Blanche DuBois arrives at her sister's New Orleans apartment, dressed in white, clinging to illusions, and the collision with Stanley Kowalski's brutality will destroy her. Williams wrote this out of his own terrors: his sister's lobotomy, his closeted sexuality, his alcoholism, his need for beauty in an ugly world. The play runs on desire and cruelty, on the poetry of Blanche's delusions and the violence of Stanley's reality. Marlon Brando created the role that made him famous. The kindness of strangers: the line echoes because it is both hope and surrender. The streetcar runs to Cemeteries.