Blog #3, Topic #3

Blog #3, Topic #3

In Merriam-Webster Dictionary, insanity is defined as “a severely disordered state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder”, and “unsoundness of mind or lack of the ability to understand that prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or that releases one from criminal or civil responsibility”. Based on the first definition, a person is insane when he has issues with his mental activity, which makes the person mentally disable to think about some objects like the normal people do. For example, many people have acrophobia, which hampers them to look down from a very high place. Their phobia causes them to think the height differently compared with a normal person who can withstand the height. The second definition is talking about a different situation, in which an insane person has a specific value that prevents them from doing things that are commonly thought to be correct. Moreover, those insane people may be willing to do the thing that others think is commonly thought to be foolish and unreasonable. For example, some vagrants who want to be put in jail so they don’t have to work, are often recognized as insane by many people.

In the drama, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Blanche is thought to be crazy by other characters in the story at the end of the story since she is sent to a mental hospital. In my opinion, Blanche gradually becomes crazy as the story progress. I didn’t consider her behavior to be insane or crazy when I just read the beginning of the story, but I also had the idea that her behaviors will make herself to be less likeable to others especially to Stanly who share the home with her. When she starts to live in Stella’s home, her behavior can be seen as a result as her unwillingness to accept that she lost all her money and that her following life will be less luxurious than before. She kept her habits of wearing fine clothes and spending the whole afternoon bathing. Unfortunately, the definition of crazy is mostly based on the value of majority, so those behaviors can be considered not crazy, as a large amount of rich people consider such behavior to be normal, but in Stanly and his friends’ point of view, those behaviors are indeed crazy. People as Stanly have to work daily and taking care of family, so when they see Blanche have no intention to have a job and spend all day to spread her idea from high class, they feel uncomfortable. The high frequency of Blanche taking bath implicate that Blanche brings many habits when she was in higher class to the life she start in her sister's home. Moreover, the description of her bathing often comes with a lot of hot water and loud singing. In Scene, when Stanly is arguing with Stella about Blanche's stories, Blanche sang in the bathroom alone. "In the bathroom the water goes on loud; little breathless cries and peals of laughter are heard as if a child were frolicking in the tub". In this description, Blanche is bathing in hot water so comfortably, that makes people see the difference between the high class that Blanche comes from and the class that Stanly lives in.

Those differences of Blanch's value against the environment, where she just moves in, makes herself become the target of people’s questioning, which is also the origin of the pressure on Blanche. As a result, people believe the rumor of Blanche, which makes her looks unclean. Because Blanche doesn’t get used to poor people’s life fast enough and still look down upon her new life, people treat her unfriendly. She wants to make herself looks like she will only stay temporarily, so she makes up her fake friend, Shep Huntleigh. At my point of view, her action in the later scenes is pretty rational. She makes up something to think about, so that she can distract herself from the pressure of rumor and Stanly. However, as the pressure on her is so heavy at the end of the story, she start to behave irrationally, and is cheated by her own lies. The pressure comes from the facts that she is gradually rejected by the environment that she lives, and she also lost all her chance to get back to her luxurious life.