欲望号街车象征

姓名：鄢子雅 班级：英语师范101 学号：1007012029

Analysis of symbolism in A Streetcar Named Desire

关于《欲望号街车》中象征主义的分析

Abstract：A Streetcar Named Desire is one of Tennessee Williams’s most popular plays and he is famous for this masterpiece. He uses a lot of symbolism to express the theme in the play. The purpose of this paper is to explore the specific symbolism in the play and to remind readers that although human’s life has become abundant, people need to prevent spiritual and moral decaying. The author probes into the research from three aspects: the Overall use of symbolism in the play, main symbols in the play and effects of symbolism on the theme of the play. During the research, the author mainly uses the methods of description and illustrating with examples. Key words: symbolism gender conflict flower water theme

摘要：田纳西·威廉斯是美国当代最著名的剧作家之一，被公认为是第二次世界大战以来美国最优秀的戏剧大师。《欲望号街车》是他的最著名的剧作之一。在这篇戏剧中，他运用了大量的象征手法来凸显主题。这篇论文是为了更好地研究象征主义在《欲望号街车》中的具体应用，以及通过这篇论文去警醒世人：尽管人们的物质生活丰盈了很多，避免道德精神沦丧仍然很重要， 不要像布兰奇一样，最终走向毁灭。作者主要从两性冲突的象征这一戏剧中的整体象征，一些具体的事物象征，以及象征对主题烘托的作用这几个方面来进行研究。作者主要使用了举例子，下定义，描述说明的方法来探讨这一问题。

关键词：象征主义 两性冲突 花 水 主题

1 Introduction

1.1 Reasons of writing this thesis

Tennessee Williams was known as one of the most important and talented playwrights after World WarⅡ. One of his masterpieces, A Streetcar Named Desire, which has played 855 games. And this play was the first one in the history of American theatre that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Donaldson Award at the same time. Symbolism, was considered as one of the longest and oldest campaigns in the literary history. Williams successfully used symbolism to make his work A Streetcar Named Desire have a strong artistic effect. Many papers about the drama focus on cultural aspect, such as character analysis and feminism. Few people pay attention to the skills that were used in the play. So this thesis will discuss about symbolism in details.

1.2 Literature review

For the past many years, scholars have paid much attention to various aspects in

A Streetcar Named Desire. For example, Yuan, kai ze probe into the symbolism of flowers in the play, he argues that ― Flower symbolizes the tragic fate of Blanche, suggesting the entire process of Blanche’s destroying‖(23). Cai, fang fang analyze the use of water and fire in A Streetcar Named Desire, and she thinks that these two symbols can highlight the opposition between fantasy and reality.

1.3 Definition of symbolism

Symbolism, in generally, is one of the writing skills. It refers to use concrete

images as symbols to express an emotion or an abstract idea, to represent an ideal world, or to suggest another plane of reality. Besides, it means use the method of suggestion to evoke hidden meanings. For example, candle burning itself and lighting others, which can make us think of the noble spirit of sacrificing oneself to protect others. Therefore, we can say candles are a symbol of self-sacrifice.

What is more? Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. It is a core and earlist branch of modern literature and the watershed of the classic literature and modern literature. The goal of symbolism is to convey elusive illusion and its content is mysticism. What’s the writer wants to expound isn’t the realistic objective world, but the inpidual subjective inward world.

We can find abundant examples of symbolism in A Streetcar Named Desire, such as the card games，the rape and Blanche’s repeated bath, the color and so on.

2 Overall use of symbolism in the play

2.1 symbolism of Blanche’s journey

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams designed the desire of Blanche that will not be met as the main symbol. Blanche took the "Desire" and "graveyard number" street car from beautiful ―Dream park‖-Belle Reve Manor in south America, and passed the Moon Lake Casino and Flamingo Hotel, to the dreamland（Elysian Fields）-her only sister Stella's home, which was in the slum in New Orleans. Thus she became insane gradually and tried to forget all things. These names not only indicate the route of Blanche, but also symbolize Blanche’s past experiences and the upcoming fate. "Dream Park" symbolizes her life is just a beautiful dream. Streetcar Named ―Desire" is a symbol of factors that cause her own misfortune. "Graveyard number" street car symbolizes the process of her doom. Dreamland is a symbol of the heaven that she will go to after her death.

Blanche is a woman full of desire. After a series of unfortunate things happened, like bereavement and her husband committed suicide, she came to her only sister's house later. She desired some people to protect and accompany with her. She flirted with Stanley, seduced Mickey, and even seduced a newsboy. She kept holding her old ideas and living in her own fictional fantasy world, which led to her all sorts of

cheating behaviours. So then she was hitted by the reality, Stanley mercilessly expose her past, her fragile nerves can not stand this blow, and she finally fell into the crazy insane. So it is not difficult to find that in the symbolic journey of Blanche, death is actually an incentive, and desire is a motivation that directly cause Blanche’s dementia.

2.2 symbolism of gender conflict

The gender conflict is the conflict between the hero Stanley and heroine Blanche. Stanley is a son of a polish immigrant. He is able to accept …… 此处隐藏：14723字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……