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Scene Six opens in the early hours of the morning on the exterior wall of the building. Blanche and Mitch enter, both visibly worn after a night at the amusement park on Lake Pontchartrain. Mitch carries an upside‑down plaster statuette of Mae West, a carnival prize. Their dialogue is marked by Blanche’s neurasthenic fatigue and Mitch’s stolid, depressive demeanor. They exchange jokes about the deserted street‑car named Desire and lament the lack of entertainment that evening.
Mitch offers to fetch an “owl‑car” from Bourbon, and Blanche mock‑plays a flirtatious game, asking him to locate her door‑key, then pretending to be packing to leave. The pair move to the kitchen, light a candle, and adopt a whimsical “Bohemian” posture, pretending to be in a Parisian café. Blanche attempts French phrases, asks Mitch to kiss her goodnight, and then they share drinks, discussing clothes, perspiration, and personal habits. Mitch reveals details about his physique—he weighs 207 lb, stands six foot one and a half inches barefoot, and describes his membership in the New Orleans Athletic Club, where he lifts weights and swims.
The conversation turns to Stanley and Stella, who are absent, having gone out with Mr. and Mrs. Hubbell to a midnight preview at Loew’s State. Mitch wonders why they should not join later, and Blanche notes that Stanley is an “old friend” of Mitch’s from the “Two‑forty‑first” (a shared military unit). Mitch reveals his mother is seriously ill and likely to die within months, explaining his anxiety about being settled.
Blanche then divulges her own desperate circumstances: she is a summer schoolteacher with a meager salary, having come to New Orleans for financial survival, and endures Stanley’s constant oppression. She recounts a traumatic episode from her past—a marriage to a boy she loved deeply, a night at Moon Lake Casino where the boy, named Allan, ultimately shot himself after a chaotic dance and a polka tune. She describes the frantic crowd, the shot, and the lingering horror, ending with a vivid memory of the scene’s darkness and the “kitchen‑candle” that now lights her present.
Mitch, moved, embraces Blanche, offering mutual need for companionship. He asks, “Could it be—you and me, Blanche?” Blanche, overwhelmed, collapses into his arms, weeping silently as Mitch kisses her forehead, eyes, and finally her lips while the distant polka fades. The scene ends with Blanche’s breath released in grateful sobs, hinting at a brief moment of solace amid their bleak circumstances.