American Literature books summary

Back at the house, Luster takes Benjy out to his "graveyard," which consists of two blue glass bottles with jimson weeds sticking out of them. Luster hides one of the bottles behind his back, and Benjy starts to howl; Luster puts it back. He takes Benjy by the golf course and they watch the men playing. When one of them yells "caddie," Benjy begins to cry again. Frustrated, Luster repeats Caddy's name over and over, making him cry even louder. Dilsey calls them and they go to her cabin. Dilsey rocks Benjy and strokes his hair, telling Luster to go get his favorite slipper. When he begins to cry again, Dilsey asks Luster where T. P. is (T. P. is supposed to take Benjy to the graveyard as he does every Sunday). Luster tells her that he can drive the surrey instead of T. P., and she makes him promise to be good. They put Benjy into the surrey and hand him a flower to hold, and Luster climbs into the driver's seat.

 Dilsey takes the switch away from him and tells him that the horse knows the way. As soon as they are out of sight of the house, Luster stops the horse and picks a switch from the bushes along the road, then climbs back into the driver's seat, carrying himself like royalty. They approach the square and pass Jason in his car by the side of the road. Luster, carried away in his pride, turns the horse to the left of the statue in the square instead of to the right, breaking the pattern that Benjy is used to. Benjy begins to howl. As his voice gets louder and louder, Jason comes running and turns the horse around. When the objects they pass begin to go in the right direction again, Benjy hushes.

Analysis of April Eighth, 1928:

Readers commonly refer to this section of the novel as "Dilsey's section," although it is narrated in the third person. Dilsey plays a prominent role in this section, and even if she does not narrate this section, she serves a sort of moral lens through which to view the other characters in the section and, in fact, in the novel as a whole. The section contrasts Dilsey's slow, patient progress through the day with Jason's irrational pursuit of Quentin and Mrs. Compson's self-centered flightiness. As we watch Dilsey slowly climb up the stairs as Mrs. Compson watches to tend to Benjy, only to discover halfway up that he isn't even awake yet, we begin to sympathize with this wizened old woman. As we see her tenderly wiping Benjy's mouth as he eats, we come to see her as the only truly good person in the book. Even Caddy, the object of Benjy and Quentin's obsessions, was not as selflessly kind or as reliable as Dilsey. Throughout the course of the section, she is witness to any number of the Compson family's flaws, yet she never judges them.

The only statement she makes that resembles a judgement is her concern that Luster has inherited the "Compson devilment." Instead she stands calmly in the midst of the chaos of the disintegrating household, patiently bearing what she is dealt "like cows do in the rain" (272). Unlike any of the Compson family, Dilsey is capable of extending outside herself and her own needs. Each of the brothers is selfish in his own way; Benjy because he cannot take care of himself and relies on her to, Quentin because he is too wrapped up in his ideals, Jason because of his greed and anger. Mrs. Compson is even worse, passive-aggressively manipulating the members of the family as she lies in her sickbed. And Miss Quentin is too troubled and lonely to sympathize with anyone else. Dilsey, however, in her kindness, ungrudgingly takes care of each family member with tenderness and respect.

In her selflessness, Dilsey conforms to the Christian ideal of goodness in self-sacrifice; therefore it is not surprising that the section takes place on Easter Sunday. This section of the novel resounds with biblical allusions and symbols and revolves around the sermon delivered by Reverend Shegog at Dilsey's church. The sermon profoundly affects Dilsey, who leaves the church in tears. Perhaps this is because the sermon seems to describe perfectly the disintegrating Compson family. Benjamin is the youngest son described as being "sold into Egypt" in the Appendix to the novel; here Shegog lectures on the Israelites who "passed away in Egypt" (295). Matthews notes that Jason is a "wealthy pauper" (11), fitting Shegog's description: "wus a rich man: whar he now, O breddren? Wus a po man: whar he now, O sistuhn?" (295). He has embezzled thousands of dollars from his sister, yet he lives like a poor man. Even Mrs. Compson, Matthews claims, is described in Shegog's sermon: "I hears de weepin en de lamentation of de po mammy widout de salvation en de word of God" (296). Matthews even suggests that Quentin is implied in the voice of one congregation member that rises "like bubbles rising in water" (11).

Much has been made of the religious symbolism in this chapter. Aside from Shegog's sermon there is Benjy's age: he is 33 years old, the age Christ was when he died. Like Christ, or like a priest, he is celibate. And he seems to be one of the only "pure" members of the family, incapable of doing anything evil merely because of his handicaps. But he is not the only Christlike member of the family. Quentin, the daughter of the woman whose brother wanted to remember her as both virginal and motherly, has an unknown father, just as Christ, the son of the Virgin Mary, had no earthly father.

