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A Streetcar Named Desire

The Desire to Justify Cruelty
When do we overlook malicious behavior? Is our emotional appeal to like a person enough for us to look past deliberate cruelty? Bound up in the play A Streetcar Named Desire is the fundamental question of how the characters are dialectically cruel and the ways they justify their desires. By means of a theme of cruelty when whiteness is evoked, author Tennessee Williams displays when we justify the actions of others to reinforce gender identities, and the emotions which act as a vehicle for judgments.
Blanche lives in a fantasy world where truth and logic are replaced by a fake humanity. At one point she says,
I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! –Don't turn the light on! (117)
Fantasy is her primary means of self-defense. She is not deceitful out of malice.......


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Approximate Word Count: 1218
Approximate Pages: 5 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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