ELLB3 Exemplar response paragraphs
Assessment Essay
How does Williams present the relationship between the two sisters in the following passage?
Scene 1
Context
After being introduced to the self-absorbed and socially aware Blanche, we as an audience are intrigued to see how she converses with her sister. The conversation takes place in the modest apartment of Stella and Stanley Kowalski, Blanche already within whilst Stella returns. The audience has been party to Blanche’s loathed reactions to the New Orleans neighbourhood and have met Stella through her brief and sexually loaded discourse with her virile husband. The purposes of this conversation are to introduce the relationship between the two sisters and to show their differing natures, despite the similarity in up-bringing and adolescent social status. Williams is careful to construct the motherly protective nature of Blanche to ironically foreshadow her demise towards the end of the play.
Interactional Features
The modes of address used by both characters are of particular interest and after the repetitive use of ‘Stella’ at the beginning of the conversation to show Blanche’s hyperbolic greeting to her sister, which reveals more of her unstable and child-like character to the audience, we have a combination of references of vulnerability ‘precious lamb,’ ‘baby...