 Like Christ, Quentin suffers a misunderstood and mistreated existence. But most compelling is the fact of her disappearance on Easter Sunday. Just as the disciples found Christ's tomb empty, the wrappings from his body discarded on the floor, Jason opens Quentin's room to find it empty: "the bed had not been disturbed. On the floor lay a soiled undergarment of cheap silk a little too pink, from a half open bureau drawer dangled a silk stocking" (282). If Quentin is a Christ figure, however, she seems to have a very un-Christlike effect on her family. Whereas the pure and virginal Christ's disappearance signaled the end of death and the beginning of new life in heaven, the promiscuous Quentin's disappearance signals the destruction of her family.

Other elements of the section seem more apocalyptic: there is Shegog's name, for instance, which sounds much like the Gog and Magog mentioned in the Book of Revelation. There is the story's preoccupation with the end of the Compson family: Jason is the last of the Compsons, and he is childless, his house literally rotting away. And finally there is Dilsey's comment that she has seen the first and the last, the beginning and the end: although the meaning of this statement is unclear, she seems to be discussing the end of the Compson family as well as her life, and perhaps the end of the world. Dilsey has borne witness to the alpha and the omega of the Compson family.

Nevertheless, none of this religious symbolism is particularly well-developed. It is impossible to tell who, if anyone, is the Christ figure in this Easter story. It is impossible to know what will happen to Quentin, or if the family will really dissolve as Dilsey seems to think it will. Nor is it particularly clear why Reverend Shegog's sermon has such an effect on Dilsey or what his actual message is; he has seen the recollection and the blood of the Lamb, but why is this important? What should the congregation do about it? What can they do in order to see this themselves?

The problem with this last section is that it doesn't satisfactorily bring the story of the Compson family to a close. The reader is left with a glimpse of the family's psychology and slow demise, but no real answers, no redemption. We don't know what will happen to the family or its servants: will Jason send Benjy to Jackson? Will Dilsey die? Will Quentin get away? John Matthews has pointed out that the story doesn't really end but keeps repeating itself.

This is partially due to its nature as a stream-of-consciousness narrative; none of the three brothers' sections is purely chronological, therefore when the story ends their memories continue on. Matthews claims that the fourth section does not "[complete] the shape of the fiction's form" or "retrospectively order" the rest of the book; in fact it does not have much to do with the first two sections at all (9). The Compson clock ticks away toward the family's imminent demise, but it chimes the wrong hours, mangling the metaphor. Reverend Shegog's sermon does not have the intended effect, so he modifies it and tells it again: it "succeeds because it is willing to say, and then say again" (12). The story doesn't end; its loose ends are not tied together. Instead it constantly repeats. Faulkner himself said that the novel grew because he wrote the story of Caddy once (Benjy's section), and that didn't work, so he wrote it again (Quentin's section), but that wasn't enough either, so he wrote it again (Jason's section), and finally wrote it again (Dilsey's section), and even this wasn't good enough. The story of Caddy and the Compsons does not end, but repeats itself eternally in its characters' memories.

The Streetcar Named ”Desire”

 

Context

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911. Much of his childhood was spent in St. Louis. The nickname Tennessee' seems to have been pinned on him in college, in reference to is father's birthplace or his own deep Southern accent, or maybe both.Descended from an old and prominent Tennessee family, Williams's fatherworked at a shoe company and was often away from home. Williams lived

with mother, his sister Rose (who would suffer from mental illness and later undergo a lobotomy), and his maternal grandparents.

At sixteen, Williams won $5 in a national competition for his essay, "Can a Wife be a Good Sport?," published in Smart Set. The next year he published his first story in Weird Tales. Soon after, he entered the University of Missouri, where he wrote his first play. He withdrew from the university before receiving his degree, and went to work at his father's shoe company.

After entering and dropping out of Washington University, Williams graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938. He continued to work on drama, receiving a Rockefeller grant and studying play writing at The New School in Manhattan. During the early years of World War Two, Williams worked in Hollywood as a scriptwriter.

In 1944, The Glass Menagerie opened in New York, won the prestigious New York Critics' Circle Award, and catapulted Williams into the upper echelon of American playwrights. Two years later, A Streetcar Named Desire cemented his reputation, garnering another Critics' Circle and adding a Pulitzer Prize. He would win another Critics' Circle and Pulitzer for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955.

Tennessee Williams mined his own life for much of the pathos in his drama. His most memorable characters (many of them complex females, such as Blanche DuBois) contain recognizable elements of their author or people close to him. Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness in search of purpose, and insanity were all part of Williams's world. Certainly his experience as a known homosexual in an era and culture unfriendly to homosexuality informed his work. His setting was the South, yet his themes were universal and compellingly enough rendered to win him an international audience and worldwide acclaim. In later life, as most critics agree, the quality of his work diminished. He sufiered a long period of depression after the death of his longtime partner in 1963. Yet his writing career was long and prolific: twenty-five full-length plays, five screenplays, over seventy one act plays, hundreds of short stories, two novels, poetry, and a memoir. Five of his plays were made into movies.

