Monologue: a long interrupted speech by one speaker- these are used to express the character's feelings and for the playwright to raise or develop important themes

Iambic pentameter: verse from comprising five meters in feet called iambs

Enjambment: the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line couplet or stanza

Dramatic Irony: where the audience knows more than a character does at a particular point in the action

Stage Craft:

• What set is chosen?
• What do the characters wear?
• What props are used?
• What sound effects are there?
• How does the lighting change?
• What music is used?
• Where do they enter and exit the stage?
• How are the monologs/soliloquies and asides used?
• What stage directions are there?
  

Creating characters:
Williams using minor characters that have dramatic functions such as the “Negro woman” who represents racial diversity and harmony of a vibrant 1940s New Orleans
Protagonist: the central character around which the plot revolves
Antagonist the character in conflict it in opposition to the main character

Conveying identity through dramatic techniques:
Appearances: what information is given about the way the character looks and how they dress?
Background; what do we learn if their experiences or lives before the play's action?
Behavior: what do they do?
Speech style: what characterizes their language?

Hegemonic masculinity: the prevalent view of society about what it is to be masculine- behaviours, appearances, interest that keep in a dominant position over women
Hegemonic femininity: the prevalent view of society about what it is to be feminine- behaviours, appearances, interest- that keep women in a subordinate position to men
Idiolect: the variety or form o f language used by an individual
Sociolect: a distinct speaking style made up from our regional background and influences like our peers, family. education and ,media

Speech acts:
who uses the speech acts: questioning, demanding, complaining. threatening and commanding?
who uses speech acts : answering , agreeing, apologising and giving in?
Who use interrogatives? Who uses imperatives? Who use declaratives?

Terms of address
who uses for name address terms? who uses titles or more formal addresses terms?

Social deixis: a category for words and expressions that encode a speaker's attitude towards another person
Asymmetry: a power imbalance between speakers shown by the unequal way they address each other
Diminutive: the informal form of an name, often characterized by the addition of a suffix
Solidarity: word chosen to strengthen social ties between speakers
Unequal encounters: where one person has more power than another in a social situation it communication exchange

Williams’s own life: - In 1931 Williams had a nervous breakdown, and in 1937 his sister Rose was sent to a mental institution – like Blanche – and was lobotomised.

• Like Blanche’s husband Allan (called ‘a degenerate’), Williams was a practicing homosexual at a time when it was still illegal.
• Suffering from depression, he resorted to heavy drinking (like Blanche) and drugs.
• He had a lifelong fear of death, especially death from cancer – hinted at in the death of Margaret, one of the many at Belle Reve.

Desire and Fate:
This is a dominant theme that runs throughout the play and is particularly prominent in the title itself. Williams himself was intrigued by the names of two streetcars that carried the words ‘Desire’ and ‘Cemeteries’ as their destination. Whilst living in New Orleans in 1946 Williams mentioned these aptly named streetcars in an essay he wrote:

Death:
Images of death recur throughout the play. The streetcar going to ‘cemeteries’ is another reminder from Williams of the likely eventual outcome of a life driven by passion and serves to reinforce the theme of fatal desire.

Madness:
Blanche’s fear of madness is first hinted at in Scene 1 (‘I can’t be alone! Because — as you must have noticed — I’m — not very well ...‘). Never stable even as a girl, she was shattered by her husband’s suicide and the circumstances surrounding it. Later the harrowing deaths at Belle Reve with which she evidently had to cope on her own, also took their toll. By this time she had begun her descent into promiscuity and alcoholism, and in order to blot out the ugliness of her life she created her fantasy world of adoring respectful admirers, of romantic songs and gay parties.

Hubris:
Hubris is another famous Greek dramatic rule: it means the humiliation or downfall of an arrogant person caused by their own pride. The rule of hubris, however, is curiously reversed here, as the vain, self-deluded Blanche acquires tragic status after her, downfall. Having been at the centre of the play throughout, Blanche stages a dramatic exit. Stanley’s fondling of Stella provides an ironic conclusion: Stella has bartered her sister for sexual gratification and now she is left with Stanley.

The Unities:
The convention of imposing rules on playwrights is a long-held tradition. The so-called three unities — of time (demanding that the action of a play should take place within twenty-four hours), of place (requiring the setting to remain the same throughout the play) and of action (that the play should centre on the main characters, with no sub-plots, and that the action should have a satisfying ending) — were wrongly attributed by Renaissance literary critics to Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and critic. Whilst Aristotle certainly discussed several Greek tragedies, he never laid down any strict rules.

Blanche DuBois:
Blanche DuBois is the main character of the play and also the most thoroughly described one. The name Blanche is French and means white or fair. Her last name DuBois is of French origin as well and translates as made of wood.

