American Literature And Its Borders Interwoven Themes of Homeland, Migrations and Deportation In Tennessee Williams’ Masterpiece Screenplay ‘A StreetCar Named Desire’

Brief Biography of the contributing author and symposium paper presenter: An undergraduate student of the English and Humanities Department affiliated with Brac University. The correspondent wishes to study English Literature with profundity as his majoring engrossment. ‘Synchronized Chaos’-American interdisciplinary journal, ‘Reader’s Digest Asia’, ‘Youth Magazine’ Libyan printed and electronic editions and varieties of Indian Literary Anthologies have treasured and glorified his narratives.         


Abstract Writing: Multifaceted charismatic character Blanche Dubois’ spectral specks hollers, lingers and muses amidst the epochs of twentieth century pandemic macabres. How ‘ruptures’ and ‘resilience’ will feed the lecture theater banquet hall with quintessential dialogues inversion as in the speech of Stanley and Blanche Dubois’ beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart’s sustenance ;which have culminated through ‘relentlessness of times’, ‘sorrow’, ‘fear’, ‘recriminations’ and ‘regrets’. And how the gusto and oomps prevail in transforming stage actors as belligerent shoppers despite emerging pandemic.       


Phenomenal and mercurial Blanche Dubois’ catharsis hollering with the photograph on the mantelpiece as a reminiscence of her awesome memorabilia sunken treasures. In the abyss of wretchedness the patronage and legacy of endowments languishes the fulfillment of American Dreams. Her phantom haunts like a hobgoblin in theaters, brothels, asylums and rehabilitation centers amidst the epoch of twenty first century’s pandemic macabres. The purpose of this paper perhaps might be engrossed ‘raptures and resilience’ in the canons of psychoanalysis and feminist critical literary theories. However, I wish to spotlight the facets of ruptures and resilience in the ‘diasporic migrational drift’ of this stellar feminine character.

We might wonder and marvel at the laurel lifelike character through digging her cherished suitcases, closets, attics, chests and whatsoever. In reality, she is not cynical or skeptic but hilarious and explosive; i.e. circumstances and implications foreshadowings of uncertainty, ambiguities and nihilism echoing resonance of ‘Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot’s personified caricature Lucky. Unemployment crisis together with identity crisis have ironically fretted Tennessee William’s scapegoat to the menaces and diabolical: vicious cycles of life and death.

Crumbling walks upon a lakeshore, dwindling with inglorious and inauspicious memories of the past; Tennessee Williams’ Blanche Dubois’ portrayal limelights her daylight shudders to night of endless darkness. And we are reminded by the tragic events of wartimes genocides, Holocaust survivors’ horror and terror, mass graveyard burials... Are they suffice and benefice to the interiority of split personality and schizophrenic Blanche Dubois and she is sensed as a resemblance of the dear sister. Siblinghood of fraternity can cast a glimmer of unraveling the sheerness of her identity. 

Through ruptures and resilience we will be stepping the stony gravel amidst an avalanche of unprecedented disruption and outbreak of pandemic. The lecture theater hallway by this gravity of the situations’ momentum will be drinking with thine eyes of eerie creature Blanche Dubois’ wit of impishness and caprice. In the prevalence of epidemics’ insurgency had the playwright twisted motifs and plots of what would be likely interpretations in fancy of will-o-the-wisp will foster food for thought in the banquet hall.

 Pathetic fallacy benignly fascinates the aura of imagery in the readers’ imaginative minds with the line, ‘ajar on a sky of summer brilliance’. Blanche utters a moaning cry and throws herself down away from the bathroom beside Stella in a  sense of hysterical tenderness and chastises her for being fondling and affectionate to Stanley-brother-in-law and Stella’s brutish husband. Gaudy pajamas of Stanley hanging from the threshold of the bathroom and the act of Stella’s picking broom to sweeping, swirling and twirling as if idiosyncratically justifying the frenzied attitude and sheerness of absolute lunacy of Stanley. To Stella’s being Stanley’s defense solicitor, she argues to justify that the defamed Stanley being preyed upon by victimization on the pretext of the condition that ‘men drinking and playing poker can do anything[inverted dialect would be: ‘Since there's a blazing unemployment crisis from layoffs amidst lockdown, we, men are justified in wine toasting and billiard pastimes’}. Further like Stanley, Stella’s preoccupation and fancy with movies and bridges acquit the blamed Stanley free of stringent estrangement.

