The following is a journal response from Scene Six. Question: From Allan Gray’s point of view, retell the story Blanche told Mitch. Try to provide some explanations why he killed himself and how he felt towards Blanche.

 

Loved her. I loved her, I always will. She found me, and I found her. And there we found our truth. Our innocent truths.

Manipulated her. Used her. But I needed her. I was selfish. “I love you,” I told her always before walking out of the bedroom at night. She always slept, never asked. She could never hear herself shrieking and desperately grasping onto the crumpled white sheets of our wedding bed. I remained the lonely witness to her innocent terror.

I never tell. How can I tell her the wrong I am? How can I tell her how I don’t lust and desire her in the same way she does for me? But forever I will always love her. She comforts me, is my shining sun. When I was a seed encompassed within the crude darkness, she became the light that naively granted me the ability to escape from the dead soil and see life. Never told her. Never told her how the dead only live momentarily to clutch at their sweet sun. The flames become entrapped within hell; darkness becomes a permanent stain upon their ivory attire. I can never be of service to her similarly through the purity she presents forth to me.

My love, oh how I desperately love you, cling to you, but can never want you. For my sole desire is to bed another. My love, where you were my light, I became your darkness. Behind the luminance hid the darkest of skies, where stars did not shine within God’s eyes.

You began to suspect. I couldn’t have you wonder, for don’t you see how fervently I needed you? Your distance was calamitous. I clutched at you, come near, but then quickly stay away. I needed you to do both my sweet. But those with secrets never do get heard.

You approached the wrong day, oh the cruelty of timing. My façade no longer could remain pure, it became its flawed self, oh how ignorantly your sun glared then. We didn’t talk, just drank. I failed you. You met the blemished animal I was, and it scarred you.

We were drunk, you had to tell. My sweet you needed to. I wanted you to. The bitter words were spewing from you gentle mouth; the ruin, its time had already begun. That death, it freed me. My sweet dove, you were my angel. That pure white of your feathers I’d left stained with my misery. Your innocent fair and fine coat I’d instigated demolition upon. You were my salvation, I your devastation.

My love, please remember how paint always gets removed with the correct corrosive liquid. Your white paint will not last forever.

My blessed dove, I tethered your wings to the ground as you set mine free.

I’m so sorry.

 

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This journal entry in itself granted me the ability to further understand why Blanche desperately presents an illusion of herself and forces her stained past to remain behind the curtains of darkness.

Blanche lies and possesses the need to deceive others due to the dire circumstance she has been placed within. She has participated within acts of prostitution to instigate relief towards her grotesque sexual desire. Blanche knowingly speaks lies from her tongue to preserve that innocence she once had with Allan, she seeks that undeniable purity of her past youth and love, but Allan himself was an illusion (as he was homosexual).

Blanche lies to destroy the sinful attributes (bedding young men) she acquired after the death of her husband, but she does not understand how she cannot destroy the one thing that will initiate the change she desperately seeks within herself. Therefore, Blanche lies with the intention of destroying past demons, but they can only be suppressed, never expelled. This is the exact ludicrous hope she clings onto, the same hope I believe Allan clutched at her for. Allan’s relationship with Blanche was initially based upon an honest and virtuous love, but what destroyed this legitimacy was Allan’s selfish use of Blanche as the sole need for his redemption because of his societal unsound desire towards men.

Throughout Blanche’s spiral into insanity we can see how her mental state becomes exhausted because of this constant suppression and maintenance of this ideal fantasy, due to the fact that her hidden truth has not been acknowledged by her fabricated reality. Therefore, Blanche cannot attain her reality if it has not been stained by the truth of her past. This is an outcome that Blanche herself is aware of, as she is cunning and an intellectual woman, but chooses to distance herself from. She chooses to not acknowledge the predetermined fate she recognizes, and becomes purposely ignorant towards it. Blanche seeks to fly knowing she is buckled to the ground. And what releases these buckles is the sole thing that Blanche chooses to hide. Therefore, when the Mexican woman says, “flores para los muertos,” it reminds Blanche of Allan, and she is frightened due to the fact that she does not want her fate to become his, as within him she finds sanctitude but consequently is encompassed within the hell of both of their reprehensible desires.

When Allan and Blanche both lie, a blackened seed begins to embed itself within the confinements of their minds, and all it requires is itself to grow. They both fiercely seek to subdue the one thing that is the ultimate truth of who they are through creating a veneer, and whereas Allan accepts this truth through his death, Blanche is frantic to isolate herself from the captivity of her horrid truth, she ultimately runs a race that leads her towards the very thing she craves riddance of.