How and why is the Grotesque Used in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire?

Throughout this semester, we were introduced to varying degrees of literary styles and themes. From the epiphanies discovered through American Realism, to the skepticism explored through Literary Modernism, to the conflicts of social conformity and individualism approached by a Post-Modernistic America and its writers. We have had the great opportunity of being exposed to individuals who questioned and pushed the boundaries of creativity and expression. Tennessee Williams was an author and playwright who balanced the enigmatic, macabre, and often cruel disintegration of his characters with a poetic grace. He became the keystone of a style that is known
But I had to be burned like rubbish!....And, oh, what gorgeous boxes they packed them away in! Unless you were there at the bed when they cried out, “Hold me!” you’d never suspect there was the struggle for breath and bleeding. You didn’t dream, but I saw! Saw! Saw!....” (Williams 2193). This description was a faint cry for compassion or an attempt to restore the relationship with Stella, but through a premeditated state of self preservation. The grotesque narcissism with which she approaches the loss of the estate and their relatives only happened to her. It is this over dramatic perception that reinforces the author’s emphasis on the Southern Gothic or grotesque style apparent throughout his play.

The culmination of the loss of Belle Reve, her husband’s suicide, and, later, her dismissal from her job, could have contributed to her current state. But it in the end, she chose not to face her demons, she opted to hide behind the ruse of entitlement associated with old Southern Society that proved to be her ultimate demise. “If there is any character in modern dramatic literature whose identity is bound up in such fantasies and sees herself as unique, special and entitled, it is Blanche DuBois, whose very name conjures up images of French, chivalric romances. Furthermore, it is clear that she identifies with the role of the “Southern Belle” and, in fact, retreats to memories of herself as “Southern Belle” when confronted with death and trauma. Ironically, from