“This shuffling about and mumbling-one smashed tube, beer-bottles, mess in the kitchen’’-as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened’’ This Blache’s quotable quote dramatizes the climax of the scene four with stupendous and stupefying humor, irony and sarcasm when paralleled with Stella’s counterfeit. “He [Stanley] snatched off one of my slippers and rushed about the place smashing the light-bulbs with it. ’’

Figurative tropes and figurative techniques have been embellishing the incredibly insightful read of this very scene with emerald treasures of metaphor, simile, personification and hyperbole. ‘He [Stanley] was as good as a lamb’ highlights the simile of Tennessee Williams in depiction of the naivety and innocence of Stanley Kowalski’s personae. Christmas Eve holiday seasons, Blanche Dubois’s gala with Shep Huntleigh- getting on his Cadillac Boulevard long drive touring through the dusky Biscayne Boulevard. Intimating college acquaintance character’s hyperbolic and metaphorical descriptions of personage, trip of investment since meeting ‘‘someone with a million dollar investment’’ and ‘the City of Texas’ literally ‘spouting gold in his pockets’’.      

Belle Reeve is a persisting hackneyed influence of Southern state of St Louis Mississippi Antebellum aristocracy with plantation of cotton and tobacco employing marginalized African American minority diaspora [ethnic community subjugated by oppressive and suppressive culture of exploitation through slavery]. However, post antebellum New Orleans and the Elysian Fields Kowalski villa the emerging absurdist playwright’s modernity plastic theater evidently becomes a thriving society to breed characters like Blanche Dubois. Blanche, the ‘destitute mammoth’ of Belle’s provision of pocket money, family allowance and public relief in the worst nightmarish Stanley household incites modern day contemporary readers with the paradigms of Blanche figure with morale as depicted by the illustrious repertoire of Stella upon extending five dollars share [from the ten dollars gifted by Stanley to smooth things over]. Blanche’s anachronistic bigotry is a striking prejudice; which, nevertheless, demarcates the reality of Stanley's appearance of character. Not a ‘‘particle’’ of ‘’gentleman in his nature’’ exhibit bestial and animalistic force of Stanley upon Blanche Dubois embarking brutal desire- “Desire!’’—that name of the rattle trap street car that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another….’’     

Eventually climax and resolution of the drama have been showcased through the red letter day of Blanche Dubois’ trapped maidenhood at stake because of Stanley’s bestial interference in her privacy; and the subsequent admittance of the former’s to the mental health infirmary by the vigilance of Doctor and Nurse.

Bathos; the ironic use of banality through hyperbolic exaggeration that results in the failure for satiric or humourous effects. ‘Egyptian Queen’ might and perhaps transcends allusions to ‘Desdemona’; yet Stanley- the king wearing silk pyjamas shirtless fulfills the illegitimate and adulterous affair of sexual gratification through rape of Blanche Dubois. Shep Huntleigh’s fantasy, sensory illusion and hallucinatory delusion, awkward fancy attire such as the rhinestone crown of Blanche  -the ‘lurid’ reflections of ‘grotesque’ and ‘menacing’ ambience.

Tragic heroine, Blanche dupes a vindictive claim in assertion of her chastity and virginity- “A cultivated woman, a woman of intelligence and breeding, can enrich a man’s life-immeasurably!’’ To herself, she boasts of her beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart which increases to grow as ages reach maturity.

