Victimization: tragedy's accomplice

The two characters who are most victimized would be Blanche and Mitch. Blanche is a victim to many negative characteristics. Clearly, Blanche is a victim of her pride and her delusions caused by the past. She is trapped by her inability to get over her husband's death and creates her own dream world in order to escape it. It is because she is a victim that she creates all this drama and a bad image of herself but she just refuses to acknowledge this fact due to her pride. Her flaws drives her to her downfall in which the whole cast soon knows about her sinful actions in Hotel Flamingo and back in Laurel, her hometown. Her past creates this fear of loss in which she is another victim of. She fears losing aristocracy and true happiness with real love. This forces her to find comfort in any man and those who remind her of Allan, her husband. She pretends to be of high-class and as if she is desirable to men to quiet reality. As a tragic victim to all these characteristics, it is sad to see the effects of being victimized drive her into the end of her road, which points to going to a mental institution.



Mitch on the other hand, is not a victim of himself but rather he is a victim to others. He is also tied to his family duty. His mother is seriously ill and her only wish is for Mitch to bring home a wife that is worth her praise. With this pressure, Mitch has no choice but to find someone who may seem easy to approach so that he can marry her within a limited time. Blanche somewhat fulfills this requirement. Mitch knows that she is old and he is willing to give her an opportunity of love for the sake of making his mother happy. Blanche has high standards and it requires a man to double his effort in order to court her. He was willing to give crazy Blanche a chance when all the readers can see that Blanche is obviously not worthy of Mitch. He is sacrificing his own ideal of a woman and working hard to accommodate a woman who is high maintenance to accomplish his mother's wish. Sure, Mitch may have fallen for Blanche but soon he realizes that Blanche becomes a liar and in the midst of trying to fulfill his mother's wish, he becomes yet another victim to heartbreak. He thought that Blanche could have been the one but now all his efforts and sacrifice has been negated. Blanche was just using Mitch for companionship whereas Mitch had put him himself out there for real love. Throughout the play, it seems that we only see Mitch as a tragic victim and barely a winner.

Black or Blanche?

Tennessee William's play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche is well-known as the delusional aging woman at the beginning but as the story goes on, it is evident that she is slowly changing into a more real person. At first she is displayed as the high-class sister that does not tolerate dirty common people when she herself does not seem to go off any better. She had just lost the family property and yet she still lies to herself by trying to play off as a young woman with class. She is blinded by her pride which leads her to lie about her age and the situations she has gone through. Blanche is glued to her pride such that all she cares about is her appearance and what people say about her. In advantage, she knows Stella would believe whatever she says and that is why she always nags Stella to tell her what people say about her and lies about her life.

The one moment we finally see Blanche start to change is when she opens up to Mitch. She seems to really care about Mitch which is evident when she talks nervously about him to Stella. Blanche even doubted that she may not be able to actually get Mitch to fall in love with her. Mitch is a very sincere gentleman and that may be the reason why Blanche decides to tell him her past. We see a real side to Blanche where she is willing to open up, put her pride aside, and tell Mitch her shame. Also, she has been too occupied in thinking about her relationship with Mitch to even fully fight with Stanley anymore. Blanche is starting to become more vulnerable and unable to hide that. Even more, now that most of the characters know about Blanche's mistake in Flamingo, Blanche is even more vulnerable at this point. She now has to fear rejection from Mitch.

Stop. Drop. and Realize.

In James Joyce's short story "Eveline", the main character lives a miserable life with her father and her brothers. Her mother had died and that was when the family became in such a miserable state. She is so unhappy with her father's constant yelling and abuse along with the unappreciated effort she puts in keeping the household together. This causes her to want to run away with a boy named Frank. She plans to go with him to Buenos Ayres on sea and leave everything behind.

Before this journey could begin, Eveline slowly analyzes the pros and cons of this decision. This draws to her paralysis in the story. She flashes through memories of her mother where her mother had told her to try and keep the family together for as long as she could. Along with those memories, she remembers how nice her father could be and the happy days she had had with her family. These flow of flashbacks literally puts Eveline motionless right before Frank and the ship that could sail her to her new life. She is paralyzed as she has an epiphany that she cannot leave her family behind because she had promise her mother to fulfill that duty. This sudden realization forces her to leave her possibly happy life with Frank and sacrifice her love for the sake of her family.


In Joyce's "Araby", a boy falls in love with a girl and offers to buy her a gift from the bazaar in Araby since she could not go herself. Through frustrating patience with his uncle, the boy finally gets money for transportation to the bazaar and arrives seeing many stands closing. He goes into an open shop where this woman is flirting with two soldiers. At this point, the boy is paralyzed when he does not buy anything because it is then that his epiphany hits. He realizes that the girl he is about to buy something for may not even feel the same way he is. The sound of the flirting woman tells him that the girl of his dreams may just be playing around with him.

In both cases, the main characters are paralyzed and has an epiphany related to love. Eveline has to deal with the love for her family and mother as the boy in "Araby" realizes that love is what makes him a fool. Both of the protagonists were fooled. Eveline was convinced that her love for Frank can make her happy but her responsibilities come first. The boy in "Araby" thought that buying something for his crush will bring them closer to love but it is his rationality and logic that knocks him out of this state. Both of these characters cannot love what they want so they have to deal with reality.