Land as a Central Symbol in Desire

One of the ways in which Eugene O’Neill made the land symbolic in Desire Under the Elms was through the use of stones. Throughout the play stones, and the walls they created, are mentioned by both Ephraim Cabot and others.

To Peter and Simon, the stone walls were symbolic in their own way. They represented a sense of confinement and imprisonment. Ephraim Cabot was a man of little or no real emotion. He was very hard on his children and his first wife. As a result Eben, Simon, and Peter hated their father. They felt trapped into doing his wishes, and they saw no real way out. To Peter and Simon, the stone walls built around the farm by their father symbolized their imprisonment for life. This point is clearly shown when Peter and Simon leave to go find gold in California. In their jubilation upon leaving they say,

The halter’s broke-the harness is busted-the fence bars is down-the stone walls air crumblin’ an’ tumblin’!

Eben makes an interesting reference to the stone walls as well. He believes that the stone walls caused the lack of caring and emotion towards their mother by Peter and Simon. He states,

An’ makin’ walls-stone atop o’ stone-makin’ walls till yer heart’s a stone ye heft up out o’ the way o’ growth onto a stone wall t’ wall in yer heart!

What he is really saying is the fact that the many years of hard work on the farm have made Simon, Peter, and of course their father Ephraim, immune to emotion or caring. All they knew was work, and it was work that had made them and their father not care about their first mother.

Ephraim also uses the land as a symbol to describe heaven. He describes it by stating,

The sky. Feels like a wa’m field up thar.

Here Ephraim is describing his old age and what he feels heaven would be like. Peter and Simon even imagine California as being not unlike their farm in New England. In the early part of the play they imagine California as “fields o’ gold!” and “Fortunes layin’ just atop o’ the ground waitin’ t’ be picked!” What is ironic here is that they imagine gold in California being just like the stones in the fields of their father’s farm. In California they would be picking up stones just as they had done in New England.

Another part of the landscape of the farm, and one of the most important, are the two elm trees on each side of the house. The elms represent the spirit of Eben’s mother. Ephraim gives a clue to this when he leaves his party and in the yard says,

Ye kin feel it droppin’ off the elums, climbin’ up the roof, sneakin’ down the chimney, pokin’ in the corners! They’s no peace in houses, they’s no rest livin’ with folks. Somethin’s always livin’ with ye. I’ll go t’ the barn an’ rest a spell.

This statement has two very important aspects. First, it shows that the spirit of his former wife is still in the house. Moreover, it shows Ephraim’s close ties to the land, and illuminates the fact that he cannot share his life with other people. He feels that the animals in the barn can understand him better than any human since both the animals and Ephraim are close to the land, and fail to show emotion.

The most important aspect of the land throughout the play in my opinion deals with greed. Ephraim Cabot is an extremely possessive man. He even states that he would rather burn the farm to the ground than give it away. Everyone in the play wants the farm, despite the fact that when Ephraim first bought it, many people considered it worthless. He removed all the stones from the fields, planted them, and raised his animals. It is as a result of these years of hard work that makes the farm so attractive to everyone, and is in fact the reason why everyone wants it. Ephraim felt that it was God’s will for him to have to go through hardships in working the land. God wanted him to be a hard man. And Ephraim felt that it was not right for anyone to have the luxury of receiving a farm when he had to build it with his own blood and sweat. This was not what God wanted. And in the end of the play, God did in fact win.

Eben feels that he is the rightful heir to the land. Abbie, through lies and chicanery, feels that she is the rightful owner of the farm. Ephraim feels that the land will always be his, and not belong to anyone else. Peter and Simon felt that they were entitled to the land due to the years of blood and sweat they had donated to the land and their father’s wishes. In fact, Simon, Peter and Eben hope that Ephraim is dead when he leaves to get married in the first scene of the play. And in the last line of the play, even the sheriff admits that he would like to have the farm as well. It is this greed over land that effects every major character in the play.

The true importance of the land becomes very clear by the end of the play . It is what drives all of the characters. It affects their feelings, emotions, and outlook on life. It is all that they know and care for. Being farmers, it is their livelihood and a source of pride, at least for Ephraim. It can also be used to show beauty, as well as loneliness. The land is life, and the land is death. To the farmers, the land is tangible, while emotions and personal relationships may seem immaterial.

Escaping Reality

“The Glass Menagerie” is set in the apartment of the Wingfield family. By description, it is a cramped, dinghy place, not unlike a jail cell. It is one of many such apartments in the neighborhood. Of the Wingfield family members, none of them want to live there. Poverty is what traps them in their humble abode. The escape from this lifestyle, this apartment and these relationships is a significant theme throughout the play. These escapes may be related to the fire escape, the dance hall, the absent Mr. Wingfield and Tom’s inevitable departure.

The play opens with Tom addressing the audience from the fire escape. This entrance into the apartment provides a different purpose for each of the characters. Overall, it is a symbol of the passage from freedom to being trapped in a life of desperation. The fire escape allows Tom the opportunity to get out of the apartment and away from his nagging mother. Amanda sees the fire escape as an opportunity for gentleman callers to enter their lives. Laura’s view is different from her mother and her brother. Her escape seems to be hiding inside the apartment, not out. The fire escape separates reality and the unknown.

Across the street from the Wingfield apartment is the Paradise Dance Hall. Just the name of the place is a total anomaly in the story. Life with the Wingfields is as far from paradise as it could possibly be. Laura appears to find solace in playing the same records over and over again, day after day. Perhaps the music floating up to the apartment from the dance hall is supposed to be her escape which she just can’t take. The music from the dance hall often provides the background music for certain scenes, The Glass Menagerie playing quite frequently. With war ever-present in the background, the dance hall is the last chance for paradise.