This scene further highlights the identity crises and classes of diasporic cultures prevalent in post world war modern times. The tragic figure Blanche throws further light upon her lunacy as intimidating encounters with the Doctor and Nurse. “Oh, my God! What have I done to my sister’’-the loyal and devoted sisterly Stella Dubois’s sympathy and empathy coincides despite the triumphs of two brute forces between the clashes of different cultures. In the world of Stanley, a moth chameleon doesn’t exist. On the contrary, the world of Blanche has reservations for fantasy and magic and the abolition of reality.  

The breaking down of ‘silver mirror’ and the symbolic attire of ‘white satin robe’ manifests cataclysmic catastrophe that ruins the prospects of Blanche Dubois’ survival turning her as a destitute of the asylum. ‘Relentlessness of time’, ‘sorrow’, ’fear’, ’recriminations’, ‘regrets’ and so on by the reflections of “wrinkles’’ and ‘’bags of the eyes’’ casted upon her silvery mirror.  Eminent Indian literary critics of noteworthy publication interpreted her depressive melancholy with ‘mental malady’. Imaginative fictional myths of mothlike figures aren’t tolerated in the Kowalskis' apartment. Therefore, bestial Stan disdains her upon fabrications of Sheep Huntleigh’s fantasy cruise to the  Caribbean and Mitchell’s flower bouquet of apology. 

Minor characters are symbolic representations of Tennessee Williams’ A StreetCar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams will be endowed homage in his repertoire of symbolist movement. After the Mexican lady and here comes the symbolic Negro woman stealing the vanity bag of the drunk raped prostitute. In this anticipation, the desecrating robbing of Blanche’s privacy and honor by Stanley is embellished. Furthermore, the Western Union symbolically features the breakdown of civilization and cultural catechism. And the swelling music of the blue piano resonates comical relief meant to underscore the undergoing violence that is being penetrated on Blanche. Finally the drama witnesses anticlimax through the blue eyes of Allan Grey-the former deceased admirer remembrances by Blanche. Further Blanche’s epilogue ‘’Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’’ leaves no stones unturned in foolishness of wits and impudence of lunacy.   

‘Ruptures and Resiliency’ are entombed and enshrined by vessels of literature heralding the eminence and prominence of Tenessee Willaims’ brevity of theatrical production and lucidity in  film adaptations. Dear audience, I proclaim in ecstasy of glee, “Ah, Tennessee Williams shall be unhackneyed dimestore even in context of quintessential evolutionary viral outbreaks.” The reportage of Guardian mesmerizes subscribers when they are tantalized by the iconic commentary of Gillian Anderson; whose claim “I was hanging on to a reality by a thread” whilst her shopping errands would be effervescent ether hadn’t she possessed the belligerence of mental strength.     

1/  On Grote Street – Lopsided

A sculpture by the Central Market
 
 

An elongated box

standing on one corner

a time machine

a spacecraft

to admire

to hop into

to hope for a different time

 

‘What happened to the phone box?’

she asks

‘It’s built for lopsided conversations,’

I say

 

for conversations across time and space

where the corner of sharpness

is buried in the ground

 

forming an unstable base

with the elongated box 

about to topple off

 

unless the sharpness is

the point of contention

buried in the ground

the hatred can no longer bite

is no more

no more

 

for the benefit of all

and the planet

 

a dream

an out of space whisper

contained within glass pans

of a contemporary TARDIS

 

and the doctor --

will she come

will she save

this earth yet again?

 
 


 

2/  Not a royal nor Grand Victory

 

The Girl on a Slide -John Dowie (SA), Rundle Mall

Was published in InDaily Adelaide (9th Feb. 2022)

 

She is joy frozen in time

exuberant, bewitching

 

in my photo, her left foot is enormous

kicking at phantoms

 

it’s the perspective, though

nothing to do with what's real

 

and what's real is a slight sprightly kid

cast into bronze, sliding down a slop

 

arms and legs outstretched

plaits mirroring limbs, blown in the air

 

she’s enchantment caught in mid-slide

in busy Rundle Mall

 

amid the rushing of shoppers

she makes me look up to the sky

 

a blue ribbon

a pause among concrete giants.

