and a

nurse lead Blanche away.

Scene 1 Summary

The scene is the exterior of a corner building on a street called Elysian

Fields, in a poor section of New Orleans with "rafish charm." The building

has two ats: upstairs live Steve and Eunice, downstairs Stanley and Stella.

Voices and the bluesy notes of an old piano emanate from an unseen bar

around the corner. It is early May, evening.

Eunice and a Negro woman are relaxing on the steps of the building when

Stanley and Mitch show up. Stanley hollers for Stella, who comes out onto

the first oor landing. Stanley hurls a package of meat up to her. He and

Mitch are going to meet Steve at the bowling alley; Stella soon follows to

watch them. Eunice and the Negro woman in particular find something

humorously suggestive in the meat-hurling episode.

Soon after Stella leaves, her sister Blanche arrives with a suitcase,

looking with disbelief at a slip of paper in her hand and then at the

building. She is "daintily" dressed and moves tentatively, looking and

apparently feeling out of place in this neighborhood. Eunice assures her

that this is where Stella lives. The Negro woman goes to the bowling alley

to tell Stella of her sister's arrival while Eunice lets Blanche into the

two-room at. Eunice makes small talk. We learn that Blanche is from

Mississippi, that she is a teacher, that her family estate is called Belle

Reve. Blanche finally asks to be left alone.

Eunice, somewhat offended, leaves to help fetch Stella. Blanche, trying to

control her discomfort, nerves, and whatever else, spies a bottle of

whiskey and downs a shot.

Stella returns. The women embrace, and Blanche talks feverishly, nearly

hysterical. Blanche is clearly critical of the physical and social setting

in which Stella lives. She tries to check her criticism, but the reunion

begins on a tense and probably familiar note. Blanche tells Stella that she

has been given a leave of absence from school due to her nerves, and that

is why she is here in the middle of the term. She wants Stella to tell her

how she looks, and in return comments on Stella's plumpness. She fusses

over Stella, is surprised to learn Stella has no maid, takes another drink,

worries about the privacy and decency of her staying in the apartment when

Stella and Stanley are in the next room with no door, and worries whether

Stanley will like her.

Stella warns Blanche that Stanley is very difierent from the men with whom

Blanche is familiar back home. She is quite clearly deeply in love with

him. In an outburst that builds to a crescendo of hysteria, Blanche reveals

that she has lost Belle Reve and recounts how she sufiered through the

agonizingly slow deaths of their parents and relatives{all while, according

to Blanche, Stella was in bed with her "Polack." Stella finally cuts her

off, then leaves the room, crying. Blanche begins to apologize, but the men

are returning.

They discuss plans for tomorrow's poker night, then break up. Stanley

enters the apartment and sizes Blanche up. The two make small talk, with

Stanley in the lead and Blanche reacting. Stanley asks what happened to

Blanche's marriage. Blanche replies haltingly that the "boy" died. She sits

down and declares that she feels ill.

Scene 2 Summary

Six o'clock the following day. Blanche is taking a bath. Stella tells

Stanley to be kind to Blanche because she has undergone the ordeal of

losing Belle Reve (the family estate). Stanley is more interested in what

happened to the proceeds of the supposed sale. He thinks Stella has been

swindled out of her rightful share, which means that he has been swindled.

Angrily he pulls all of Blanche's belongings out of her trunk, looking for

a bill of sale. To him, Blanche's somewhat tawdry clothing and rhinestone

jewelry look like finery{all that remains of the estate's value. Enraged at

Stanley's actions, Stella storms out onto the porch.

Blanche finishes her bath. She sends Stella out to the drug store to buy a

soda while she and Stanley have their discussion. With her blend of

irtation, nonsense, sincerity, and desperation, Blanche manages to disarm

Stanley and convince him that no fraud has been perpetrated against anyone.

Blanche is horrified when Stanley opens and begins to read the old letters

and love poems from her husband. Stanley lets slip that Stella is going to

have a baby. Stella returns from the drugstore and some of the men arrive

for their poker game. Exhilarated by the news of Stella's pregnancy and by

her own handling of the situation with Stanley, Blanche follows Stella for

their girls' night out.