Williams died of choking in an alcohol-related incident in 1983.

Characters

Blanche { Stella's older sister, until recently a high school English teacher in Laurel, Mississippi. She arrives in New Orleans a loquacious, witty, arrogant, fragile, and ultimately crumbling figure. Blanche once was married to and passionately in love with a tortured young man. He killed himself after she discovered his homosexuality, and she has sufiered from guilt and regret ever since. Blanche watched parents and relatives{all the old guard{die off, and then had to endure foreclosure on the family estate. Cracking under the strain, or perhaps yielding to urges so long suppressed that they now cannot be contained, Blanche engages in a series of sexual escapades that trigger an expulsion from her community. In New Orleans she puts on the airs of a woman who has never known indignity, but Stanley sees through her. Her past catches up with her and destroys her relationship with Mitch. Stanley, as she fears he might, destroys what's left of her. At the end of the play she is led away to an insane asylum.

Stella Kowalski { Blanche's younger sister, with the same timeworn aristocratic heritage, but who has jumped the sinking ship and linked her life with lower-class vitality. Her union with Stanley is animal and spiritual, violent but renewing. She cannot really explain it to Blanche. While she loves her older sister, and pities her, she cannot bring herself to believe Blanche's accusation against Stanley. Though it is agony, she has her sister committed.

Stanley Kowalski { Stanley is the epitome of vital force. He is a man in the ush of life, a lover of women, a worker, a fighter, new blood{a chief male of the ock, with his tail feathers fanned and brilliant. He is loyal to his friends, passionate to his wife, and heartlessly cruel to Blanche.

Mitch { An army buddy, coworker, and poker buddy of Stanley. He is the sensitive member of that crowd, perhaps because he lives with his slowly-dying mother. Mitch and Blanche are both people in need of companionship and support. Though Mitch is of Stanley's world, and Blanche is off in her own world, the two believe they have found an acceptable companion in the other. Mitch woos Blanche over the course of the summer until Stanley reveals secrets about Blanche's past.

Eunice { Stella's friend and landlady. Lives above the Kowalskis with Steve.

Steve { Poker buddy of Stanley. Lives upstairs with Eunice.

Pablo { Poker buddy of Stanley.

A Negro Woman { Two brief appearances. She is sitting on the steps talking to Eunice when Blanche arrives. Later, in the 'real-world-struggle-for-existence' sequence, she ri es through a prostitute's abandoned handbag.

A Doctor { Comes to the door at the play's finale to whisk Blanche off to an asylum. After losing a struggle with the nurse, Blanche willingly goes with the kindly-seeming doctor.

A Nurse { Comes with the doctor to collect Blanche and bring her to an institution. A matronly, unfeminine figure with a talent for subduing hysterical patients.

A Young Collector { A young man (seventeen, perhaps), who comes to the door to collect for the newspaper. Blanche lusts after him but constrains herself to irtation and a passionate farewell kiss. The boy leaves bewildered.

A Mexican woman { A vendor of Mexican funeral decorations who frightens Blanche by issuing the plaintive call: Flores para los muertos. The Mexican woman later reprises this role in the underrated comedy Quick Change (1990), starring Bill Murray and Geena Davis.

Summary

Stanley and Stella Kowalski live on a street called Elysian Fields in a run-down but charming section of New Orleans. They are newly married and desperately in love. One day Stella's older sister, Blanche DuBois, arrives to stay with them, setting up the drama's central con ict: an emotional tug-of-war between the raw, brute sensuality of Stanley and the fragile, crumbling gentility of Blanche. Truth be told, it is not an even match, for Blanche is already sliding down a slippery slope. Blanche and Stella are the last in a line of landed Southern gentry. Stella has renounced the worn dictates of class propriety to follow her heart and marry an uncultured blue-collar worker of Polish extraction. Meanwhile, Blanche has played nursemaid to the old guard on its deathbed and watched the family estate slip through her fingers into foreclosure. Her professed values are those of an older South, of charm and wit and chivalry, gaiety and light, appearance and code.

Blanche claims she has been given a leave of absence from her high school teaching job to recover from a nervous breakdown. She settles in with the Kowalskis but things do not go smoothly. Her disapproval of Stanley and the station in life her sister Stella has chosen is obvious, though she strives to be polite. Her feelings against Stanley are galvanized when she witnesses him strike Stella in a fit of drunken rage. Stanley's feelings for her are similarly hardened when he overhears her describe him as animal-like, neolithic, and brutish. Blanche's imposition, her airs, and her distortions of reality infuriate Stanley. He begins to chip away at her thin veneer of armor.