Mr. Wingfield, the absent father of Tom and Laura and husband to the shrewish Amanda, is referred to often throughout the story. He is the ultimate symbol of escape. This is because he has managed to remove himself from the desperate situation that the rest of his family are still living in. His picture is featured prominently on the wall as a constant reminder of better times and days gone by. Amanda always makes disparaging remarks about her missing husband, yet lets his picture remain. Tom always makes jokes about his dad, and how he “fell in love with long distances.” This is his attempt to ease the pain of abandonment by turning it into something humorous. It is inevitable that the thing which Tom resents most in his father is exactly what Tom himself will carry out in the end…escape! Through his father, Tom has seen that escape is possible, and though he ishesitant to leave his sister and even his mother behind, he is being driven to it.

Tom escapes reality in many different ways. The first and most obvious is the fire escape that leads him away from his desolate home. Another would be the movies that Amanda is always nagging him about. She thinks he spends too much time watching movies and that he should work harder and find a suitable companion for Laura. The more Amanda nags, the more Tom needs his movie escapes. They take him to another world for a while, where mothers and sisters and runaway fathers do not exist. As the strain gets worse, the movie watching becomes more frequent, as does Tom’s drinking. It is getting harder and harder for Tom to avoid real life. The time for a real departure is fast approaching. Amanda eventually pushes him over the edge, almost forcing him out, but not without laying overpowering guild trips on him. Tom leaves, but his going away is not the escape that he craved for so long. The guilt of abandoning Laura is overwhelming. He cannot seem to get over it. Everything he sees is a reminder of her.

Tom is now truly following in the footsteps of his father. Too late, he is realizing that leaving is not an escape at all, but a path of even more powerful desperation.  Williams uses the theme of escape throughout “The Glass Menagerie” to demonstrate the hopelessness and futility of each character’s dreams. Tom, Laura and Amanda all seem to think, incorrectly I might add, that escape is possible. In the end, no character makes a clean break from the situation at hand. The escape theme demonstrated in the fire escape, the dance hall, Mr. Wingfield and Tom’s departure prove to be a dead end in many ways.

Reality in Streetcar

Although Williams’s protagonist in “A Streetcar Named Desire” is the romantic Blanche DuBois, the play is a work of social realism. Blanche explains to Mitch that she fibs because she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her. Lying to herself and to others allows her to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is. Stanley, a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world, disdains Blanche’s fabrications and does everything he can to unravel them. The antagonistic relationship between Blanche and Stanley is a struggle between appearances and reality. It propels the play’s plot and creates an overarching tension. Ultimately, Blanche’s attempts to remake her own and Stella’s existences—to rejuvenate her life and to save Stella from a life with Stanley—fail.

A recurring theme found in A Streetcar Named Desire is a constant conflict between reality and fantasy, actual and ideal. Blanche says

I don’t want realism, I want magic.

This recurring theme is read most strongly in Williams’ characterization of Blanche DuBois and the physical tropes that she employs in her pursuit of what is magical and idealized: the paper lampshade she employs to cover the harsh white light bulb in the living room, her chronically deceptive recounting of her last years in Belle Reve, the misleading letters she presumes to write to Shep Huntleigh, and a pronounced tendency toward excess consumption of alcohol.  Blanche creates her own fantasy world through the characters she plays, such as the damsel, southern belle or school teacher. She wears her costumes creating a façade to hide behind, concealing her secrets and attempting to reach her former glory, and illustrating her narcissism and inability to relate to others in a “normal” sense.

Notably, Blanche’s deception of others and herself is not characterized by malicious intent, but rather a heart-broken and saddened retreat to a romantic time and happier moments before disaster struck her life (her previous loved one, the refined Allan Gray, committed suicide during a Varsouviana Polka, as a reaction to Blanche’s revulsion when she discovered he was bisexual, after she accidentally encountered him having sex with an older man).

Then I found out. In the worst of all possible ways. By coming suddenly into a room that I thought was empty- but it wasn’t empty, it had two people in it… the boy I’d married and an older manwho had been his friend for years…

In many ways, Blanche is understood to be a sympathetic and tragic figure in the play despite her deep character flaws.

In an effort to escape the misery of her life in Laurel, Blanche drinks heavily and has meaningless affairs. She needs alcohol to stop the polka music, symbolic of Allan’s death, from running on in her head and to avoid the truth of her life. She surrenders her body to various strangers in an attempt to lose herself. She seduces young boys in memory of Allan. But her empty heart finds no peace, and her bad reputation ends her teaching career.

Though reality triumphs over fantasy in A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams suggests that fantasy is an important and useful tool. At the end of the play, Blanche’s retreat into her own private fantasies enables her to partially shield herself from reality’s harsh blows. Blanche’s insanity emerges as she retreats fully into herself, leaving the objective world behind in order to avoid accepting reality. In order to escape fully, however, Blanche must come to perceive the exterior world as that which she imagines in her head. Thus, objective reality is not an antidote to Blanche’s fantasy world; rather, Blanche adapts the exterior world to fit her delusions. In both the physical and the psychological realms, the boundary between fantasy and reality is permeable. Blanche’s final, deluded happiness suggests that, to some extent, fantasy is a vital force at play in every individual’s experience, despite reality’s inevitable triumph.

The Wasteland

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Once again, we see and individual terribly unable to communicate with those around them. One difference here is the use of line breaks to again make the flow of the lines be broken and awkward, almost allowing the reader to hear the stuttering narrator stumble through his words. Also strange is that the silence is perceived by the narrator as the “heart of the light.” Normally, we would liken silence to darkness, but here, paradoxically, it is actually viewed as the heart of the light. In the middle of the light there is said to be a dark loneliness.