Blanche DuBois?

•A southern woman character in the play called AStreetcar Named Desire (《欲望号街车》); 

•At the end of the play, she said this well-remembered line before she is taken toan asylum:

–“Whoever you are,---I have always depended on the kindness of the strangers.”

Tennessee Williams 

•The author of A Streetcar Named Desire(Pulitzer winner);

•In this plays, as in many of his other works, Williams explores the intense passions and frustrations of a disturbed and frequently brutal society;

•The story opens with Blanche DuBois coming to New Orleans to visit her sister, the pregnant Stella, and thesister's husband Stanley Kowalski. To get to their apartment, she has to take a streetcar named Desire. Thus the Desire streetcar became the most famous street railway in the world.

AStreetcar Named Desire

•In 1947 the play opened on Broadway for a two-year runwith Marlon Brando as star and Elia Kazan as director. 

•In 1951 the famous play was made into a movie starring:

  *Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois

  *Kim Hunter as Stella

  *Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski

  *Karl Malden as Mitch

•In God We Trust, the national motto of the United States. 

•Deriving from the line “And this be our motto, ‘In God is our trust’,” in the battle song that later became the U.S.national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

•First appearing on U.S. coins in 1864 and became obligatory on all U.S. currency in 1955. In 1956 it was made the national motto by act of Congress.

•The official seal of the U.S. government;

•TheAmerican Eagle has its wings spread and carries in its beak a scroll on which appears the Latin motto E pluribus unum(“From many, one”). It is the United States motto, appearing on the nation's coins and on many of its public monuments;

•The motto was first used to unify the 13 British colonies in North America during the American Revolution(1775-1783),and acquired new meaning when the United States received wave after wave of immigrants from many lands;

•The immigrants had to find ways to reconcile their varied backgrounds and fit together under one constitution and one set of laws. That process of creating one society out of many different backgrounds is one of the biggest stories of the American experience.

•The text is adapted from the original article by Mike Mclntyre which appeared in Reader’s Digest, May 1997.

A Short Story

Plot:The author travelled across the United States alone to find out if people werewilling to help strangers. 

Setting:People in the United States seem to have become more and more indifferent toother people’s needs. 

Protagonists:“I” and the people helped “I”

 Theme:What do you think?