A Streetcar Named Desire Lesson Plan

How do you characterize the dialogue in Scene 11? What do you make of Blanche's grape speech?

The scene is packed with mundane small-talk; the real action is signified through the stage directions. Still, there is great emotion expressed through the dialogue on the part of the people who understand what is going on.

Blanche's one speech is mostly meaningless, a bit more of Blanche's poetic babble for everyone to remember her by. The speech even seems to reflect awareness of its own meaninglessness; Blanche speaks of how she wants to die from eating an unwashed grape, as unheroic and meaningless a death as one can imagine, just a bit more fluff to tide her through...