What is the significance of the two poker games in A Streetcar Named Desire?

The significance of the
two poker games in 's plays off of the idea of juxtaposition.
Juxtaposition is a literary device which places two or more things near one another in order to
illustrate a contrast.

The first poker scene appears early in the play.
Stanley and his friends are playing poker, and Stella and Blanche are out (so as not to disturb
the men and their games). The ladies do not stay out long enough for the poker game to end.
Blanche does not know any of the men except Stanley, and she falls into her flirtatious persona.
She tries to draw attention to herself by changing in front of a backlit curtain, through which
the men can see. She flirts with Mitch and questions Stella about Mitch's background.
Eventually, the ladies anger Stanley to the point of eruption; he throws a stereo out of a
window and hits Stella. Stella flees the flat, and Blanche follows her. Stanley ends up being
thrown into the shower by the other men in an effort to shock him out of his drunken
rage.

The second poker game happens at the very end of the play. Blanche is
showering and getting ready to leave the flat. Although she thinks that she is going on vacation
with an ex-"beau," she is being taken to a mental hospital. In the previous scene,
Stanley has raped her, and Stella cannot believe Blanche and go on living with Stanley. Stella
decides to believe her husband and sends Blanche to a mental hospital.

The
juxtapositions the scenes illuminate are the changes in the characters. Blanche is no longer the
flirtatious woman in a search for love. Stella is no longer a woman enamored with her
"perfect" husband. Stanley, though, is the same man he was at the beginning. This lack
of a change in Stanley accentuates his inability to identify his own shortcomings and change
them for his wife and child. His static nature proves to be incapable of the necessary change in
order to deal with the world around him. The poker games illuminate Stanley's lack of ability to
change, while also illuminating the dramatic changes in both Stella and
Blanche.