Tragedy ✔️✔️Tragedies evoke the disillusionment and agony of life. Tragic protagonists are destroyed
by their own self-destructive tendencies, or by external forces over which they have no control- nature,
rivals, society, war, poverty, illness. Their downfall and death often seem predestined.
Comedy ✔️✔️Comedies reflect the foibles, contradictions, and confusions of man and society. They
may be broadly funny and playful, wry and cynical, or satirical and biting. Comic protagonists face many
conflicts, but they usually emerge unscathed from them.
Flat ✔️✔️apartment
Portiere ✔️✔️a curtain hanging across a doorway
Neurasthenic ✔️✔️an emotional and psychic disorder that is characterized especially by easy
fatigability and often by lack of motivation, feeling of inadequacy, and psychosomatic symptoms
Contrapuntally ✔️✔️a: a complementing or contrasting item
b: use of contrast or interplay of elements in a work of art (as a drama)
Sotto Voce ✔️✔️under the breath: in an undertone; also: in a private manner
Bohemian ✔️✔️a person (as a write or an artist) living an unconventional life usually in a colony with
others
Courtesan ✔️✔️a prostitute with a courtly, wealthy, or upper-class clientele
Blanche ✔️✔️full discretionary power (as in carte blanche)- to rearrange the truth with no limits
, Elysian Fields ✔️✔️The mention of this is an allusion to the underworld of Greek mythology
When we first meet Blanche Dubois, she has traveled to see her sister Stella. She took streetcars named
Desire and Cemeteries to arrive at her sister's apartment. What might these names represent?
✔️✔️The street-car named Desire represents the desire Blanche had for a better life with her sister
Stella. This Desire brought her to Cemeteries which represents the destruction and death of Blanche.
Blanche goes into Stella's apartment to wait for her to come home. What does she do while she is
waiting? ✔️✔️While Blanche is waiting for Stella, she sits nervously and tight together, then drinks
half a tumbler of whiskey.
What does Belle Reve mean? What does it refer to in the play? ✔️✔️Belle Reve means "beautiful
dream". This is thought of as Blanche's old life and better life. This is no longer reality, but it is a
"dream".
Why does Blanche say that she has left her teaching job to visit Stella? ✔️✔️4. Blanche does not want
anyone to know that Blanche was kicked out of the school. Rather she would like them to think that she
left for her own reason and she is still in control.
Why does Blanche say that she lost Belle Reve? ✔️✔️5. Blanche says that she lost Belle Reve to cost of
the funerals and deaths of family members, but she avoids the fact that she does not have a job or
money.
At the end of Scene One, what music "rises up, faint in the distance"? ✔️✔️6. Polka music is the music
that "rises up, faint in the distance".
Near the end of Scene One, what do we learn about Blanche's husband? ✔️✔️We learn that Blanche's
husband was young and died.
In Scene Two, Stanley finds out about the loss of Belle Reve. What is his reaction? ✔️✔️8. Stanley's
reaction to the loss of Belle Reve is that he is furious and is curious to what happened because he claims
Belle Reve as his own as well.