These are revision documents that I used for my A* in English A'level, summarising and analysing key parts of the Streetcar text. These really helped my exam answers, and got me the grades I needed for Cambridge - hopefully these will help you too!
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Sc Quotation Theme Analysis Device
en
e
3 poker Perhaps reflects how this play is like a
game where there are winners and victors.
3 Van Gogh Madness. Committed suicide with a gun,
like Allan.
3 lurid nocturnal Bright colours, seems violent. Plastic
brilliance Reflects the lighting in S10? theatre
raw colours of Lighting
childhood’s
spectrum
3 yellow linoleum Industrialisation, artifice, tacky. Contrast to
Belle Reve’s ‘white columns’, shows
Blanche and Stella’s degraded status
3 Pablo A welcome friend of Stanley - contrasts
with how Blanche is racist. Shows New
Orleans’s ethnic diversity
3 coloured shirts, solid Brightly coloured - like male birds who
blues, a purple, a compete to get mates by having brighter,
red-and-white check, more attractive plumage. Bold colours
a light green perhaps symbolise strength and
peak of their masculinity - by contrast, Blanche wears
physical manhood pale colours. Achromatic colours could
as coarse and as symbolise conflict.
Blanche says ‘I like an artist who paints in
direct and powerful
strong, bold colours, primary colours’
as the primary
colours
3 vivid slices of
watermelon
3 One-eyed jacks are Animalistic?
real
3 I’m out Mitch is defeated throughout the play - he
is a weak male
3 Anyone want a shot? Mitch is feminine - playing the traditional
role of a woman serving drinks at a party
3 Chinaman Racial mixing in New Orleans
chop suey
3 Get off the table, Relationship between Stanley and Mitch
Mitch perhaps acts a foil to the relationship
Shut up between Blanche and Stella. Reflects ideas
about masculinity
3 high horse Mitch offers some resistance to Stanley’s
bullying at the beginning of the play - he
will not do so by the end
3 I oughta get home Weak masculinity
soon
, 3 I gotta sick mother Mitch is a kind, caring son
She says to go out,
so I go, but I don’t
enjoy it
3 You all are married. lonelines Like Blanche
But I’ll be alone s
when she goes
3 sugar-tit Stanley mocking Mitch.
3 Seven card stud Last words of the play - Scene 11 parallels
S3, perhaps to reinforce the passage of
time and Blanche’s descent into madness
3 ole nigger Foreshadows rape? Perhaps shows their
rooster right behind attitude to women
her
3 How do I look? Blanche’s obsession and excessive concern
Wait till I powder about her appearance
as fresh as a daisy -
one that’s been
picked a few days
3 a show Metatheatrical - they have just returned
from a show
3 Mr Gonzales and Mr Racial harmony
Hubbel
3 Please don’t get up The men of NO contrast with the upper-
class, gentlemanly men Blanche was used
to. Contrast with S11
3 kibitz Race Word of yiddish origin
3 you women Stanley classes women together
3 loud wack of his Domestic abuse
hand on her thigh
3 not fun ‘Not fun’ - perhaps passes it off as a game.
makes me so mad Could imply that she does not mind when
when he does that in they are alone. Explores the public and
front of people private spheres
3 The men laugh They find it amusing - indifferent attitudes
towards domestic abuse
3 I think I will bathe Blanche does not support her sister Bathing motif
My nerves are in
knots
3 He stares at her Mitch is awkward, unlike Stanley who
moves with the confidence of a ‘richly
feathered male bird among hens
3 Harold Mitchell Formal names.
Blanche DuBois
3 glancing back at Opposite to how Blanche ‘draws
Blanche involuntarily back’ from Stanley’s gaze
coughing a little when they are introduced. Mitch is
shyly weaker, a beta male.
embarrassed laugh
3 certain interest Blanche is interested in Mitch
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