Compare and contrast how Williams and McEwan present a reliance upon illusion in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘The Cement Garden.’

In ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ creating the illusion of being, ‘attractive…prim and proper,’ is all Blanche can do to satisfy her yearning to maintain the ‘beauty’ and gentility of her ‘fading’ youth; preferring the life ‘of the mythically cavalier Old South to…reality…,’ Blanche escapes into, ‘…a legendary world,’ (Cash). In ‘The Cement Garden,’ the children live in what Slay describes as a ‘frenzied dream.’ They grow to rely upon the illusion that they can ‘keep the family together,’ and escape, ‘…a reality filled with orphanages, unsympathetic rules and social control’ (Slay), as they are cast into a ‘parentless world.’ Both texts pose us a debate: whether we value truthful reality or the illusions which the characters’ livelihoods grow to rely upon. While one might argue that both texts present a reliance upon illusion as unattractive, a convincing argument can be made that the tender humanness which permeates both pieces of literature, makes us view illusions as innately human; a way of transcending the hardships of reality through a means which only man is capable. In both texts a reliance upon illusion is presented as something we should surely sympathise with. 
In ‘Streetcar,’ the conception of Mitch and Blanche’s romance is built on illusions; during its embryonic stages it is nurtured by the codes of chivalry; ultimately it crumbles the moment that reality intervenes: ‘I don't think I want to marry you anymore…you’re not clean enough…’. Williams poses the reader a debate: whether we value truthful reality, or the illusion which served as the lifeblood of their romance. Arguably the intrinsically human desire to find love, that both Blanche and Mitch possessed, makes us choose the latter: ‘You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be— you and me, Blanche?’ In ‘The Cement Garden’ the children’s illusion that they can evade the authorities and survive in their own makeshift living arrangements is presented as being incited by a loving desire to keep their mother’s last wish alive and find relief after the trauma of loosing their parents: ‘The house must be run properly…otherwise…they’ll come and put Tom in care and perhaps you and Susan too…the house would stand empty…’. Jack’s repetition of his mother’s last few words in the wake of her death serves to evidence this: ‘they’ll come and put us into care…the house will stand empty.’ As in ‘Streetcar’ a reliance upon illusion becomes so intimately tied to the ideal of love and emotional truth, that to say either writer protests a reliance upon illusion seems wholly unconvincing. Indeed both writers seem to value love over all else