Amanda Hovnanian
Blog Post #3 Topic #3
Merriam Webster Dictionary defines “insanity” as “a severely disordered state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder.” This definition encapsulates the idea that insanity is caused by something and is a mental disorder. Insanity can be caused by a traumatic experience that someone must endure, a chemical imbalance, or even something as small as the repetitive sound of a water droplet from a facet. What the Merriam Webster Dictionary definition does not include is the idea that repeating the same action over and over again and expecting a different outcome can lead one to insanity. In this way we see how Blanche goes insane.
Blanche was a privileged southern bell that never had to deal with anything and had a perfect carefree life until she lost her family’s house and land. Before she lost her family’s land Blanche was married to a man that did not actually love her, because he actually loved men. Her husband goes on to kill himself, because of a horrible thing that she said, and I believe that this event triggered the beginning of Blanche’s slow journey to insanity.
Blanche did not find reciprocal love in the first man she fell in love with so she tried again and again. She tried so many times to fall in love with a man that would reciprocate that love, but to no avail. Blanche became the town’s resident whore because she let so many men into her room in the hopes that they would love her. By continually trying to have men fall in love with her in the same way and expecting a different outcome, Blanche develops this severely disordered state of mind. This was the repetitive action that, slowly but surely, caused Blanche to come to the brink of insanity.
When Blanche goes to visit Stella, we see that she is troubled, but at first we do not know to what extent. Through little bits of dialog and in how she interacts with others we start to see Blanche’s madness. As she tries, once again, to have a man, Mitch, fall in love with her we see the deranged parts of Blanche’s character start to unfold. She is so set and almost obsessed with having Mitch fall in love with and marry her, she starts to come unhinged and we glimpse the instability of her mind set. When Stanley, reveals to Mitch all of Blanche’s impurities, something is triggered inside of Blanche that makes her travel even further into lunacy. I believe that Blanche descends completely into insanity when Stanley rapes her. I think this traumatic event is the last straw that finally causes Blanche to realize the true inhumanity of the world. She realizes that this world is cruel and men can not save her from it, if anything they bring more misery. With this bombarding realization Blanche takes refuge in her own insanity because she can no longer bear the injustice of the world and what it has done to her.
Word Count: 500
Hi Amanda,
ReplyDeleteI agree that repeating the same things over and over and continuously failing to earn what one wants can also lead him/ her to be insane. For instance, Blanche keeps seeking for true love and eventually gets sick of not getting the outcome she expects and becomes insane. You had very detailed and supportive examples that prove why Blanche reaches the brink of insanity and eventually takes refuge in her own insanity. But just to make your writing more convincing and organized, it would be nice to add a concluding paragraph which clarifies how repetitive failure leads one to insanity. I would briefly explain how her past scar from her ex- husband and her experience with Mitch and Stanley brought her to insanity in the last paragraph in order to summarize your ideas.
You have done a brilliant job explaining what makes Blanche crazy. You have also done a great job on the expansion of the definition of insanity. To further improve your paper, you could have included something relating cultural ideas of sanity that are insane along the idea of repeating some action and expecting different outcome. For example, you could mention something about modern methods of dating that seem sane but are actually quite crazy if you think about it.
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