A Streetcar Named Desire Lesson Plan

What is the content of Blanche's aural hallucination?

It is the soundtrack of the night her husband died. She hears the Varsouviana, the polka playing at the dance hall, when she is upset and confused and feels torn apart by emotion. It crescendos and crescendos and doesn't stop until the gunshot--the shot that killed her husband. Allan's death in the hallucination is a catharsis, a release, or at least the jolt that she gives herself to return to reality. She is only free of the memory after she relives it from start to finish. Yet, she is never totally free of the memory, for it keeps returning and remains a fundamental point of sorrow and lost love in her...