 

 

3/  Pigeon

(On Rundle Mall, SA)

 

Lonely letters

tied to pigeon’s breasts or legs

warmed by feathers

swept by air

 

some never arrive

some were never sent

left in sealed envelopes

shoved into drawers

abandoned in shoe boxes

in jars

alone or bundled with others

 

a lone letter is found

it’s held in trembling hands

the envelope is slit open

a thin paper is pulled out

in reverence (perhaps)

 

a pause

she breathes in

checking the handwriting 

while shadows linger on the wall

 

she bends her head

a photo slides

from between pages

followed by a sigh of relief

 

she reads fast

rereads slowly and again

whispering groaning

tears filling her eyes

 

now laughter springs

while the hands

arthritic and chipped

morph into youthful grace.

 

 

 

steel city

flowers bloom in steel city 
where the allegheny and 
the monongahela rivers
meet to form the ohio 

we walk through 
ghost neighborhoods 
turned into public parks 
where police watch 
my friends and i under 
the approaching noon sun 

no longer a smoking city, 
the mills are razed but
the cancers still linger


 
ukanhavyrfuckincitibak 

the flames from 
the cuyahoga 
still burn more 
than half a 
century 
later

and the ghosts 
cleveland claimed
are still dying
after all 
these 
years—

known names
with snowy faces,
their shadows grow
fainter in the april sun 




 
12 hours to lawrence, ks

4:11am and cold snow 
sprinkles on cleveland,

we drive into the night
where life sleeps and
the highway is empty 

billboards preach religion 
and rest-stop lights
scratch the skyline 

we wait for the sun to rise 
to see the future 


 
we survived i-70

846 miles from 
cleveland to lawrence 
to read at a dive bar that 
cancelled the show without 
telling anyone… met with empty
eyes and confused stares that 
purchase everyone a round 
from the lone man sitting 
at the bar because he 
doesn’t wanna see
any shit go down…
thanks man, i
guess. 

   To lessen is
 the lesson 

   feeling is enough 

My preference is
 Yours as I stand aside 
   and have an enjoyable 
     moment of my own 

 I have a feeling 
   As seeds of
      Hope take Root 
To find me 
   Ready to Appreciate 

      To lessen is
    the lesson 

The Tragedy Of Jessica

Looking at the western region of the continent of Africa,
The satellite of patriotism lands on Mother Jessica.
A lady stained with the blood of Patriots,
Wallowing in the pool of distress,
Fighting to impress.

A neglected mother by those she fed,
Even Pastor Testimony and uncle Fred are her progeny,
They claim to be the best in this mess,
But forgetting the distress of a great Mother.

They remember her only when their birthday party is around the corner,
Common on, for God sake stop being a Demon,
There are days other than elections,
When you can help her out of her consternation.

The time is nearing again when they shall come to cause her more pains,
Like the aridness of the Sahara desert,
Her distress is hot to burn even her own feet.




Short Bio about the Author

Gabriel T. Saah is the son of a Liberian farmer who hails from Kolahun, Lofa County. His mother is a kpelle woman from Bong county, a Liberian.
He is a student at the University of Liberia reading Biomedical Science. His passion for writing is an inspiration to him. He is the founder of the Bong Writes Education Movement an organization that pursues to promote literacy in Liberia.
He goes by the pen name, Marvelous Inker.

