Critical Analysis Of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

In Tennessee Williams’ plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire, several characters suffer by lying and by being unaware of reality. Both plays demonstrate and signify the themes of illusion vs. reality and mendacity through past trauma, alcohol abuse, and through strained family and marital relationships. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brick is an example to all of these factors through his past with his friend skipper, his abuse of alcohol, and the lack of love he shows for his wife, while in A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche encounters similar problems as Brick with her past trauma and her alcohol problem. The two plays share many similarities

Exposition : The Younger family has recently lost their head of the family, Mama’s husband, and are going to be given 10,000$ from their insurance. They are an African American family in the working class that lives on the South side of Chicago and struggling with financial difficulties.

The first Character that needs to be mentioned, Brick, is the quietest and most reserved character in the play. Brick is a former football player and a famous announcer. (Williams 149). Brick is in a constant battle with himself throughout the whole story. This being because he has started drinking at all times so that he can hear a click in his head and become peaceful. The reason that he drinks is because he feels he is responsible for his friends Skipper’s death. Brick’s drinking is important to the play because it shows his disinterest in almost everything that occurs during the book. For example, while the will of Big Daddy’s is being discussed, Brick is outside on the balcony having a drink. Gooper says to Maggie during this scene “Why don’t you go out there and drink with Brick?” (Williams 149). This also is important because it shows that they characters in the play realize that Brick has no interest in anything besides his drink. Brick is an interesting character because he is the only one who does not thrive for Big Daddy’s love, yet he is the only one who receives it. Brick can also be described as a character who is disgusted. He is disgusted with many events in this play.”Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was heralded by some as the play in which homosexuality was at last to be presented without evasion” (Bentley). This quote by critic Eric Bentley stands true because the idea of homesexuality in the play is another reason Brick is disgusted. He is disgusted with the world for the most part because nobody understand that his and Skipper’s relationship was not a homosexual one.He states “Why can’t exceptional friendship, real, real, deep, deep friendship! between two men be respected as something clean and decent” (Williams 117). This could be a reason that he is also sort of disgusted with women. Critic Jere Huzzard says “Clearly both father and son had enjoyed a physical competency

The play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” was performed in Indiana University, in Bloomington, on November 2013. The acting in the play was very well performed, for a couple of different reasons. Each actor seemed to develop a personal relation with its own character and thought about the smallest details for their characters. The director of the play was Marti Maraden, who is a sought freelance director. Her debut in this play made it better because she had worked on so many different plays and know what each of them need. The director of the play did state that it was wonderful working with a group of people that took everything seriously and that they worked very hard for the production. She also stated that they were able to have such a wonderful production because the school picks people based upon their acting skills and how interested they are in theater. For her to say that the acting skills of the

In the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Williams explores a theme of sexuality. The story focuses on Brick and his wife, Margaret. Margaret cares deeply for Brick and refuses to leave his side. Brick is ashamed of his sexulity in the play. When he was younger he was great at sports and had a very close relationship with his friend, Skipper.

– Then I thought, Yes! – I couldn’t make up my mind” (112). Furthermore, because Big Daddy is unable to come to a definitive answer, the turmoil throughout his family increases. Disorder is at the center of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; thus, Big Daddy’s internal conflict propels the family into complete chaos.

Tennessee Williams wrote the play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in the mid-1950’s.The play takes place in Mississippi during one of its hot, humid summers. Most of the play is centered in the bedroom and sitting room of Big Daddy’s home on a Mississippi plantation. The characters are members or acquaintances of the family. On one summer evening, the Pollit’s family is gathering to celebrate Big Daddy’s birthday. The previous evening Brick break’s his leg, while trying to jump hurdles. Brick’s wife, Maggie, then tries to stop Brick from his miss-behaving due to his alcoholism, while trying to seduce him at the same time. Maggie feels as if it is urgent for her to have a baby, but Brick is too drunk to even care much about

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play written by Tennessee Williams that takes place on a southern plantation. Self-made millionaire Big Daddy has been told that he is dying of cancer and the family has gathered for his birthday in an attempt to secure his favor for the plantation inheritance. The analysis of the play goes through the creation of such iconic characters as the wealthy southern patriarch, Big Daddy, his middle-aged football hero son, Brick is lost soul. He has no goals or cares in life and wants only for the return of his youth. He lets Maggie dominate his lie., reading from the book examines the bitterness that comes with being untruthful, the complexities of family life, the disappointments of aging, and pain of confronting one's own mortality.

