Streetcar+Named+Desire

=**Tennessee Williams**=



Assignment #1 : IB HL 2 English __A Streetcar Named Desire__ Glossary assignment  Check out the page ranges (from the Signet edition) that you’ve been assigned, and then create a glossary page that explains any difficult vocabulary words or phrases, terms, idioms or other figures of speech, geographical or historical references, etc. – anything you believe would be helpful for other student readers in gaining an in-depth understanding of the play and its writer’s purposes. You may have to do minor outside research to find the answers.

Name and then link your glossary page here on the wiki so everyone in class can check it out.

Use the table format so there is some standardization of appearance, but feel free to expand or add rows or columns, change fonts, add materials, etc. You should have at least 5 items explained in your table, but do not exceed 10. (Consider what __most__ needs explanation.) Due: Feb. 22

//Example: // Reference || Meaning/Explanation ||
 * Page || Word/Term/Phrase/
 * 13 || Elysian Fields || Name of the Kowalskis’ home building, but also a reference from Greek mythology to the heaven-like otherworld where “good souls” go after death (sometimes said to be in the “distant west” or at the edge of the earth) ||
 * 13 || L & N tracks || Reference to the now-defunct Louisville and Nashville railroad company, which once owned and operated tracks throughout the southern US ||
 * 13 || New Orleans || City in the Mississippi delta region in the southeastern United States; known as melting pot of French, Spanish, and native Caribbean cultures ||


 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Pages || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Name ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">14-23 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Amy ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">24-32 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Amelie ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">33-42 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Patrick ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">43-51 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">David ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">52-61 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Cam ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">62-71 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Alex S ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">72-81 || Alan ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">82-90 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Aurore ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">91-98 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Sehoon ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">99-105 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Sara ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">106-115 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">@Darren ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">116-124 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Alex C ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">125-133 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Ching ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">134-142 || <span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium','sans-serif';">Isabel ||

A few articles and essays to consider: "Poker in __A Streetcar Named Desire__" by Daniel Brooks (from __The Explicator__, and available through JSTOR)

Some early theatergoers were attracted to //A Streetcar Named Desire// by its sensationalism. Others objected to its sordidness. Here is part of theater critic Brooks Atkinson explanation of the artistry of the play: As a matter of fact, people do appreciate it thoroughly. They come away from it profoundly moved and also in some curious way elated. For they have been sitting all evening in the presence of truth, and that is a rare and wonderful experience. Out of nothing more esoteric than interest in human beings, Mr. Williams has looked steadily and wholly into the private agony of one lost person. He supplies dramatic conflict by introducing Blanche to an alien environment that brutally wears on her nerves. But he takes no sides in the conflict. He knows how right all the characters are-how right she is in trying to protect herself against the disaster that is overtaking her, and how right the other characters are in protecting their independence, for her terrible needs cannot be fulfilled. There is no solution except the painful one Mr. Williams provides in his last scene. "'Streetcar' Tragedy Mr. Williams' Report on Life in New Orleans," The New York Times, 1947 George Jean Nathan, another respected theater critic, found less to admire in Streetcar: The borderline between the unpleasant and the disgusting is... a shadowy one, as inferior playwrights have at times found out to their surprise and grief. Williams has managed to keep his play wholly in hand. But there is, too, a much more shadowy borderline between the unpleasant and the enlightening, and Williams has tripped over it, badly. While he has succeeded in making realistically dramatic such elements as sexual abnormality, harlotry, perversion, seduction and lunacy, he has scarcely contrived to distil from them any elevation and purge. His play as a consequence remains largely a theatrical shocker which, while it may shock the emotions of its audience, doesn't in the slightest shock them into any spiritual education. "The Streetcar Isn't Drawn by Pegasus," The New York Journal-American, 1947 Much of the verbal and theatrical imagery that constitutes the drama is drawn from games, chance and luck.... Indeed, the tactics and ceremonial games. in general, and poker in particular, may be seen as constituting the informing structural principle of the play as a whole. Pitting Stanley Kowalski, the powerful master of Elysian Fields against Blanche DuBois, the ineffectual ex-mistress of Belle Reve, Williams makes the former the inevitable winner of the game whose stakes are survival in the kind of world the play posits. Leonard Quirino, "The Cards Indicate a Voyage on A Streetcar Named Desire," Tennessee Williams: Thirteen Essays, 1980.
 * Some excerpts from general critics **
 * ON A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE **
 * IMAGERY IN A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE **