Representation Of Split Personality In A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams is one of the most excellent playwrights in America. His masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire (hereafter abbreviated as SND) gained universal recognition after its first performance in New York in 1947, winning three most important dramatic awards in America: the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics' Awards, and the Donaldson Award. SND is regarded as the best play ever written by Williams. Criticisms on the play mainly concentrated on the analysis of its themes, characters, based on archetypal theories or feminism. However, textual analysis on the theme of the play through "Split Personality" perspective of psychoanalysis has not been touched upon. There still remains a large room for us to do research.Under the guidance of Freudian Psychoanalytical theory, the thesis explores how the theme of the protagonist's Split Personality is embodied in SND. Split Personality is a notion in psychology, often mistaken as Schizophrenia. The thesis firstly differentiates Split Personality from Schizophrenia, revealing that the root of Split Personality lies in the conflicts among individual Id, Ego and Superego, excessive use of Defense Mechanism, Traumatic experiences as well as human beings' Death Instincts' impact on Life Instincts from Collective Neurosis. By analyzing the protagonist—Blanche's inner conflicts, we hold that the protagonist could not reconcile the antagonism between illusion and reality, between body and soul. Through the depiction of the conflicts between the protagonist and the antagonist, the play reveals social dichotomies of civilization and barbarism, and between elegance and barbarism.In the play, Williams' character portrayal of the antagonist and the protagonist is successful. The depiction of costumes, the actions and the languages fully represent the sharp contrast between the two social hierarchies. Besides, the dramatic devices in the play are diversified, such as music, sound, lighting, as well as the application of symbolism and imagery, which illustrate the conflicts between characters, representing the inner conflicts of them. All such techniques represent the theme of Split Personality.The thesis comes to the conclusion that, suffering from a severe Split Personality, the protagonist fails to adapt herself to the harsh reality, which turns her into a tragic Schizophrenic finally. The play represents the physical agony and the spiritual dilemma of modern Americans, their pains and struggles.