Streetcar Named Desire Long Days Journey Night Essay

Streetcar Named Desire Long Days Journey Night ( Scenes Acts Correspondigly- Introduction-role Stage Directions-themes-character Development-setting-structure -- Dramatic

A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night"

Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Eugene O'Neil's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" both deal with the physical and mental difficulties that people encounter partly as a result of being unwilling to accept their condition and partly because of the set of problems that they come across. Williams focuses on the character of Blanche Dubois as she vainly struggles to ignore her troubled past in order to create a dreamlike future while O'Neil deals with the Tyrone family as it is severely affected by the fact that each of its members has proved to be a failure. Although the Tyrones appear to be heading toward the same route as Blanche, they seem to be stronger and better prepared to accept their problems, even with the fact that they have little to no success in solving them.

The first three scenes in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and the first two acts in "Long Day's Journey Into the Night" are quite similar, considering the two central characters in each of the plays enter a male-dominated territory with the certainty that they are perfectly able to control the situations that they come across. Blanche arrives from Laurel, Mississippi, at her sister's place in the French Quarter of New Orleans and takes on a pretentious and authoritarian attitude with the purpose of hiding her defects and the fact that she has experienced traumatizing events in the recent years. Mary, James Sr.'s wife, arrives home from having attended drug rehabilitation meant to have her abandon her morphine addiction. Similar to Blanche, Mary tries to pretend that everything is fine, despite the fact that she is still addicted. Mary is apparently unwilling to accept her condition and insists that her family is perfect, as she is particularly reluctant to acknowledge the fact that her son Edmund is in a critical health state.

Both Blanche and Mary have experienced failure in trying to improve their lives in Laurel, and, respectively, in the rehabilitation institute.The two women put across cheerful attitudes and certainty regarding their healthy physical and mental states. However, while it is apparently initially possible for Blanche to hide her problems by posing into a woman interested in embracing a urban lifestyle, Mary has great difficulties in trying to act as if everything is alright, with her husband being worried about the social status of their two sons and her son Edmund putting across symptoms displaying tuberculosis. While this is one of the first signs that the Tyrone family is going through difficult times, conditions become clear in the case of Blanche as she reveals the fact that she has lost the family fortune.

The setting that Blanche comes across in her attempt to find Stella's home is disturbing, as the southern woman is struck with the low-level appearance of the neighborhood. Similarly, Mary arrives in a setting containing a distressed James Sr., a spiteful James Jr., and an obviously sick Edmund. While Blanche is unwavering about telling her sister that she lives in terrible conditions, Mary expresses her lack of interest in discussing her family's desperate state and actually relates to how each of the Tyrones is in a perfect condition, emphasizing her improving health state and the fact that the Tyrone family is undergoing a thriving period. Both the people that Blanche comes across and the ones that interact with Mary express their lack of confidence regarding the two women's overconfidence.

From the very first moment when she arrives at her sister's home, Blanche shows that she has an affinity for alcohol, as she is unhesitant about pouring herself a glass of whiskey and then asking her sister for another drink. She actually relates to the fact that she is not an alcoholic, even with the fact that no one implies that she is one. While Mary has better success in initially hiding her addiction….....