Of Stella's and Stanley's friends, one seems to stand above the rest in sensitivity and grace. This is Mitch, who works at the same factory as Stanley, and lives with his sick mother. He has no refinement, but his native gentleness and sincerity inspire Blanche to return his afiection. The two seem to need each other They see a great deal of one another as the summer wears on, but Blanche places strict limits on their intimacy. She has old-fashioned ideals and morals, she tells him. Meanwhile, Stella's first pregnancy progresses and Stanley continues his subtle campaign of intimidation against Blanche.

Blanche's past catches up with her. When she was younger, she fell in love with and married a man whom she later caught in bed with another man. When she confronted him, he killed himself for shame. This knocked the foundations out from under her, and the subsequent poverty and emotional hardships were too much for her. She sought solace or oblivion in the intimacy of strangers; apparently many intimacies with many strangers, and a disastrous afiair with a seventeen- year-old student at her high school.

Blanche departed Mississippi in disgrace and arrived in New Orleans with nowhere else to go. Stanley discovers this sordid account. He tells Mitch and efiectively ends the budding relationship. For Blanche's birthday, Stanley presents her with a one-way bus ticket back to Mississippi. And then, while Stella is in labor at the hospital, Stanley rapes Blanche.

Stella cannot believe the story Blanche tells her about the man she loves. And Blanche's grasp on reality is otherwise shattered. So, with supreme remorse, Stella has Blanche committed. In the final scene of the play, Stella sobs in agony and the rest look on indifierently as a doctor and a nurse lead Blanche away.

Scene 1 Summary

The scene is the exterior of a corner building on a street called Elysian Fields, in a poor section of New Orleans with "rafish charm." The building has two ats: upstairs live Steve and Eunice, downstairs Stanley and Stella. Voices and the bluesy notes of an old piano emanate from an unseen bar around the corner. It is early May, evening.

Eunice and a Negro woman are relaxing on the steps of the building when Stanley and Mitch show up. Stanley hollers for Stella, who comes out onto the first oor landing. Stanley hurls a package of meat up to her. He and Mitch are going to meet Steve at the bowling alley; Stella soon follows to watch them. Eunice and the Negro woman in particular find something humorously suggestive in the meat-hurling episode.

Soon after Stella leaves, her sister Blanche arrives with a suitcase, looking with disbelief at a slip of paper in her hand and then at the building. She is "daintily" dressed and moves tentatively, looking and apparently feeling out of place in this neighborhood. Eunice assures her that this is where Stella lives. The Negro woman goes to the bowling alley to tell Stella of her sister's arrival while Eunice lets Blanche into the two-room at. Eunice makes small talk. We learn that Blanche is from Mississippi, that she is a teacher, that her family estate is called Belle Reve. Blanche finally asks to be left alone.

Eunice, somewhat offended, leaves to help fetch Stella. Blanche, trying to control her discomfort, nerves, and whatever else, spies a bottle of whiskey and downs a shot.

Stella returns. The women embrace, and Blanche talks feverishly, nearly hysterical. Blanche is clearly critical of the physical and social setting in which Stella lives. She tries to check her criticism, but the reunion begins on a tense and probably familiar note. Blanche tells Stella that she has been given a leave of absence from school due to her nerves, and that is why she is here in the middle of the term. She wants Stella to tell her how she looks, and in return comments on Stella's plumpness. She fusses over Stella, is surprised to learn Stella has no maid, takes another drink, worries about the privacy and decency of her staying in the apartment when Stella and Stanley are in the next room with no door, and worries whether Stanley will like her.

Stella warns Blanche that Stanley is very difierent from the men with whom Blanche is familiar back home. She is quite clearly deeply in love with him. In an outburst that builds to a crescendo of hysteria, Blanche reveals that she has lost Belle Reve and recounts how she sufiered through the agonizingly slow deaths of their parents and relatives{all while, according to Blanche, Stella was in bed with her "Polack." Stella finally cuts her off, then leaves the room, crying. Blanche begins to apologize, but the men are returning.

They discuss plans for tomorrow's poker night, then break up. Stanley enters the apartment and sizes Blanche up. The two make small talk, with Stanley in the lead and Blanche reacting. Stanley asks what happened to Blanche's marriage. Blanche replies haltingly that the "boy" died. She sits down and declares that she feels ill.

Scene 2 Summary

Six o'clock the following day. Blanche is taking a bath. Stella tells Stanley to be kind to Blanche because she has undergone the ordeal of losing Belle Reve (the family estate). Stanley is more interested in what happened to the proceeds of the supposed sale. He thinks Stella has been swindled out of her rightful share, which means that he has been swindled. Angrily he pulls all of Blanche's belongings out of her trunk, looking for a bill of sale. To him, Blanche's somewhat tawdry clothing and rhinestone jewelry look like finery{all that remains of the estate's value. Enraged at Stanley's actions, Stella storms out onto the porch.

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