Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

People have never enjoyed reading about, or watching entertainment about functional people and families. There is a reason that August Osage County won best drama last year and Little Miss Sunshine was a huge success; people enjoy watching dysfunctional families. As I discussed in my fist blog, the family in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is by far one of the most dysfunctional families in theater history. This really comes together in Act 3. One of the main reasons is that the family is based off getting things out of each other instead of love. This is seen right from the beginning of act three when Big Daddy is leaving the room yelling “ALL LYING LIARS!” Brick cares about Big Daddy more than any one else in his family, and yet he won’t even go after Big Daddy to help him because he does not care enough about him. 

At the end of the play, the audience really sees the disfunction of the family. The house eventually explodes into chaos, each person trying to get what they want and not hearing the other person. Gooper finally tries to get the money flat out. He takes out a document he has created and hands it to Big Mama to sign. It is as if everyones true intentions could not be kept hidden any longer and everyone burst. What I thought was the most interesting was the interaction between Gooper and his wife. Mae wants Big Mama to sign Gooper’s plan for Big Daddy’s will and she is relentless. Both Gooper and Mae want the same thing, but are unable to even work with each-other because they are both blinded by their goals. This forces them to even turn against each-other on page 169:

Mae: Of course we know that this is – a lie.

Gooper: Be still, Mae. 

Mae: I won’t be still! I know she’s made this up!

Gooper: Goddam it, I said shut up!

The play closes showing how there is no love in the play but instead it is full of people who just use each other. Maggie ends up “winning” her battle for land. She attempts to have a child, not out of love, but out of greed. While it is uncertain if Brick gives in, it would appear that he does, and that he does it not for love of her, but so she will give him what he wants, his liquor. It is sad the the couple that love each other the least, Brick and Maggie, in the end are the most successful because they have figured out how to use one another. Maggie ends the play by saying how much she truly does love Brick, and Brick repeats a line from Big Daddy, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that was true.” Brick seems to be able to see all the lies and deceit, but the lies and the liquor have numbed him to a degree where he just doesn’t care. 

Lying is a huge theme in this book. This concept, however, does not come out until the second half of Act 2 when Big Daddy asks Brick why he drinks. Brick responds with a powerful line: “DISGUST!” This opens up the door to a long set of dialog between Brick and Big Daddy. For the first time they seem to be having a conversation in which they both participate and which means something to both of them. Brick tells big daddy how he is disgusted with liars. This would make sense considering that they live in a house surrounded by liars; everyone pretending to love Big Daddy just so they can get their reward. But the lie that is plaguing Brick is deeper than this. 

Earlier, in act one, when Maggie brought up Skipper, Brick broke his glazed over appearance and physically attacked Maggie. This showed that there was clearly something about Skipper that was important to Brick, beyond the “pure normal friendship” that he kept claiming it was. In act two Brick breaks his glazed over quality a second time when Big Daddy, in trying to figure out Brick’s drinking problem, says “You started drinkin’ when your friend Skipper died” (p. 115). At this point the two begin a huge argument in which Brick keeps trying to convince Big Daddy that there was nothing going on between him and Skipper but friendship. The thing that makes this suspicious is that Big Daddy is never accusing him of anything like that. On page 122 Brick yells, “Why can’t exceptional friendship, real, real, deep, deep friendship! between two men be respected as something clean and decent without being thought of as-” To which Big Daddy responds, “It can, it is, for God’s sake.” Brick is not able to accept that people, such a Big Daddy, do believe him probably because he does not believe himself. Brick finally admits to Big Daddy that Skipper called him up one day and told Brick his feelings. Williams never says that Skipper told Brick he had sexual feelings towards him, but Williams makes it clear that what is unsaid is more important that what is said. Brick tells Big Daddy that after this he hung up the phone without saying anything. This is when Big Daddy has his revelation. “Uh-huh. Anyhow now! – we have tracked down the lie with which your disgusted and which you are drinking to kill your disgust with, Brick. For you have been passing the buck. This disgust with mendacity is disgust with yourself. You! – dug the grave of your friend and kicked him in it! – before you’d face truth with him!” 

Brick: “His truth not mine!” 

Big Daddy: “His truth, okay! But you wouldn’t face it with him.” 