Instructions For Living Like Tofu

be like whoever’s nearby
softening in a saute pan 
coagulating soy milk
dying to be buffaloed

jerked    spiced    riced
burrito bowled    baked
into chocolate cream pie

ubiquitousness is nothing

terrible since marinades
drown your pores with tang
plump you like tiny teriyaki
pillows of misshapen mush

cherished only by sleepers

like you who surrender
give up resisting the chef
with his spinning knives

reeling overhead whistling
a Sinatra song as he carves
you into uniform squares
till “My Way’s” last big note 


 
Birthday Candle Remix                                      

~for Jillian


I carried you
into the world
my flame lily
Bore your candle
deep in my dim
delivered you tender 
fire bouquet in bleak
November dusk 

That gift was all I had

You carried me
into the world
my flame lily
Spiced my fading
like a saffron suncatcher  
curled about my empty
trellis climbing in bright
November dusk 

That gift was all you had

We carry us
in this world
my flame lily
We carpet cold winds
scarlet the gray velvet
bloom as we must  
resplendent in bold
November dusk   

Our nothings left light everything



My Classroom Needs a Baggage Claim  

You scurry to check-in
stack luggage 
between us 
tall leathery walls,
cumbersome trunks,
questions bulging 
out the sides. 

We strap down our pasts with bungees 
so nothing delicate unfolds.  

We hand over our devices,
but what can airport x-rays see?
		
Do 		you 		know 		me? 


Because I don’t    

know you yet. 

Give me your heaviest
bag, the one that cost 
extra, wrenched your back
as you bore it 
through dark tunnels
to reach the gate. 
 
There’s just us now, 
dying to go faraway 
places together 
find space to rest

our heads in flight.



Portrait of My Son as Kanye’s Vision

he lets Marvin, Ray, & Otis
spin gold under his stylus

alchemy’s his power &
samples rise like prayers

artist wearing canvas
lyrics sing our scene

so many lionize him
mama’s still his queen

BATTLE

Life is only life 
If it is filled with wars
And battles always within these wars.

The battle to get your children to do what they’re told.
The battle to overcome your lovesickness and your grief.
The battle of the hungry bird and the wily worm. 
The battle of the space between the unnecessary noise and the uncomfortable quiet.

Life is only life
If every moment is a struggle inside your mind
Between sanity and letting go. 

The battle to wake up every morning
With the fist doubling in your stomach
And the hammers pounding out S.O.S. on both temples –
A battle daily fought and daily won until the morning you lose the war

Like we all must, in some way, lose the war
In the final place where the space narrows,
The lights dim, the music fades to distant silence.

 
FREEDOM OF SPEECH

I have found my freedom of speech
In slipping through the bars
Of the constriction of my words
To tell you plainly that I see God
In a bubble that floats in a dish
Full of rain that sits unnoticed
On the backsteps of a house
Where nobody any longer lives
And at the same time tell you that
I know for certain there is no God.
 
HOLY TIME

That time of night
that’s also morning
when the time moves so slowly
and you ponder all of it.
You feel all of the ground overturning.
A religious time.
Contemplative time.
Holy time.

She calls you
and she’s just had surgery
and she was afraid 
lying there waiting for the knife
that she would never wake up,
never see you again;
never tell you that even when she hated you,
she still loved you.
She calls you in the depth
of the night that is morning.
Holy time.
Halfway between the death and birth
of the sun.

The words come to you
and they feel like
they belong to someone else;
that you are just a transcriber,
a monk with his quill and parchment
squinting in the candlelight
but you are more than that.
The words are yours 
but they’re also not
and, years later
you tell that story
about the time she called you up
right out of the blue
and told you that she loved you
even when she hated you
and please could you tell her
that you always loved her, too?
And you did
so you tell her.

It’s only that time 
during the mass sleeping
in your part of the world,
the thickness of everything thinned,
that you can bring yourself
to tell such stories
that you usually can’t 
even bring yourself to remember.
The time when the sun is 
farthest from you
and the moon feels her power 
to push and pull you
just before her influence fades again.
A religious time.
Contemplative time.
A holy time
when something unquantifiable 
enters you
and brings words
that you didn’t know resided inside you
right out into the world
from your hands.

The holy time
when your wounds open
and it helps you convalesce.
 
