In Elysian Fields, she is punished by her memory as she relives the death of the Grey Boy in Promethean fashion. Blanche is seeking solace in the shadows of New Orleans but is instead confronted by a rowdy purgatory. In book six of the Aeneid, Virgil describes the Elysian Fields as vibrantly alive, “Whatever, living/The men delighted in, whatever pleasure/Was theirs in horse and chariot, still holds them/Here in the underworld./Some grapple on the grassy wrestling-ground/In exercise and sport,/and some are dancing,/And others singing” (166). The heroes that the gods honored with immortality lived in “Elysium“ or the Elysian Fields. In Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields were the final “resting” place of the happy dead.

In Streetcar, Tennessee Williams, who believed that, “Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama,” indulgently embraces the symbolism of the Elysian Fields. The luxuriousness of bourbon has to exist side by side with the suffocating and cacophonous energy of the Elysian Fields. The viscous heat and raucous atmosphere of New Orleans in the 1940s is more than a backdrop for the battle for ascension and mastery that makes the action of A Streetcar Named Desire, it is an active participant.