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Scene 6 Summary

Two a.m. the same night. Blanche and Mitch appear. She is exhausted, he seems a bit depressed. Mitch apologizes for not giving her much entertainment this evening, but Blanche says it was her fault. She reveals that she will be leaving soon. They discuss a goodnight kiss and the other night by the lake when Mitch tried for a bit more "familiarity." Blanche explains that a single girl must keep her urges under control or else she is "lost." Perhaps he is used to woman who like to be lost on the first date. Mitch says he likes her simply because she is difierent from anyone he has ever met. Blanche laughs and invites him in for a nightcap.

Blanche lights a candle and prepares drinks. Mitch remains standing awkwardly. He won't take his coat off because he's embarrassed about his perspiration. They discuss Mitch's imposing physique, her slighter one, and this leads to a brief and somewhat clumsy embrace. Blanche stops him, claiming she has "old-fashioned ideals" (she rolls her eyes as she offers this gem, but he cannot see her face). After an awkward silence, Mitch asks where Stanley and Stella are, and why the four of them never go out together.

Blanche expresses her conviction that Stanley hates her. Mitch thinks that Stanley simply doesn't understand her. Blanche knows it's more than that, that he wants to destroy her.

Mitch asks Blanche how old she is. He has told his ailing mother about Blanche, but could not tell her how old Blanche was. His mother is not long for the world and wants to see him settled. Blanche says she understands how he will miss his mother when she's gone. She understands what it is to be lonely. She gives a revealing account of what happened with the tender young man she married. She loved him terribly but somehow it didn't seem to be enough to save him from whatever it was that tormented him. Then one day she came home to find her young husband in bed with an older man who had been his longtime friend. At first they all pretended nothing happened.

They went out to a casino together, the three of them. On the dance floor she drunkenly confronted him, telling him he disgusted her. Then the boy rushed out of the casino and everyone heard a shot. He killed himself.

Mitch comes to her and holds her, comforting her. "You need somebody. And I need somebody, too," he says. "Could it be{you and me, Blanche?" They kiss, even as she sobs. "Sometimes{there's God{so quickly," she says.

Scene 7 Summary

Late afternoon, mid-September. Stella is decorating for Blanche's birthday. Stanley comes in. Blanche is in the bathroom, bathing, and Stanley mocks her to Stella. He tells Stella to sit down and listen because he's got the dirt on Blanche now. As Blanche, unconcerned, sings "It's Only a Paper Moon," Stanley gleefully recounts to Stella how Blanche earned a notorious reputation at the Flamingo hotel and was asked to leave (presumably for immoral behavior unacceptable even by the standards of that establishment).

She came to be regarded as "nuts" by the town and was declared 'off-limits' to soldiers at a nearby base. She was not given a leave of absence by her school; she was kicked out for having a relationship with a seventeen-year-old boy.

Stella defends her sister. She's not convinced this story is true{certainly not all of it. Stanley tells Stella not to expect Mitch for the birthday dinner. He has told Mitch all he heard, and there's no way Mitch will marry her now.

Stanley has bought Blanche a birthday present: a one-way bus ticket back to Laurel, Mississippi. He yells at Blanche to get out of the bathroom. She emerges at last, in high spirits. But Stanley's face as he passes by gives her a fright. And the dazed way that Stella responds to her chatter alerts her that something is wrong. She asks Stella what has happened, but Stella can only feebly lie that nothing has.

Scene 8 Summary

Three quarters of an hour later, the birthday dinner is winding down. The place set for Mitch is empty. It has obviously been a strained meal. Blanche tries to break the gloomy silence by asking Stanley to tell a story. He declines. So Blanche tells one herself- -a lame joke involving a priest and a swearing parrot. Stanley pointedly does not laugh. Instead, he reaches across the table for a chop and eats it with his fingers. Stella scolds him. He smashes his plate, declares that he is sick and tired of being called "pig Polack disgusting vulgar greasy!" He is the king of this house. He smashes his cup and saucer and storms out onto the porch. Blanche again asks Stella what happened while she was taking a bath. What did Stanley tell Stella about her? Nothing, Stella says, but she is clearly upset.

Although Stella implores her not to, Blanche calls Mitch's house to find out why he stood her up. Mitch is not home. Stella goes to Stanley out on the porch. They embrace, and Stanley promises her things will be all right again after the baby comes and Blanche leaves. Stella goes back inside and lights the candles. Blanche and Stanley join her. Stanley's patent ill will produces another tense exchange with Blanche. One of Stanley's bowling buddies calls up. While he's on the phone, Stanley unnecessarily yells at Blanche to be quiet. She tries her best to control her nerves. Stanley returns to the table, and with a thin veneer of kindness offers Blanche a birthday envelope. She is surprised and delighted|until she opens it and Stanley declares its contents: a one-way ticket back to Laurel, Mississippi on a Greyhound bus, leaving Tuesday.