HOW MANY MELANINS

We were visiting my wife’s brother Saddiq in North Carolina:
My wife, my three-year-old son Johnny, baby Sara and me.
Her brother was divorced and remarried.
His two daughters from his first wife were also staying with him that weekend.
My wife and her brother were from Pakistan although their father was born in a part of India
That is now Bangladesh. 
Saddiq’s ex-wife was a Sikh from India. 
I’m just a white American mutt.

Saddiq had two daughters and no sons
And it became obvious having a son was important to him
Because he paid more attention to my son that weekend than to his own daughters.
His older daughter was about twelve and right away she began to confide in me.
I don’t know why.
She told me about how she hated her “wicked stepmother”
And that she considered herself to be ugly.
I told her to look in the mirror and see how much she looked like her mother,
Which was true.
“Is your mother ugly, Jia? 
No, she’s beautiful. So are you.”
I also told her that being a stepmother was not an easy thing
And to be patient and understanding of that.

Later on she declared, 
“I know why you like Sara more than you like Johnny.”
She had made that assumption because, 
Seeing how much attention my son was getting from Saddiq,
I was giving my daughter more attention than usual so she wouldn’t be upset.
“Well, first of all, Jia, that’s not true
But I would like to know why you think I like Sara more.”
“It’s because Sara’s skin is lighter and Johnny’s is darker.”
With that, my son walks up to us.
He had heard what Jia said about skin color and merely responded, “I’m brown!”
As a declarative statement of fact – without any emotion whatsoever.
Then he went back to watching SpongeBob. 

“Jia, there is something in the skin called melanin
And it helps to decide how dark your skin is. 
Johnny has more melanin in his skin than Sara. That’s all.
How silly would it be to like one person more than another based on something like that?
They have no say in how much or little melanin they have.
They have no control over it. 
I’m too smart to like or dislike someone over something so trivial.
I’m sure you are, too.
I would never even think to like or judge someone over it.”
“Well, how many more melanins does Johnny have?” she asked.
“I don’t know, dear. I don’t know how much more melanin he has.
It’s not really important. 
It’s who he is in his heart that’s important. 
That and how he treats himself and others.”

She said she understood
And I really think she did.
I’m long since divorced and I haven’t seen Saddiq or his family in years.
Such is life.
Well, 
If you ever read this, Jia,
I hope you’re doing well
And you still understand what I told you
Because too many people never will. 
 
IODINE

We held onto one another
Until the money ran out.
I spent it on lottery tickets,
You on wine.
I spent it on lawyers and looseleaf,
You on bandages
And bottles of iodine.

We may not have money, honey,
But we got rain.

The stars blind against the sun,
Too far away to matter.
Time as thin as a razor blade,
As short as its handle.

You spent your money on worrying.
I spent my money on the horses.
You spent it on transportation 
To always the same lifeless destination
Where your sister and your mother led you
As I pitched pennies in the alley,
Trying to strike it rich with the other poets
And losers.

We may not have money, honey,
But we got rain.

We loved one another
As long as the moon allowed us,
Peeking in through the blinds
To see our naked bodies
So helplessly ensnared.
To see our naked everything.
The moon could not hide us well enough
Or illuminate us beyond our own walls.
The moon is gone now, along with the money.

I made for you clothes to wear.
You made the salve that calmed the scars
That lay long and razed along my back.
I see you in my clothes now
As I run my fingers along
My whiplash scars
Just as you used to do.

Now
My crumpled words, 
Your secret photographs,
All smoldering in an ashtray
In a room we once occupied
Together.
A room now half-occupied.
The smell is bitter
Like burning leaves with kerosene.

We may not have money, honey
But we got rain.
I close my eyes and listen to it
Outside, just beyond my thoughts
That concentrate on your heart
That is stained red
With iodine.
There is nothing to do, the money is gone.

You close your eyes in your Home for the Indigent
And I sit in mine,
Both huddled alone,
Both waiting for the things 
That never arrive.
Knowing they will never arrive
But hoping.
I close my eyes,
You close yours,
Listening to the same rain
That falls as red
And bright
As iodine.

We ain’t got money, honey…

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.