Elysian Fields

Tennessee Williams’ dramatic presentation of violence in A Streetcar Named Desire is evident within relationships of the play. Prominent scenes from the play include intense portrayals of violence, such as Stella being domestically abused by her husband Stanley, Blanche recalling the suicide of her past closeted boyfriend Allen and when Stanley rapes Blanche at the end of scene ten. However, physical abuse is not the extent of this key motif as Williams’ presents verbal and emotional violence as…

Illusion, a deceptive appearance or impression, is an idealistic escape from reality, the state of things as they actually exist. Ultimately, finding the correct balance between the two is crucial to surviving this barbarous world. Connection in a disconnected world drives people to steadily move forward in their lives. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Blanche DuBois desperately yearns for this connection but fails to find it. Her isolation will become her ultimate…

Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire is provocative and goes in depth with the lives of his poor creatures. The looming theme throughout the story is the tragedy and cruelty that is experienced or caused by those in Williams’ Elysian Fields. Although I feel a general sympathy for many of the characters and their circumstances, Blanche’s hardships are clearly outlined and plentiful, leading to a deep sympathy for her. Tennessee Williams’ makes Blanche’s unwarranted, selfish and…

Western culture has always included a strong element of mysticism in its traditions. Mysticism is strongly based on the occurrences of revelations: experiences in which Divine knowledge is disclosed to someone, usually in the form of some incredible happenstance (for example, a bush that burns but never turns to ash.) Revelation is where all three major world religions started. Even more than that, revelation is appealing to both humans and God: to humans, because it means that anyone can gain…

The Greek Mythology Column Myth: Orpheus and Eurydice Once upon a millennium ago, there was a musician by the name of Orpheus (Or-phe-us). Orpheus was the best mortal (not a god) musician in all of Greece. His mother was the muse Calliope, and his father was the god Apollo. No wonder he was so gifted in music with those talented parents. But to tell the truth, Orpheus was more than gifted. His beautiful music was magical. With the songs he learned from his mother and the lyre his father…

Rabih Yaghmour April 15, 2015 Understanding Movies Beasts of the Southern Wild We didn’t have time to sit around and cry like pussies,” says the heroine of Beasts of the Southern Wild, six-year-old Hushpuppy, after a hurricane wipes out the shanty town in which she and her father, Wink live. Environmental disaster was the principal theme of the film. At the school in this destroyed village, Hushpuppy learns about the aurochs that are extinct, but still alive in her imagination as heralds of…

the Underworld. Once in the Underworld these souls would be judged on what these people did during their lives. The evil souls would be sent far below Hades’s castle where they would be punished, but the good souls would be sent to the beautiful Elysian Fields. The entrustment of the responsibility of care-taking of the Underworld changed…

Grief, bereavement and mourning are worldwide phenomenon but they are conceived differently according to the culture and society. The process, that people need to elaborate the loss and to reconcile with it, is related with how they perceive death, their beliefs about immortality, their historical and religious background, and their cultural traditions. In each culture, rituals and customs surround death, helping people mourn and grieve. Rituals help people express their grief and allowed…

“You can disguise any set with lights and shadows” - indeed you can, even with a paper lantern. It simply depends on what type of “set” one has. It might be a scene, a place or even a person, as in the case of A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams describes the main character in his play as a woman named Blanche DuBois, desperate to cover the truth of her real self. Although the constant strive of Blanche to maintain an impression of youth, purity and innocence in the night, her real…

.A damnation where offenders experienced torment in discipline for their deeds, a midway area called limbo where babies and individuals who had passed on youthful abided, and the Elysian Fields, where saints delighted in a pleasurable presence. For the Romans, demise was seen as a pleasurable presence. Some felt that the dead stayed in the sky or in the Moon, or were conveyed over the sea on the backs of ocean animals to the Blessed…