A Streetcar Named Desire

Vocabulary In part excerpted from Geva Theatre’s Streetcar study guide.

Belle Reve – French, beautiful dream. This is the name of Blanche and Stella’s family home in Laurel, Mississippi.

Elysian Fields - The name of the apartment building the Kowalskis live in. In Greek mythology this was where the blessed spent eternity. The phrase has come to mean a place or condition of ideal happiness. gaudy - tasteless and showy. heterogeneous – a whole consisting of unlike parts, for example, a community of people from different backgrounds. implicit - implied. incongruous - out of place. the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir – a weir is a barrier placed in or across a stream of river to either create a pool or otherwise divert the stream’s flow; to redirect the water (a tarn—see the end of the quote—is a small lake). Blanche’s reference is a quote of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “Ulalame,” in which a young man is led to his lover’s tomb on the year anniversary of her death by a deceptively bright star. The last cheery little stanza is: Then my heart is grew ashen and sober As the leaves that were crispéd and sere— As the leaves that were withering and sere, And I cried—“It was surely October On this very night of last year That I journeyed—I journeyed down here— That I brought a dread burden down here— On this night of all nights in the year, Ah, what demon has tempted me here?

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber— This misty mid region of Weir— Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.” indulgence - something granted as a favor or privilege. por nada – Spanish: Don’t mention it, it was nothing.

Napoleonic Code – a civil code of law carried over into Louisiana from its French origins. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica Online, “the Napoleonic Civil Code, an ambitious work of legal codification, . . . consolidated certain basic principles established in 1789: civil equality and equality before the law; the abolition of feudalism in favor of modern contractual forms of property; and the secularization of civil relations. Codification also made it easier to 28