Scene 3 Summary

It's two-thirty a.m. the same night. Steve, Pablo, Mitch, and Stanley are

playing poker in the Kowalski's kitchen. Their patter goes back and forth,

heavy with testosterone. Stella and Blanche return and Stella makes in-

troductions. Blanche immediately determines something "superior to the

others" in Mitch; Mitch's awkwardness seems to indicate an attraction on

his part, as well.

Stella and Blanche share a sisterly chat in the back room while the poker

game continues. Stanley, drunk, hollers at them to be quiet. Blanche turns

on the radio, which again rouses Stanley's ire. The other men enjoy the

rhumba, but Stanley springs up and shuts off the radio. He and Blanche

stare each other down. Mitch skips the next hand and goes to the bathroom.

Waiting for Stella to finish, he and Blanche talk. Blanche is a little

drunk, too. They discuss Mitch's sick mother, the sincerity of sick and

sorrowful people, and the inscription on Mitch's cigarette case. Blanche

claims that she is actually younger than Stella. She asks Mitch to put a

Chinese lantern she has bought over the naked bulb. As they talk Stanley is

growing more annoyed at Mitch's absence. Stella leaves the bathroom and

Blanche impulsively turns the radio back on. Stanley leaps up, rushes to

the radio, and hurls it out the window.

Stella yells at Stanley and he begins to beat her. The men pull him off.

Blanche takes Stella and some clothes to Eunice's apartment upstairs.

Stanley goes limp and seems confused, but when the men try to force him

into the shower to sober him up he fights them off. They grab their

winnings and leave.

Stanley stumbles out of the bathroom, calling for Stella. He phones

upstairs, then phones again, before hurling the phone to the oor. Half-

dressed he stumbles out to the street and calls for her again and again:

"STELL- LAHHHHH!" Eunice gives him a piece of her mind, but to no avail.

Finally, Stella slips out of the apartment and down to where Stanley is.

They stare at each other and then rush together with "animal moans." He

falls to his knees, caresses her face and belly, then lifts her up and

carries her into their at.

Blanche emerges from Eunice's at, looking for Stella. She stops short at

the entrance to the downstairs at. Mitch returns and tells her not to

worry, that the two are crazy about each other. He offers her a cigarette.

She thanks him for his kindness.

Scene 4 Summary

Early the next morning, Stella lies serenely in the bedroom, her face

aglow. Blanche, who has not slept, enters the apartment. She demands to

know how Stella could go back and spend the night with Stanley after what

he did to her. Stella feels Blanche is making a big issue out of nothing.

Yet Blanche goes on about how she must figure out a way to get them both

out of this situation, how she recently ran into an old friend who struck

it rich in oil, and perhaps he would be able to help them. Stella pays

little attention to what Blanche says; she has no desire to leave. She says

that Blanche merely saw Stanley at his worst. Blanche feels she saw at his

most characteristic{and this is what terrifies her.

Blanche simply cannot understand how a woman raised in Belle Reve could

choose to live her life with a man who has "not one particle" of a

gentleman in him, about whom there is "something downright{bestial..."

Stella's reply is that "there are things that happen between a man and a

woman in the dark{that sort of make everything else seem{unimportant." This

is just desire, says Blanche, and not a basis for marriage.

A train approaches, and while it roars past Stanley enters the at unheard.

Not knowing that Stanley is listening, Blanche holds nothing back.

She describes him as common, an animal, ape-like, a primitive brute. Stella

listens coldly. Under cover of another passing train, Stanley slips out of

the apartment, then enters it noisily. Stella runs to Stanley and embraces

him fiercely. Stanley grins at Blanche.

Scene 5 Summary

It is mid-August. Stella and Blanche are in the bedroom. Blanche finishes

writing an utterly fabricated letter to the old friend she recently ran

into, then bursts into laughter. She reads from the letter to Stella,

breaking off when the noise of Steve and Eunice's fighting upstairs grows

too loud. Eunice storms off to a bar around the corner. Nursing a bruise on

his forehead, Steve follows her. Stanley enters the apartment in full

bowling regalia. He is rude to Blanche and insinuates some knowledge of her

past. Finally, he asks her if she knows a certain man. This man often

travels to Blanche's town, and claims she was often a client of a

disreputable hotel. Blanche denies it, insisting the man must have confused

her with someone else. Stanley says he'll have the man check on it. He

heads off to the bar, telling Stella to meet him there.