Blanche tries to smile, tries to laugh, runs to the bedroom, and then to the bathroom, clutching her throat and making gagging noises, as if Stanley's cruelty has literally taken her breath away. Stanley, pleased with himself and his just actions (considering, he says, "all I took off her"), prepares to go bowling. But Stella demands to know why Stanley has treated Blanche so callously. He reminds her that Stella thought he was common when they first met, but that he took her off her pedestal and things were wonderful until Blanche arrived. While he speaks, a sudden change comes over Stella.

She slowly shufies from the bedroom to the kitchen, then quietly asks to be taken to the hospital. Stanley is with her in an instant, speaking softly as he leads her out the door.

Scene 9 Summary

Later the same evening, a scarlet-robed Blanche sits tensely on a bedroom chair. On a nearby table are a bottle of liquor and a glass. We hear polka music, but not from the radio: it's playing in her own head. She is drinking, we are told in the stage directions, not to think about impending disaster.

Mitch appears in work clothes, unshaven, making no attempt to play the gentleman caller. He rings the doorbell and startles Blanche. She asks who it is, and when he replies, the polka music stops. She frantically scurries about, applying powder to her face, stashing the liquor in a closet, before letting him in with a cheerful reprimand. Mitch walks right past her proffered lips into the apartment. Blanche is frightened but takes it in stride. She continues in her light and airy mode, scolding him for his appearance and forgiving him in the same breath. Mitch stares at her, clearly a bit drunk. He asks her to turn off the fan; she does so. She offers him a drink, but Mitch doesn't want Stanley's liquor. She backs off, but the polka music begins again. It's the same tune that was played, she says out loud, when Allen (her husband)...She breaks off, waiting for the gunshot. It comes, and the music subsides. Mitch has no idea what she's talking about.

Blanche goes to the closet and pretends to discover the bottle. She takes her charade so far as to ask out loud what Southern Comfort is. Mitch does not bite, but bides his time, getting up the nerve to say what he has come to say. Blanche tells Mitch to take his foot off the bed, and goes on about the liquor. Mitch again declines. Stanley has complained to him that Blanche drinks all of his liquor. At last Blanche asks point blank what is on his mind.

Mitch says it's dark in the room. He has never seen her in the light, never in the afternoon. She has always made excuses on Sunday afternoons, only gone out with him after six, and then never to well-lit places. He's never had a good look at her. Mitch tears the paper lantern off the lightbulb. He wants a dose of realism. "I don't want realism, I want magic," replies Blanche. "I try to give that to people... I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth.

And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it." She begs him not to turn the light on. He turns it on. She lets out a cry. He turns it off. Mitch is not so concerned about her age; what he can't stomach is the garbage and excuses about her morals and old-fashioned ideals that he's been forced to swallow all summer. Blanche tries to defend herself, but Mitch has heard stories about her from three difierent sources and is convinced. She breaks, and admits the truth through convulsive sobs and shots of liquor.

She had many intimacies with strangers. She panicked after Allan's death, did not know she what she was doing and eventually ended up in trouble with the seventeen-year-old. She found hope when she met Mitch, but the past caught up with her. "You lied to me, Blanche," is all Mitch can say. In her heart she never lied to him, Blanche replies. Mitch is unmoved.

A blind Mexican woman comes around the corner with bunches of tin owers used at Mexican funerals. "Flores. Flores para los muertos," the woman intones. (Flowers. Flowers for the dead.) Blanche goes to the door, opens it, sees and hears the woman (who calls to her and offers her owers), and slams the door, terrified. The woman moves slowly down the street, calling. We hear the polka tune again.

Blanche begins to speak as if she were thinking out loud. Her lines are punctuated by the Mexican woman's calls. Her tortured soliloquy mentions regrets, legacies, death, her dying parents, death and agony everywhere, desire as the opposite of death, the soldiers from the nearby camp who staggered drunkenly onto her lawn and called for her while her deaf mother slept. The polka music fades. Wanting what he's been waiting for all summer, Mitch walks up to her, places his hands on her waist and tries to embrace her.

Blanche says he must marry her first. Mitch doesn't want to marry her; he does not think she's fit to live in the same house as his mother. Blanche orders him to leave. When he does not move, she threatens to scream 'Fire.' He still does not leave, so she screams out the window. Mitch hurries out.

Scene 10 Summary

A few hours have elapsed since Mitch's departure. Blanche's trunk is out in the middle of the bedroom. She has been packing, drinking, trying on clothes and speaking to imaginary admirers. Stanley enters the apartment, slams the door and gives a low whistle when he sees Blanche. Blanche asks about her sister. The baby won't be born until tomorrow, says Stanley. It's just the two of them at home tonight.

Stanley asks why Blanche is all dressed up. She tells him that she has just received a telegram from an old admirer inviting her to join him on his yacht in the Caribbean. It was the oil millionaire she met again in Miami. Stanley plays along. In high spirits, he opens a bottle of beer on the corner of the table and pours the foam on his head. He offers her a sip but she declines.

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