A Streetcar Named Desire: Metaphors 2 key examples

The world that Blues celebrates and criticizes is the polar opposite of the sanitized, thoroughly white world of Southern gentility that Blanche inhabits. Polka music is cyclical and repetitive with an insistent downbeat, unlike the loose and improvisational structure of Blues songs. The Varsouviana's rhythms and its recurrence suggest Blanche’s inability to move beyond her grief, especially as the song is directly related to the night her husband committed suicide. When the audience hears polka music, it’s implied that it’s happening in Blanche’s imagination, as backdrop for memories of the traumatic past she's lost in. The Blues tells contemporary stories and engages with gritty reality, whereas the Varsouviana glosses over the details for the sake of aesthetics.

Everyone in the play can hear Blues music, however, and it's everywhere. Indeed, as Williams says in the introductory stage directions, in the French Quarter one is always "around the corner" from the sound of "a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers." Unlike Blanche’s polka, the Blues is not insular or situational. Whether it's in the background or playing loudly, it occurs frequently and becomes more prominent during intense moments in the play. The increasing volume of the Blues during critical scenes where Blanche’s secrets are exposed is a musical metaphor. It represents the encroachment of contemporary reality on Blanche's fantasy world. The auditory encroachment of the Blues into Blanche’s life is also a harbinger of her starting to mentally unravel. The more Blues she hears, the less rooted in reality she becomes.

Blanche’s metaphorical language in this passage paints the struggle of romantic, aristocratic Southerners against the tide of modernity as a “march.” This, like many other moments in the play, suggests that Blanche feels she’s being dragged forward unwillingly into the future. Rather than capitulating to modernity, she urges her sister to hold onto the values she believes are important.

Calling the passing of time a “dark march toward whatever it is [they’re] approaching” suggests that Blanche pictures her life as a journey filled with challenges and obscured visibility. Because Blanche has no plans and no idea what her future holds, compared to Stella she is moving forward in figurative blindness to what lies ahead. Her language here is highly exaggerated, as is her plea for her sister not to “hang back with the brutes.” By “brutes,” she means people like Stanley. She seems unaware of how alike Stella and her husband truly are.

Blanche also asserts that as “people [in whom] some tenderer feelings have had some little beginning,” she and Stella must nurture them “as our flag.” This is a confusing mixed metaphor, which aligns with Blanche's tenuous grip on her sanity. Blanche is demanding that she and Stella hold onto the romantic ideals they grew up with, however unrealistic, and nurture them like growing a plant. She then changes the idea she’s using to suggest that these values should be of paramount importance to them, like a “flag” they follow. Blanche dreams of letting the “tenderer” things in life guide her and her sister like a banner in battle. Stella implores Blanche to cling to these finer feelings, not to allow them to die off.