Quotation & Comment A Streetcar Named Desire

"They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields."

Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

These words are uttered by Blanche DuBois when she first arrives at her sister Stella’s apartment called Elysian Fields in New Orleans.

It tells us she is on a journey. ‘They’ refers to the attendants at the station who give her directions.

Symbolically ‘They’ indicates Blanche is vulnerable and powerless. All the men in Blanche’s life - family and lovers - have always had power and followed their sexual desires. She too has lived like this and it has brought her to rejection and exile which is a form of death.

Here at Elysian Fields Blanche hopes to start again.

beneath the oaks
we walk a bed of dead leaves
crushed fired glass

Photo autumn leaves on grass by pkirrage

Quotation & Comment

I'm starting a new project shortly.

The idea is to take a quotation from a work of literature which may include the Bible. It will probably be from a text I'm studying with my students or a text I've taught in the past. I might take quotations from the Conjured Sunlight blog. It will be a line or a phrase, perhaps even a word.

Then I'll comment on the quotation.

And I hope people that visit the blog will add a comment too. Either a response to the quotation or on my comment. Everyone is free to comment.

Anyway lets see how it rolls out.

Join in

David

dawn, looking west
trees in shadow
beyond a tower block rising gold

the river
smudged by mist and drizzle
dissolves into twilight

wet leaves, limp, black
glistening
a broken mirror

beneath the trees
a corrugated mat
of rusted leaves

Photo Autumn Forest Ground by elventear