A Streetcar Named Desire

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Look at these various book covers and theater posters of the play. From their art, what can students infer about the text? What might they imagine the plot to be about? Ask them to consider color scheme, objects, body positioning, etc.

Teaching Suggestion: Point out the recurring color motifs of red and black throughout these images, and ask students to apply adjectives to these colors (red: love, lust, passion, anger, war; black: death, mourning, power, evil, despair). Make a list of the objects that appear in the images (bathtub, alcohol, a lightbulb, a moth, playing cards) and have students free associate what these symbols could represent. Lastly, explain the stock character of the femme fatale, and ask students to list women (real or fictional) who have been understood or portrayed as femmes fatales (Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones, Black Widow from The Avengers, Lady Macbeth from Macbeth, Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby, etc.). 

2. The epigraph to A Streetcar Named Desire comes from Hart Crane’s poem “The Broken Tower”:

And so it was I entered the broken world

To trace the visionary company of love, its voice

An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)

But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

Ask students: How does Crane depict the world in these lines? How does he depict love? What is the mood of these lines? (theme: the meaning of desire)

Ask students to think of a song they know whose music/lyrics evokes a similar mood or message. Have them explain the similarities they see between the poem and the song.

Teaching Suggestion: Show your students these 19 epigraphs from literature. If the students have read any of the books, ask them how the epigraph helps frame the text or makes explicit one of the text’s themes. Then ask them what they think Streetcar is about based on its epigraph.

Short Activity

3. Consider the following relationships:

Husband/wife

Siblings

In-laws

With a partner, students should discuss the conventional expectations for the roles in these relationships. Ask them to make a list of phrases they would use to describe the expectations for each role. After 5 minutes of brainstorming, pairs should share out with the class. Ask if other students agree or disagree with other classmates’ ideas. Encourage discussion and respectful debate.

Teaching Suggestion: Allow the conversation to draw upon stereotypes around these roles, particularly in the husband/wife relationship. Once the stereotypes have been articulated, encourage students to think about how these stereotypes may have evolved from the late 1940s to today. (theme: forms of power)

• Use this website to show students the rigidity of gender roles in the late 1940s ­­and early 1950s.