Blanche is shaken to the core by Stanley's remarks. Stella doesn't seem to

take much notice. Blanche demands to know what Stella has heard about her,

what people have been saying. Stella doesn't know what she's talking about.

Blanche admits she was not "so good" the last two years, as she was losing

Belle Reve. She quite lucidly describes herself as soft, dependent, reliant

on Chinese lanterns and light colors. She admits that she no longer has the

youth or beauty to glow in the soft light. Stella doesn't want to hear her

talk like this.

Stella brings Blanche a drink. She likes to wait on Blanche; it reminds her

of their childhood. Blanche becomes hysterical, promising to leave soon,

before Stanley throws her out. Stella calms her for a moment, but when she

accidentally spills her drink slightly on her skirt, Blanche begins to

shriek.

She is shaking and tries to laugh it off. At last she admits that she is

nervous about her relationship with Mitch. She has been very prim and

proper with him; she wants his respect, but doesn't want him to lose

interest. She wants him very badly, needs him as a stabilizing force.

Stella assures her that it will happen. She kisses her older sister and

runs off to meet Stanley.

Blanche sits alone in the apartment and waits. A young man comes to the

door collecting for the newspaper. Blanche irts with him, offers him a

drink, and generally works her wiles. The young man is very nervous and

would like to leave. Blanche declares that he looks like an Arabian prince.

She kisses him on the lips then sends him on his way. "I've got to be

good," she says, "and keep my hands off children." A few moments later,

Mitch appears with a bunch of roses. She accepts them irtatiously while he

glows.

Scene 6 Summary

Two a.m. the same night. Blanche and Mitch appear. She is exhausted, he

seems a bit depressed. Mitch apologizes for not giving her much

entertainment this evening, but Blanche says it was her fault. She reveals

that she will be leaving soon. They discuss a goodnight kiss and the other

night by the lake when Mitch tried for a bit more "familiarity." Blanche

explains that a single girl must keep her urges under control or else she

is "lost." Perhaps he is used to woman who like to be lost on the first

date. Mitch says he likes her simply because she is difierent from anyone

he has ever met. Blanche laughs and invites him in for a nightcap.

Blanche lights a candle and prepares drinks. Mitch remains standing

awkwardly. He won't take his coat off because he's embarrassed about his

perspiration. They discuss Mitch's imposing physique, her slighter one, and

this leads to a brief and somewhat clumsy embrace. Blanche stops him,

claiming she has "old-fashioned ideals" (she rolls her eyes as she offers

this gem, but he cannot see her face). After an awkward silence, Mitch asks

where Stanley and Stella are, and why the four of them never go out

together.

Blanche expresses her conviction that Stanley hates her. Mitch thinks that

Stanley simply doesn't understand her. Blanche knows it's more than that,

that he wants to destroy her.

Mitch asks Blanche how old she is. He has told his ailing mother about

Blanche, but could not tell her how old Blanche was. His mother is not long

for the world and wants to see him settled. Blanche says she understands

how he will miss his mother when she's gone. She understands what it is to

be lonely. She gives a revealing account of what happened with the tender

young man she married. She loved him terribly but somehow it didn't seem to

be enough to save him from whatever it was that tormented him. Then one day

she came home to find her young husband in bed with an older man who had

been his longtime friend. At first they all pretended nothing happened.

They went out to a casino together, the three of them. On the dance floor

she drunkenly confronted him, telling him he disgusted her. Then the boy

rushed out of the casino and everyone heard a shot. He killed himself.

Mitch comes to her and holds her, comforting her. "You need somebody. And I

need somebody, too," he says. "Could it be{you and me, Blanche?" They kiss,

even as she sobs. "Sometimes{there's God{so quickly," she says.

Scene 7 Summary

Late afternoon, mid-September. Stella is decorating for Blanche's birthday.

Stanley comes in. Blanche is in the bathroom, bathing, and Stanley mocks

her to Stella. He tells Stella to sit down and listen because he's got the

dirt on Blanche now. As Blanche, unconcerned, sings "It's Only a Paper

Moon," Stanley gleefully recounts to Stella how Blanche earned a notorious

reputation at the Flamingo hotel and was asked to leave (presumably for

immoral behavior unacceptable even by the standards of that establishment).

