As Blanche is in the bathroom bathing and singing about the paper moon and make-believe world, the realistic Stanley comes home with a complete case against Blanche. He has collected all the facts and has assembled a list of all the lies that she has told him. Stanley is now ready for his final confrontation with Blanche. He now has all the information he needs to prove again his superiority over her.
Stanley’s actions, it must be remembered, stem from several motivations. Most important, Blanche has represented a threat to his marriage. His marital life has not been the same since the arrival of Blanche, and Stanley feels this. Secondly, he is tired of being referred to as vulgar and common. Even if he is vulgar, he feels that his life cannot hold a candle to the type of life Blanche has been leading. Thus he will reestablish his own sense of importance only by proving how degenerate Blanche actually is. Lastly, Stanley is a person who cannot tolerate illusion or make-believe. He is the realist and must have “his cards on the table.” Thus, he must, according to his nature, destroy all the illusions Blanche has been creating.
Stanley does not have the sensibility to realize that perhaps Blanche and Mitch could have had a successful marriage in spite of Blanche’s past. Instead, he feels some manly obligation to inform Mitch of Blanche’s past life. And not only does he tell Mitch, but he buys a bus ticket for Blanche back to Laurel. Note that he could have bought a ticket to another town, but he cruelly buys one that sends her back to the scene of her last failure and the one place where she cannot possibly return.
It is ironic that Blanche is bathing (again symbolic of a cleansing ritual) while all the past that she is trying to wash away is about to be revealed by Stanley.
