Escaping your reality and living in a fantasy world will leave you blind to the things around you. The play, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams creates a situation where A Streetcar Named Desire is driven by the fantasy of Blanche, Stanley, Stella and Mitch. In the play the characters hide from their reality by acting as if the events they went through didn’t happen or were not important. The idea of reality vs. illusion seems to bring on the idea that these characters want to escape their world or they want to act blind they don’t have to face reality.
One of the main characters that brings the idea of reality vs. illusion and escapism is Blanche. Blanche came from a wealthy background and lived in city named Laurel. When Blanche’s husband died and her family members began to die, she spent her money on their funerals and she ended up losing her home. Blanche losing her home can be compared to a princess losing her castle and money but in this story she didn’t have a handsome prince rescue her. She gained a bad yet truthful reputation for sleeping around with different men. She wanted to escape this so she went to visit her sister Stella. When she came to Stella’s house she acted as if everything in Laurel didn’t actually happen. This is when her fantasy began, in Stella’s town she acted as an old-fashioned woman who was proper and modest, this was not true. Her past revealed that she is not what she claimed to be. While in Stella’s town Blanche met a man named Mitch who is a friend of Stella’s husband. Blanche and Mitch’s relationship has a lot of Blanche’s fantasy in it. She lies to Mitch to seem more appealing and she hides in the darkness so that he won’t see her clearly. She lies because she thinks that he wants a perfect woman and she hides in the dark because she doesn’t want him to see that she isn’t young. She wants him to want her and for this she creates an illusion of what she should be. She tries to charm Mitch and she wants to live in fantasy and experience magic, her fantasy has grown to a where she has to be institutionalized. Mitch is overtaken by Blanche’s charm. Mitch is at about the time where he should he married, but he isn’t. He has a sick mother at home whom he takes care of. When Mitch meets Blanche he is attracted to her beauty. Mitch is blinded by his fantasy of marrying a perfect/good woman. The images of Mitch and Blanche show he was whisked away by her charm and then his disillusion with who she really is. When Stanley tells him about her past he goes on to call him a liar and defend Blanche. Once he confirms what Stanley said about Blanche, reality sets in for Mitch. He no longer wants to marry Blanche because of her lies. He escapes her fantasy and lies. In the end Blanche is shown to be delusional, her fantasy has set in as if it were reality and she can longer escape it. Every so often Blanche asks for a drink of liquor, seeming to calm her nerves. This could simply mean that she needs a little bit of alcohol to keep her on track to have the strength to carry on with her story. She doesn’t want the reality to come out because her fantasy is much better.
In Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the main antagonist is Stanley Kowalski, Stanley is Blanche’s brother in law. He is strong, tough, and arrogant. Stanley loves to drink, play poker. He can understand no relationship between man and woman except a sexual one. He sees the man's role as giving and taking pleasure from this relationship. However, now that Blanche has intruded in Stella and Stanley’s life, Stanley feels his home life and his habits are under attack. He is animal-like person and his actions