I chose to write a scene from the book Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams in a straightforward and ambivalent tone including Gooper and Mae. In addition to that, throughout the scene, I tried to maintain the style of writing similar to Tennessee Williams. I tried to use vigorous diction like Tennessee Williams does in his plays to make the conversation have pace.

“[They are] all liars, all liars, all lying dying liars” (2.1.985). The preceding is one of the most emotional lines at the end of the second act in Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It also succeeds in setting the tone for the entire play. The story centers on a dysfunctional southern family who is plagued by lies and deception. The closing of the second act is one of the most intense and critical moments in the play where Big Daddy finds out his son, Gooper, and daughter-in-law, Mae, have been lying to him about his rapidly declining health. Just before this gripping climax, however, Big Daddy has an emotional conversation with his youngest son, Brick, about mendacity. This term is central to the play’s themes and is mentioned continuously throughout the play. Still, the lies and dishonesties come from many different entities within the play. The roots of most problems the characters face in the play come from mendacity within the society, their family and the characters themselves.

In Heidi Hanrahan’s analysis of “The Black Cat,” By Edgar Allen Poe, she starts off by claiming that this story is “Poe’s commentary on nineteenth-century American domesticity”(Hanrahan, 40). Hanrahan then points out that Pluto should be viewed not as a symbol for something deeper, but as what he is in reality; the narrators pet. She uses excerpts and quotes from texts such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Lamplighter to support her claims that having and “Caring for animals, writers argued, helped people become better children and adults” (Hanrahan, 47). In these excerpts and quotes, parents and people who witnessed someone mistreating an animal either inflicted harm on the abuser or expressed great sympathy for the defenseless animal. Hanrahan explains that, because we must take care of these animals and treat them well, we can learn very important “moral lessons” from them. Ideally, everyone who owned a pet in the nineteenth-century was a person of high morals, therefore, according to Hanrahan, having a pet was “…a marker of domestic bliss and success.”(Hanrahan, 42). Concluding her analysis, Hanrahan explains that by writing The Black Cat, Poe is responding “…to his fellow contemporaries’ celebration of domesticity…” Poe does so by dismissing “…the comforting reassurance of domesticity…” by “Rejecting the idea that a loving home can ensure stability…” (Hanrahan, 53) instead he shows the side of domesticity that many people do not want to see. Poe’s story explains how an ordinary and normally functioning home can quickly turn into a very calamitous situation.

After reading through the course syllabus I am very excited to start this semester. I am looking forward to reading many short stories, poems, and also Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a play that a close friend recommended to be last year. My main question with regards to the syllabus would be this: will we be tested on all of the poems and short stories that we study this term?

Neil Gaiman, a renowned English author, questioned the thought-provoking line, “If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it?” Gaiman advocates towards the idea of when life becomes stressful, people tend to find a “temporary escape” to alleviate anxiety and avoid the harsh realities of the world. In his play, The Glass Menagerie, placed in St.Louis during the Great Depression, Tennessee Williams creates a story that demonstrates this theme of escapism. Tom Wingfield, an aspiring poet who steals away from his mundane life with alcohol and going to the movies, narrates a memory illustrating the familial tensions between him, his mother Amanda, and his younger sister, Laura. Amanda is stuck in an imaginary time loop, constantly reminiscing about her golden days in Blue Mountain, where she attracted seventeen gentlemen callers. Her state of mind was caused by her marriage to a man who chose world travel over his family. Now, she takes comfort in governing her children’s lives and reliving her youth. Tom’s extremely reserved 23-year-old sister, Laura, has lived a reclusive life due to insecurities about her limp. She seeks safety through tending to her treasured glass menagerie and listening to music from a Victrola. Utilizing a myriad of recurring motifs such as the Wingfield apartment fire-escape and deception in his play, Williams spins a tale that

hatched roof bungalows climb the height of the House of Cats’ tree. Lit with blue lanterns, swinging rope bridges snake across branches and zig zag through the open air from the Kitten Plaza up to each of the exotic chambers. Crimson banners stamped with the House of Cats’ crest, a silhouette of kitten ears, flutter from every balcony, and the air is thick with the smoke from cannabis pipes and the smell of cologne, the scents of debauched luxury. But to me, it’s home.

The bonds between men and women varied across the world in the 1920’s, with certain countries embracing women within society, yet other countries saw women as nothing more than homemakers. In his time in Europe, Ernest Hemingway witnessed the utmost respect men had towards women. Yet when Hemingway arrived back in America he saw the misogynistic attitudes towards women and their movement for suffrage. Ernest Hemingway’s “Cat in the rain” is the adventure of American women seeking suffrage in the 1920’s, alongside portraying the juxtaposition of treatment of American women to European women.