Forrest Gump and Streetcar

Comparing and Contrasting Feminine Constructs in a Streetcar Named Desire and Forrest Gump

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche Dubois -- the self-deluded Southern Belle -- leaves her home (and her world) for the primal, modern world of the Kowalskis. In doing so, she travels via the Desire, which serves as both the name of the streetcar in New Orleans and as an ironic symbol of that which she does not possess: fulfillment. Blanche is an unsatisfied woman, in part because she refuses to see herself for what she is -- a semi-depraved human no different from Stanley, desperately in need of saving (or as she herself puts it: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers") (Williams 123). In Forrest Gump, the title character is also traveling from one world to another via public transportation. The film is told in flashback sequences while Forrest...
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