She came to be regarded as "nuts" by the town and was declared 'off-limits'

to soldiers at a nearby base. She was not given a leave of absence by her

school; she was kicked out for having a relationship with a seventeen-year-

old boy.

Stella defends her sister. She's not convinced this story is true{certainly

not all of it. Stanley tells Stella not to expect Mitch for the birthday

dinner. He has told Mitch all he heard, and there's no way Mitch will marry

her now.

Stanley has bought Blanche a birthday present: a one-way bus ticket back to

Laurel, Mississippi. He yells at Blanche to get out of the bathroom. She

emerges at last, in high spirits. But Stanley's face as he passes by gives

her a fright. And the dazed way that Stella responds to her chatter alerts

her that something is wrong. She asks Stella what has happened, but Stella

can only feebly lie that nothing has.

Scene 8 Summary

Three quarters of an hour later, the birthday dinner is winding down. The

place set for Mitch is empty. It has obviously been a strained meal.

Blanche tries to break the gloomy silence by asking Stanley to tell a

story. He declines. So Blanche tells one herself- -a lame joke involving a

priest and a swearing parrot. Stanley pointedly does not laugh. Instead, he

reaches across the table for a chop and eats it with his fingers. Stella

scolds him. He smashes his plate, declares that he is sick and tired of

being called "pig Polack disgusting vulgar greasy!" He is the king of this

house. He smashes his cup and saucer and storms out onto the porch. Blanche

again asks Stella what happened while she was taking a bath. What did

Stanley tell Stella about her? Nothing, Stella says, but she is clearly

upset.

Although Stella implores her not to, Blanche calls Mitch's house to find

out why he stood her up. Mitch is not home. Stella goes to Stanley out on

the porch. They embrace, and Stanley promises her things will be all right

again after the baby comes and Blanche leaves. Stella goes back inside and

lights the candles. Blanche and Stanley join her. Stanley's patent ill will

produces another tense exchange with Blanche. One of Stanley's bowling

buddies calls up. While he's on the phone, Stanley unnecessarily yells at

Blanche to be quiet. She tries her best to control her nerves. Stanley

returns to the table, and with a thin veneer of kindness offers Blanche a

birthday envelope. She is surprised and delighted|until she opens it and

Stanley declares its contents: a one-way ticket back to Laurel, Mississippi

on a Greyhound bus, leaving Tuesday.

Blanche tries to smile, tries to laugh, runs to the bedroom, and then to

the bathroom, clutching her throat and making gagging noises, as if

Stanley's cruelty has literally taken her breath away. Stanley, pleased

with himself and his just actions (considering, he says, "all I took off

her"), prepares to go bowling. But Stella demands to know why Stanley has

treated Blanche so callously. He reminds her that Stella thought he was

common when they first met, but that he took her off her pedestal and

things were wonderful until Blanche arrived. While he speaks, a sudden

change comes over Stella.

She slowly shufies from the bedroom to the kitchen, then quietly asks to be

taken to the hospital. Stanley is with her in an instant, speaking softly

as he leads her out the door.

Scene 9 Summary

Later the same evening, a scarlet-robed Blanche sits tensely on a bedroom

chair. On a nearby table are a bottle of liquor and a glass. We hear polka

music, but not from the radio: it's playing in her own head. She is

drinking, we are told in the stage directions, not to think about impending

disaster.

Mitch appears in work clothes, unshaven, making no attempt to play the

gentleman caller. He rings the doorbell and startles Blanche. She asks who

it is, and when he replies, the polka music stops. She frantically scurries

about, applying powder to her face, stashing the liquor in a closet, before

letting him in with a cheerful reprimand. Mitch walks right past her

proffered lips into the apartment. Blanche is frightened but takes it in

stride. She continues in her light and airy mode, scolding him for his

appearance and forgiving him in the same breath. Mitch stares at her,

clearly a bit drunk. He asks her to turn off the fan; she does so. She

offers him a drink, but Mitch doesn't want Stanley's liquor. She backs off,

but the polka music begins again. It's the same tune that was played, she

says out loud, when Allen (her husband)...She breaks off, waiting for the

gunshot. It comes, and the music subsides. Mitch has no idea what she's

talking about.

