Stanley the ape
In contrast to Blanche, Stanley displays brutal and wild behaviour—from her perspective: ‘He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There’s something – sub-human – something not quite the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something – ape-like about him, like one of those pictures…’ (Williams 163). Stanley is at this point compared to an ape. Characteristic traits of apes are mobility, intelligence, deceit, but also lasciviousness, the drive to imitate and quarrelsome stinginess (Becker 11). Especially the lasciviousness matches Stanley’s character, for it can be detected in his love for wild sex, and his raping Blanche. With Stanley’s connection to the ape, Williams again builds up a link to the jungle. Apes often live in the jungle, for it is their habitat. Therefore Stanley’s habitat, the Elysian Fields, can be considered to be a jungle. It appears to be an appropriate place for Blanche to visit, when the "white woods" actually camouflage the "noises of the jungle" dominating her mind.
