Pub #2 - "Illusions And Lies Paved By Fantasies"

"Illusions And Lies Paved By Fantasies"

            An author who goes by the name of Tennessee Williams won a Pulitzer Prize for one of his most famous plays known as “A Streetcar Named Desire”. This play is about a woman named Blanche who tries to move in with her sister named Stella, who is married to a man named Stanley. Throughout the play, Blanche and Stanley are conflicted with each other due to suspicions of Blanche not being what she says she is, while Blanche attempts to put up an illusion to make herself seem like the pretty and elegant gentlewoman. After many points of tension and the climax, the play ends with Blanche being taken away. For the whole of the play, Stella was in the middle of all this, and in the very last scene, she says “I couldn’t go on believing her story and live with Stanley”. Stella says this because she knows she was put in a conundrum, where she had to pick between the two.

            Soon after Blanche moves in, Stanley asks Stella questions about what happened to Blanche, and yet, Stella doesn’t have any good answers. Stanley begins suspecting something especially due to the fact he sees Blanche bringing expensive clothes and jewelry, which starts an argument between him and Stella, which he says during that in scene 2, “The Kowalskis and the DuBois have different notions.” Stanley is saying that he wouldn’t be able to bode well with Blanche, and if Stella sides with her sister, then it could very well lead to the separation of them. Stella is obsessed with Stanley, but she also loves her sister very dearly. As much as she loves her sister, Stella couldn’t side with Blanche, because she’d lose her husband, the father to her baby, and a home where she is happy.

            When Stella had to play in the middle between Stanley and Blanche, it played a parallel to a show called Breaking Bad, during a part where Skyler finds out how Walter really is and it starts an argument. Walter Jr. is not certain which side to play, and he ends up stuck with what seems reasonable to him. In season 3, episode 3, Skyler finds Walter at home and considers him a threat to her baby and Walter Jr, she ends up calling the police on him to get him removed. After some time when the police arrive, Walter Jr. says “I don’t know why she’s being this way. My dad is a great guy.” He is playing on the side of his father during this scene, because that is what seems reasonable to him. He does not know the man that Walter really is, and Jr. falls for his nice father act, which is why he thinks his mother is being irrational. This is similar to “A Streetcar Named Desire” in the way that Stella parallels with Walter Jr., Stanley plays the spot of Skyler, and Blanche is the deceiver, which Walter is trying to play.

            With the parallels being made, there can be many similarities seen between these two. One of them, is how Stanley suspects Blanche, and Stella tries to defend her sister. In the Breaking Bad scene provided above, Walter Jr. tries to defend Walter from the police that Skyler called. Both Stella and Walter Jr. fell under the illusion of their loved one, and it becomes the job of another person to snap them out of that illusion.