Blanche goes to the closet and pretends to discover the bottle. She takes

her charade so far as to ask out loud what Southern Comfort is. Mitch does

not bite, but bides his time, getting up the nerve to say what he has come

to say. Blanche tells Mitch to take his foot off the bed, and goes on about

the liquor. Mitch again declines. Stanley has complained to him that

Blanche drinks all of his liquor. At last Blanche asks point blank what is

on his mind.

Mitch says it's dark in the room. He has never seen her in the light, never

in the afternoon. She has always made excuses on Sunday afternoons, only

gone out with him after six, and then never to well-lit places. He's never

had a good look at her. Mitch tears the paper lantern off the lightbulb. He

wants a dose of realism. "I don't want realism, I want magic," replies

Blanche. "I try to give that to people... I don't tell truth, I tell what

ought to be truth.

And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it." She begs him not to

turn the light on. He turns it on. She lets out a cry. He turns it off.

Mitch is not so concerned about her age; what he can't stomach is the

garbage and excuses about her morals and old-fashioned ideals that he's

been forced to swallow all summer. Blanche tries to defend herself, but

Mitch has heard stories about her from three difierent sources and is

convinced. She breaks, and admits the truth through convulsive sobs and

shots of liquor.

She had many intimacies with strangers. She panicked after Allan's death,

did not know she what she was doing and eventually ended up in trouble with

the seventeen-year-old. She found hope when she met Mitch, but the past

caught up with her. "You lied to me, Blanche," is all Mitch can say. In her

heart she never lied to him, Blanche replies. Mitch is unmoved.

A blind Mexican woman comes around the corner with bunches of tin owers

used at Mexican funerals. "Flores. Flores para los muertos," the woman

intones. (Flowers. Flowers for the dead.) Blanche goes to the door, opens

it, sees and hears the woman (who calls to her and offers her owers), and

slams the door, terrified. The woman moves slowly down the street, calling.

We hear the polka tune again.

Blanche begins to speak as if she were thinking out loud. Her lines are

punctuated by the Mexican woman's calls. Her tortured soliloquy mentions

regrets, legacies, death, her dying parents, death and agony everywhere,

desire as the opposite of death, the soldiers from the nearby camp who

staggered drunkenly onto her lawn and called for her while her deaf mother

slept. The polka music fades. Wanting what he's been waiting for all

summer, Mitch walks up to her, places his hands on her waist and tries to

embrace her.

Blanche says he must marry her first. Mitch doesn't want to marry her; he

does not think she's fit to live in the same house as his mother. Blanche

orders him to leave. When he does not move, she threatens to scream 'Fire.'

He still does not leave, so she screams out the window. Mitch hurries out.

Scene 10 Summary

A few hours have elapsed since Mitch's departure. Blanche's trunk is out in

the middle of the bedroom. She has been packing, drinking, trying on

clothes and speaking to imaginary admirers. Stanley enters the apartment,

slams the door and gives a low whistle when he sees Blanche. Blanche asks

about her sister. The baby won't be born until tomorrow, says Stanley. It's

just the two of them at home tonight.

Stanley asks why Blanche is all dressed up. She tells him that she has just

received a telegram from an old admirer inviting her to join him on his

yacht in the Caribbean. It was the oil millionaire she met again in Miami.

Stanley plays along. In high spirits, he opens a bottle of beer on the

corner of the table and pours the foam on his head. He offers her a sip but

she declines.

He goes to the bedroom to find his special pajamas top in anticipation of

the good news from the hospital. Blanche keeps talking, feverishly working

herself up as she describes what a gentleman this man is and how he merely

wants the companionship of an intelligent, spirited, tender, cultured

woman.

She may be poor financially, but she is rich in these qualities. And she

has been foolishly lavishing these offerings on those who do not deserve

them{ as she puts it, casting her pearls before swine. Stanley's amicable

mood evaporates.

Blanche claims that she sent Mitch away after he repeated slanderous lies

that Stanley had told him. He came groveling back, with roses and

apologies, but in vain. She cannot forgive "deliberate cruelty," and

realistically the two of them are too difierent in attitude and upbringing

for it ever to work.

Stanley cuts in with a question that trips up her improvisation. Then he

launches an attack, tearing down her make-believe world point by point. She

can make no reply but, "Oh!" He finishes with a disdainful laugh and walks

through the bedroom on into the bathroom. Frightening shadows and re

ections appear in the room. Blanche goes to the phone and tries to make a

call to her "admirer." She does not know his number or his address. The

operator hangs up; Blanche leaves the phone off the hook and walks into the

kitchen.

