Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House are both similar and different in many ways. They both have strong plot, theme, characters, and symbols. They are great works of great authors.
The plot in these plays are similar in that they both end with a renewal. A Streetcar Named Desire ends with Blanche going off to a mental hospital. The true Blanche dies in the end of the play. The ending of A Doll’s House is Nora leaving her husband Torvald. He does not treat her with the respect and intelligence that she deserves. Both plays display these strong endings with new beginnings ahead. A major theme of both plays involve gender. In A Streetcar Named Desire the theme is built on society’s opinion of how a …show more content…
In A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley is extremely violent and vulgar to not only, his wife, Stella, but her sister Blanche. He will yell and physically abuse Stella when she talks back to him. When Blanche and Stanley have verbal tension Stanley rapes Blanche. Stanley feels the need to have dominance over the women in his life because he feels he is superior to them and that they are at his service constantly. In A Doll’s House, Torvald treats his wife, Nora, like a child because he thinks that she is incapable for understanding the complex world. Both plays are set in the completely different time periods but both treat the women with little respect, the times were before women had rights; men are supposed to go get a job and women are supposed to stay in the house and have the children. Both men in the plays feel they are superior to …show more content…
In A Doll’s House there are prominent symbols everywhere. The name of the play is a symbol itself; Torvald treats Nora like a doll, like she cannot do anything, and the play only takes place in one room; the living room. That represents the limitations Torvald puts on Nora. The time of year that A Doll’s House takes place is also a key factor; it is during Christmas and New Years which symbolizes rebirth, which many characters go through in the play, like Nora when she leaves Torvald. The Christmas Tree symbolizes Nora because in Torvalds’s eyes she a decoration and useless. In the beginning the tree is fresh and festive but the stage directions tell us that towards the end the tree begins to die. A Streetcar Named Desire has symbols as well; they are not as clear as A Doll’s House but they have just as much meaning. The first is The name of the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, because Blanche rides in a streetcar on the way to Stella’s house in the beginning of the play. The other symbol is the tension between the old ways of life and the new. Blanche represents old southern traditions and Stanley represents the new industrial age. The way of the south is fading because of the modern age technology. The true Blanche dies at the end of the play and goes to the mental hospital, showing the old ways of America are
The plot in these plays are similar in that they both end with a renewal. A Streetcar Named Desire ends with Blanche going off to a mental hospital. The true Blanche dies in the end of the play. The ending of A Doll’s House is Nora leaving her husband Torvald. He does not treat her with the respect and intelligence that she deserves. Both plays display these strong endings with new beginnings ahead. A major theme of both plays involve gender. In A Streetcar Named Desire the theme is built on society’s opinion of how a …show more content…
In A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley is extremely violent and vulgar to not only, his wife, Stella, but her sister Blanche. He will yell and physically abuse Stella when she talks back to him. When Blanche and Stanley have verbal tension Stanley rapes Blanche. Stanley feels the need to have dominance over the women in his life because he feels he is superior to them and that they are at his service constantly. In A Doll’s House, Torvald treats his wife, Nora, like a child because he thinks that she is incapable for understanding the complex world. Both plays are set in the completely different time periods but both treat the women with little respect, the times were before women had rights; men are supposed to go get a job and women are supposed to stay in the house and have the children. Both men in the plays feel they are superior to …show more content…
In A Doll’s House there are prominent symbols everywhere. The name of the play is a symbol itself; Torvald treats Nora like a doll, like she cannot do anything, and the play only takes place in one room; the living room. That represents the limitations Torvald puts on Nora. The time of year that A Doll’s House takes place is also a key factor; it is during Christmas and New Years which symbolizes rebirth, which many characters go through in the play, like Nora when she leaves Torvald. The Christmas Tree symbolizes Nora because in Torvalds’s eyes she a decoration and useless. In the beginning the tree is fresh and festive but the stage directions tell us that towards the end the tree begins to die. A Streetcar Named Desire has symbols as well; they are not as clear as A Doll’s House but they have just as much meaning. The first is The name of the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, because Blanche rides in a streetcar on the way to Stella’s house in the beginning of the play. The other symbol is the tension between the old ways of life and the new. Blanche represents old southern traditions and Stanley represents the new industrial age. The way of the south is fading because of the modern age technology. The true Blanche dies at the end of the play and goes to the mental hospital, showing the old ways of America are