Product Description

A Streetcar Named Desire shows a turbulent confrontation between traditional values in the American South - an old-world graciousness and beauty running decoratively to seed - set against the rough-edged, aggressive materialism of the new world. Through the vividly characterised figures of Southern belle Blanche Dubois, seeking refuge from physical ugliness in decayed gentility, and her brutal brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams dramatises his sense of the South's past as still active and often destructive in modern America. In addition to the full text of the play, this edition contains a chronology of the playwright's life and work; an introduction giving the background to the play, a discussion of the various interpretations; notes on individual owrds and phrases as well as photographs from stage productions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10415 in Books
• Published on: 2005
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
'What emerges is a brutal picture of a messed-up world where escape, be it through bowling, booze or Blanche DuBois's epic self-delusion.' Herald (11 November 2008) 'Williams's world is one in which - as in real life - misery always comes entwined with a contrasting sense of beauty, glamour, music and yearning.' Scotsman (14 November 2008)

Customer Reviews

AS Level Functionality; second to none!
In ordering this copy of 'A Streetcar Named Desire,'i was primarily expecting this book to be purely a textual dialogue of the play. Although after recieving the book (with haste- i don't hesitate to add), i was pleasantly surprised to encounter aids and prompts explaining in detail the situations and literary devices used to create such an effect. I totally believe that this book is a must have for those studying the american book at AS Level, or at any level for that matter!

Haunting
A Streetcar Named Desire is rightly seen by many as Tennessee Williams's best play. The least that can be said is that along with The Glass Menagerie and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof it counts among his most haunting work. No-one can emerge unscathed from the New Orleans abode of Stella and Stanley, and Blanche surely remains the most pathetic - in the best sense of the word - theatrical character in the twentieth century. Complete with well-chosen pictures, Patricia Hern's 1984 Methuen student edition of A Streetcar Named Desire is ideal for secondary school and undergraduate students; the notes in particular are very useful for students of American Literature in non English-speaking countries. This edition will also please the non academic admirers of Williams's plays, as it provides an unpretentious and enlightening commentary, which is short enough not to bore. Curiously, Hern refrained from mentioning the playwright's love life in the chronology, which is rather infrequent when it comes to Williams. Most of her colleagues would have at least offered the dates of the beginnings and ends of the now extremely notorious principal affairs. That is not to say, however, that she shied away from Williams's homosexuality; she dealt with it in the commentary. There are one or two passages there that one might find debatable, as when Hern sees Williams's father as "a Stanley Kowalski in middle age", or when she wonders about the depiction of gender roles in the play; but Williams is the kind of writer who cannot generate a consensus, and one can only be grateful for that.

Entirely powerful.
Even though this is a play, it is still highly enjoyable to read. There are so many hidden meanings, layers, imagery and symbolism in this play, every time you read it something new is revealed. Best to read the play first, as the film with Marlon Brando portrays Stanley is a slightly different light to what I think Williams had intended.
Fantastic.