Please could you explain this quote for me from "A Streetcar Named Desire"? "They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!"

Ok so first, let's set the scene for this quote. Blanche speaks these words to Eunice and the Negro woman upon arriving at the Kowalski apartment at the beginning of Scene One. She has just arrived in New Orleans and is describing her means of transportation to her sister’s apartment. The place names that Williams uses in A Streetcar Named Desire hold metaphorical value. Elysian Fields, the Kowalskis’ street, is named for the land of the dead in Greek mythology. The street name is both a literal street in New Orleans and a symbolic resting place. It foreshadows Blanche's looming fate. Williams also romanticizes the neighborhood: even though it is poor, all races and classes are mixed, and the constant music gives everything a slightly dreamy quality. The journey that Blanche describes making from the train station to the Kowalski apartment is an allegorical version of her life. Her illicit pursuit of her sexual “desires” has led to her social death and expulsion from her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi and her some would say, looming spiritual death as she is taken to an asylum at the end of the play. What s also very interesting about this quote and good to keep in mind to boost your grade with examiners, is that this quote is rather Freudian. Freud's concept of the Death Drive (Thanatos) believed that humans have an inherint drive for destruction as shown through his research in World War I trauma patients who would subject themselves continually to nightmares about the horrors they had seen.Therefore, from a Freudian perspective, Blanche could arguably be succumbing to her ultimate will which is that of self-destruction as she repeatedly carries out actions that will harm her. To conclude, everything about this quote screams that there is no way Blanche can escape her fate: it is as certain as the running of the New Orlean streetcars. 

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