A Streetcar Named Desire

What happens with the young collector? What does this scene reveal about Blanche?

What happens with the young collector? What does this scene reveal about Blanche?

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A paperboy stops by to take a collection, and Blanche is immediately interested. He is wary of her advances, but she is drawn to his youth, and kisses him briefly. He runs off. Mitch appears for their date, and Blanche greets him gaily.

Blanche does not appear to be a predator as she flirts with the paperboy, so much as sad and pathetic. She is drawn to children, children who are innocent and gay as she imagines herself to be. Trapped emotionally in a fictional past – was her childhood so innocent with the epic fornications of her family, or her youthful love so pure with her "degenerate" husband? - she grasps at the straws of youth that she sees in the paperboy and countless other youths before him.

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