Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and Eugene O’Neill’s Long
Day’s Journey Into Night are dramas centred on the same two dramatic
collisions, the collision between the worlds of fantasy and reality as well as
the collision between the worlds of the past and present. There is a striking
similarity in each playwright’s employment of these collisions, yet each play is
able to remain a separate and distinct work of art. It may seem at first glance
that the very same collisions function in the very same way in both works, but
it is not entirely so. I would like not only to discuss the presence of these
collisions in both works, but also to suggest that the specific functions of the
conflict between fantasy and reality differ due to the conflict’s relationship
with the collision of the past and present.
Both A Streetcar Named Desire and Long Day’s Journey Into Night present
situations in which their characters attempt to use their own worlds of fantasy
as vessels to escape their harsh and unkind realities. At the centre of
fantasy’s conflict with reality in A Streetcar Named Desire we find Blanche
DuBois. If there is one source of all her problems, it would be her staunch
refusal to accept her own fate. Though she may not fully comprehend the
damages and effects it most certainly has on her, Blanche openly admits to
Mitch, “I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought
to be the truth.” (Sc. 9) By lying to the other characters, Blanche constructs a
fantasy that appears the way she believes it should appear, rather than as it
does appear.
Not only does Blanche attempt to alter the perception of others’ reality
through the creation of an ideal version of herself, she actually lives and
breathes the fantastic situations she creates. Each time she alters the truth,
she burrows deeper and deeper inside herself. As the play progresses, she
begins to adapt the outside world to fit within her own imaginary
fabrications. By the final scene Blanche has withdrawn completely from reality
into herself, into her own deluded fantasy. In order to avoid accepting the
world and her circumstances for what they truly are, she in effect escapes to
her own “perfect” place. She is a character so engrossed in fantasy that she
literally becomes insane, leaving Stella and Stanley no other choice but to
send her to an asylum.
Evidence of the collision between fantasy and reality does not lie solely within
Blanche herself, as the collision becomes increasingly apparent once Stanley
comes into the picture. Stanley is portrayed as almost the polar opposite of
Blanche. He is firmly planted within the physical world, a practical man living
comfortably in harmony with reality. From their first meting Stanley
recognizes Blanche’s stories as fantasy, and immediately begins to do
everything he can to discredit her stories and expose her fabrications. Thus
the conflict between Blanche and Stanley that spans the entire length of the
drama quite essentially is the conflict between fantasy and reality; a conflict
between a woman who lives her entire life as a fantasy and a man grounded
entirely in reality.
Blanche’s inability to cope with reality rises from yet another collision of
worlds, between the world of the past and the world of the present. Blanche is
quite simply haunted by her past, and in particular her traumatic past
marriage. Plagued by her own involvement in her first husband’s suicide,
Blanche’s reality is constantly interrupted by her remorse. Her last memory of
her husband was their dancing to the Varsouviana Polka, and throughout the
play this same Polka is heard any time Blanche is reminded of that night. She
cannot rid herself of the distractions the music causes until she hears a
gunshot, a gunshot representing her husband’s suicide. “There now, the shot!
It always stops after that.” (Sc. 9) The gunshot may signalthe music’s end,
but the damage it causes Blanche continues to hit her harder and faster each
time. Her husband’s suicide is the event marking the beginning of both her
mental instability and her departure from reality. Every time he hears the
music she panics, unable to hold on to what little grip she has on the real
world.
In essence, Blanche’ traumatic past is the very reason she sinks so far into her
fantasy and deluded happiness. She is burdened with the responsibility for
the destruction of the only good thing in her life, and rather than coming to
terms with her guilt she flees from it. She attempts to live in her present
reality as if the past had never happened; she constructs her fantasy as a
world where she needn’t be bothered with those pesky memories that cause
her so much pain.
Blanche’s final descent into the depths of her fantasy occurs during her
climactic confrontation with Stanley in Scene Ten. In the face of Stanley’s
physical threat, the epitome of true reality, she falls to total madness. “Lurid
reflections appear on the walls around Blanche. The shadows are of a
grotesque and menacing form.” (Sc. 10) The “lurid reflections” represent the
extent to which Blanche has been overcome by fantasy, for until this point
she had altered reality as she wished, she altered it to fit her fantasy. Now,
however, she is no longer able to do so, and succumbs completely to
fantasy...