The Cry Of The Wounded

A Streetcar Named Desire, as the masterpiece of Tennessee Williams, the great American playwright, delineates a homeless lady who has gone through some family disasters looks for a shelter at her sister’s, but unfortunately is raped by her brother-in-law. The protagonist Blanche DuBois has a drastic change in her disposition, and becomes absent-mined after her dear family members passed away and her beloved husband had an affair with another man. Afterwards when she settles down at her sister’s, these painful memories still lingers on her mind all the time, for she is confronted with the cultural difference of the South and the North, and the confliction between gentility and brutality. Meanwhile, her husband Allan Grey shoots himself after he was discovered about his "scandal" and could not face the reality.Under the framework of trauma theory, the paper attempts to dig out wound suffered by Blanche and Allan. On one hand, they experience the visible trauma as an individual, particularly for Blanche who is depicted as a victim with the event, clear symptoms and the desire for healing. One the other hand, it is found that collective trauma is also presented according to the investigation of Williams’ daily life and the social environment. Collective trauma in the text is the invisible trauma towards the marginalized homosexual community. Moreover, in this man-made traumatic event, Blanche is usually regarded as the victim and gained more attention, while Allan is ignored to a large extent though he is also wounded.Tennessee Williams portrays two kinds of wounds in a man-made traumatic event, with both the victim and the perpetrator suffering a lot from the catastrophe. His narration represents his cry for the perpetrator between lines of his play. Through the analysis of Allan’s suicidal behavior and the traumatic event, this thesis discovers the invisible trauma that the marginalized people are suffering from, which contributes to understanding trauma theory from the dialectical perspective and plays an advantageous role both in practical significance, humanistic study, and humanistic solicitude.