The 'Reality' of Stanley Kowalski

Tennessee Williams characterizes "reality" through Stanley Kowalski as a ravenous consumer. If Stanley is Williams' representation of reality, then reality is undeniable in it's passion and unconcerned with the consequences. When Job says of God: "I know no plan of yours can be thwarted," he could just have easily been speaking about Stanley Kowalski. Reality will devour everything and either turn it into itself, like Stanley and his friends, or destroy it, like Blanche.

There are no "finer things of life" in Stanley. When Blanche brings them into his home, through her person, he desires to remove or despoil them and eventually succeeds in doing both. In "reality," those softer and more genteel things are obsolete shadows from a life that never really was—but even if it had, it most certainly hasn't been in a long time. Stanley, not Blanche's dream-world, is the only thing that was. But reality never was either, because with him, there's only is. The past is non-existent. There's no Blanche before she came into his home and nothing she ever did matters but for what she does now. It never happened and doesn't matter. There's only today, right now, and the next five minutes. His disregard of anything that's already happened contributes to his execution of the rape he commits against his sister-in-law. If the past doesn't matter, then in the future, when now becomes the past, that won't matter either. Reality doesn't care about the consequences because when the is becomes the was, it ceases to exist.

The world that Blanche had her mind in, that world of respectability, light summer dresses, social occasions, and an aristocratic legacy, doesn't exist in Stanley's world. He begins to despoil those notions when he rifles through her trunk, complaining about the money spent to purchase those things; as if it could have been spent more wisely. At least could have been spent by him, if not wisely. He scoffs at them because they represent things that have no relevance to Stanley's world. No polite manners or aristocratic legacy are necessary (in fact they and their proxy Blanche are scoffed at by the men) to drink beer and play cards with the neighbors.

Williams seems to feel, through his characterization of Stanley, that realistic characters have limited effectiveness and that, to evoke an emotional reaction in the reader or viewer that is worthy of the thing, a "realistic" character must become unrealistic in the sense that they characterize real emotions and passions, but do so more forcefully than a character that simply mimics one from everyday life. Stanley wouldn't be the emotional heavyweight that he is if he didn't consume things so passionately to fulfill his desires. Stella doesn't seem to evoke the same emotional reaction from the viewer or reader as does Stanley. Certainly we feel sympathy for her situation, but her forgiving of Stanley for sexual pleasure leaves us feeling like she doesn't really mind that Stanley is the way he is. As if, in reality, we don't have a choice but to submit to it. While his use of Stanley is an aspect of realism, Stanley's heightened emotions, actions, and passions seem to evoke in the reader or viewer heightened emotions and passions that we don't normally feel in everyday life. In that sense, Williams wasn't satisfied with that limitation of the realistic point-of-view.

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