The special efiects continue: inhuman voices, terrifying shadows. A strange

scene takes place on a sidewalk beyond the back wall of the rooms (which

has suddenly become transparent). A drunkard and a prostitute scufie until

a police whistle sounds and they disappear. Soon thereafter the Negro woman

comes around the corner ri ing through the prostitute's purse.

Blanche returns to the phone and whispers to the operator to connect her to

Western Union. She tries to send a telegraph: "In desperate, desperate

circumstances. Help me! Caught in a trap. Caught in{".... She breaks off

when Stanley emerges from the bathroom in his special pajamas. He stares at

her, grinning. Then crosses over to the phone and replaces it on the hook.

Still grinning, he steps between Blanche and the door. She asks him to move

and he takes one step to the side. She asks him to move further away but he

will not. The jungle voices well up again as he slowly advances towards

her. Blanche tells him to stay back but he continues towards her. She backs

away, grabs a bottle, and smashes the end of it on the table. He jumps at

her, grabs her arm when she swings at him, and forces her to drop the

bottle.

"We've had this date from the beginning," he says. She sinks to her knees.

He picks her up and carries her to the bed.

Scene 11 Summary

A few weeks later. Stella is packing Blanche's belongings while Blanche

takes a bath. Stella has been crying. The men are assembled in the kitchen

playing poker. Of them, only Mitch does not seem to be in the usual card-

playing bull and bravado mood. Eunice comes downstairs and enters the

apartment.

Eunice calls them callous and goes over to Stella. Stella tells Eunice she

is not sure she did the right thing. She told Blanche that they had

arranged for her to stay in the country, and Blanche seemed to think it had

to do with her millionaire admirer. Stella couldn't believe the story

Blanche told her about the rape and still continue her life with Stanley.

Eunice comforts her.

It was the only thing Stella could do, and she should never believe the

story. "Life has got to go on," Eunice says.

The men continue playing poker. Blanche emerges from the bathroom to the

strains of the by-now familiar waltz. Stella and Eunice are gentle and

complimenting; Blanche has a slightly unhinged vivacity. The sound of

Blanche's voice sends Mitch into a daydream until Stanley snaps him out of

it. Stanley's voice from the kitchen stuns Blanche. She remains still for a

few moments, then with a rising hysteria demands to know what is going on.

The women quiet and soothe her and the men restrain Stanley from

interfering.

She is appeased for the moment, but anxious to leave. The other women

convince her to wait a moment yet. Blanche goes into a reverie, imagining

her death at sea from food poisoning with a handsome young ship's doctor at

her side.

The doctor and nurse arrive. Eunice goes to see who's at the door. Blanche

waits tensely, hoping that it is Shep Huntleigh, her millionaire savior.

Eunice returns and announces that someone is calling for Blanche. The waltz

begins again. Blanche and Stella pass through the kitchen and cross to the

door. The poker players stand as she passes, except for Mitch, who stares

at the table. When Blanche steps out onto the porch and sees the doctor,

and not Shep Huntleigh, she retreats to where Stella is standing, then

slips back into the apartment. Inside, Stanley steps up to block her way.

Blanche rushes around him, claiming she forgot something, as the weird re

ections and shadows return. The doctor sends the nurse in after her. What

follows is a wrenching capture scene, which Stella cannot bear to watch.

She rushes to the porch, where Eunice goes to comfort her. The nurse

succeeds in pinning Blanche. The doctor enters, and at Blanche's soft

request tells the nurse to release her. The doctor leads her out of the

bedroom, she holding onto his arm.

"Whoever you are," she says, "I have always depended on the kindness of

strangers." The doctor leads her through the kitchen as the poker players

look on. They head out the door and onto the porch. Stella, now crouched on

the porch in agony, calls out her sister's name. Blanche, allowing herself

to be led onward, does not turn to look at Stella. Doctor, nurse, and

Blanche turn the corner and disappear. Eunice brings the baby to Stella and

thrusts it into her arms, then goes to the kitchen to join the men. Stanley

goes out onto the porch and over to Stella, who sobs over her child. He

comforts her and begins to caress her. In the kitchen, Steve deals a new

hand.

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