Stella
Stella is a Latin term which simply means star. Stars in general are considered to be the light which breaks through the darkness. Considering that light is the opposite of darkness, and darkness itself stands for not-knowing and intellectual dullness, the stars can be regarded as reality and knowledge shining through ignorance. Stars can also be a symbol for high ideals or goals set too high. Stella represents Blanche’s ideal concerning the fact that she is leading a contented life.

Places:
Belle Reve
Belle Reve is the name of the sisters’ family’s plantation in their hometown Laurel. The name is again of French origin and means beautiful dream, which again emphasises Blanche’s tendency to cling to her illusions. The term suggests an illusion, which is not quite true, for the plantation really once existed. On the other hand, beautiful dream suggests that something beautiful, which has once existed, faded away. Therefore, the name’s symbolic meaning became true.

Desire, Cemeteries and Elysian Fields
At the beginning of the play Williams introduces three terms which do not reveal their symbolic meaning right away, but the reader comes to realise their sense and importance later in the play. In scene one, Blanche describes to Eunice her journey to her sister’s place: “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at – Elysian Fields” (Williams 117).Blanche’s journey on New Orleans’ streetcars represents the journey of her own life.

Light:
The light as a symbol for truth and reality
The light plays an important symbolic role throughout the play because it clearly reflects Blanche’s and Stanley’s characters. The light is considered to be the basis for sight and recognition, and, as already mentioned above, it is the opposite of darkness which symbolises intellectual dullness and ignorance (Becker 171). Blanche and Stanley stand in contrast concerning their attitudes towards light, which again underlines their different characters.

Stanley
Stanley’s tendency concerning colours is the exact opposite of Blanche’s. He and his friends usually dress in rather solid materials, like cotton, or denim, and their clothes are mainly coloured in blue, and sometimes green. The first time their clothes’ colours are mentioned is in scene one: ”Two men come around the corner, Stanley Kowalski and Mitch. They are about twenty-eight or thirty years old, roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes” (Williams 116).

Music:
The blue piano
The blue piano is first mentioned in the introductory stage directions of the first scene: “This ‘blue piano’ expresses the spirit of the life which goes on there” (Williams 115). Throughout the play, the blue piano always appears when Blanche is talking about the loss of her family and Belle Reve, but it is also present during her meeting and kissing the young newspaper man. The blue piano thus stands for depression, loneliness and her longing for love, which the adjective blue already suggests

The Varsouviana Polka
The Varsouviana Polka on the other hand appears when Blanche is being confronted with her past and the truth, or when she talks about Allan. The reason for this seems obvious, for exactly this polka had been played when her husband Allan committed suicide. The polka represents death and immanent disaster. Blanche tells Mitch in scene six about Allan, and how she caught him cheating on her: “Polka music sounds, in a minor key faint with distance” (Williams 183). When Stanley gives her a ticket back to Laurel for a birthday presents, the situation means disaster for Blanche. She realises that she is not wanted anymore, and that she has nowhere to go, for Laurel is an unacceptable place to go to after all the incidents there: “The Varsouviana music steals in softly and continues playing” (Williams 198). Again, the polka represents disaster.

Animals:
Blanche the moth
In the first scene, Blanche is compared to an animal: “There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth” (Williams 117). Both butterflies and moths start life as ugly caterpillars and only later transform into something more beautiful. The butterfly and cocoon symbol reflects Blanche’s attempts to re-create herself and, so to speak, spring forth a new, beautiful person from her cocoon of lies. In contrast to the butterfly, who lives during daytime, the moth mainly lives during the night, which makes it a creature of the darkness, and the butterfly one of the light. As already mentioned above, the butterfly leaves the dark cocoon to live in the light, but the moth stays in darkness for that is the time when it is feeding. This can be adapted to Blanche as it seems as though—contrasting with her name—it is her fate to live in the darkness, which symbolises ignorance. Blanche does not find a way out: at the end of the play she is being taken away to the mental institution, which means that she finally does not conquer her fate.

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.

Violence is a motif which is prevalent throughout the text, and although it may not always be manifested in clearly violent actions such as the rape, it is often displayed through more subtle verbal aggression, or spiteful acts. Violence and aggression are usually associated with Stanley, however on occasion the other men in the play do display flashes of behaviour which could be considered aggressive or violent. Violence is most commonly associated with the theme of conflict, whether between Men and Women, Upper and Lower classes, or simply Stanley and Blanche. However, the motif of violence is not confined to the conveyance of this theme, and is occasionally used in other themes including Sex and Desire, and the contrast between Blanche’s pleasant dreams and the harsh, ugly reality.