This is the lie that has caused Brick to start drinking. A lie is a denial of the truth, and even if the friendship was pure from Brick’s side, he couldn’t accept the truth that it wasn’t from Skippers. 

In the beginning of this act, Williams strongly develops the character of Big Daddy. While the audience has heard about Big Daddy, they don’t meet him till the the first page of Act 2. Once big Daddy is introduces, along with the other characters, the audience gets to see even more disfunction in the family. Within the first few pages, many conversations happen, and no one seems to be listening to each other. It is very similar to the way Brick and Margaret work. One of the biggest disfunction’s is in the relationship between Big Daddy and Big Mama. This is shown when Big Daddy makes a joke at Mama’s expense on page 67. Williams describes the scene after the joke. “Everyone laughs very loud. Big Daddy is famous for his jokes at Big Mama’s expense, and nobody laughs louder at these jokes than Big Mama herself, though sometimes they’re pretty cruel and Big Mama has to pick up or fuss with something to cover the hurt that the loud laugher doesn’t quite cover.” This begs the question why Big Mama laughs. Is it because she truly loves Big Daddy, or is it because of something he gives her. Big Mama tells him later in the scene how much she loves him and has loved him, and he responds with, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that was true…” (p. 80). 

This is where the similarity between Brick and his father begins to come out for the fist time. They two are left alone and they begin to talk. While Brick eventually points out that their conversations consist of Big Daddy talking and Brick pretending to listen, there is still a connection between the men and possibly a mutual respect. They both understand something about the women in the family. While Big Daddy is a very harsh man and can be hurtful, he does have an understanding about things. Everyone thinks he is blind to what each character wants out of him, but he sees it. He sees that Mae and Maggie both just want his land and that Gooper, his son, wants the same the same thing. He comment’s on the fact that Big Mama wants to “be in charge” and when they thought he had cancer she was, but now he is going to take control back over his family.  The only one that doesn’t seem to want something out of him is Brick, and that is probably why he talks to Brick. 

Yes Big Daddy is very cynical, but at the same time he does have this understanding of the world. “-the human animal is a beast that dies and if he’s got money he buys and buys and buys and I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind he has the crazy hope that one of his purchase will be life everlasting! – Which it never can be…. The human animal is a beast…” (p. 91). He is talking about how after his near death experience with cancer he understand his desire to rise up the ranks of his farm and get money and land, but this speech becomes very important in understanding Maggie and the rest of the family (besides Brick). Big Daddy understand what they are doing and I think he is trying to pass advice on to Brick. While he does not always appear to be a good father, this could be one time where he is trying to give his son advice about the world. 

From the beginning of the play Tennessee Williams does a brilliant job of setting up the conflict between Margaret and her husband Brick. He clearly understands what makes a dysfunctional family, and that is an inability to understand each other. Each one seems to be in their own mindset and even their own little world. While Brick is not blameless, it would seem that the majority of the conflict comes from Margaret. Her world is very artificial and her primary concerns are money and her looks. It is easy to tell that Brick has more feeling towards people than she does, yet it would seem her inability to understand him lead to his drinking and then to a comatose-like haze that he seems to live in “with the charm of that cool air of detachment that people have who have given up the struggle,” as Williams describes Brick when he is first introduced. The words given up really seem to right true in the beginning with his few word answers that don’t show any interest in what Maggie is talking about. 

From the beginning I began to feel sorry for him because Margaret brings up that his father is dying, and yet all she cares about it getting the money. The irony here is that she spends the majority of the first act complaining about how her in-laws are only after Big Daddy’s money. Her shallowness goes beyond her lack of concern into a deeply disturbing level. The talks to her husband about how interested men are in her, and how she could have an affair. Her obsession with her own looks passes narcissism into almost a delusion. This reminds me of many other Williams’ characters, mostly Ms. Venible in Suddenly Last Summer. They both are convinced of their inability to grow old and how they must maintain their good looks, putting each of them in their own bubble. They seem not to be able to, or more like not to want to hear and take in what anyone else has to say.  This seems to be the main reason for the disfunction in the family between Brick and Maggie. Towards the end of the act, however, there seems to be something else going on with Brick. Weather Margaret’s accusations of Brick’s homosexuality are true or not will play out, but nevertheless the caused a rise in him for some reason.