Mendacity In Tennessee Williams A Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

The person someone becomes is influenced by the losses they have experienced in their life. In Catcher

“There ain’t nothing more powerful than the odour of Mendacity”(Williams, 77) Mendacity is used effectively throughout the play Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. We witness how it tortures most of the characters in the play and its negative effect overall on the Pollitt family who as we can see suffers from the lack of association with each other. Mendacity acts as a vital part of every character’s life, it is also the turning point of the whole play which ends up causing disaster and for some happiness.

    Tennessee Williams is one the major writers of the mid-twentieth century. His work includes the plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. One theme of The Glass Menagerie is that hopeful aspirations are followed by inevitable disappointments. This theme is common throughout all of Williams' work and throughout his own life as well. It is shown through the use of symbols and characters.

     Brick, Maggie’s alcoholic husband, is an uncaring man who has no good feelings toward his wife. For example, when Maggie buys a gift for Brick to give to Big Daddy on his birthday and Maggie wants Brick to sign the card, he says “No… I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do”(28). Even on Big

Everyone has dreams, big and small. When one dreams, there is a scent of whimsical hope in the air mixed with the powerful drive for success to obtain their luminous goals. But, many times these luscious dreams end up in grief and pain instead of a promised joy due to the hurdles in life, such as the certain circumstances that society professes or the flaws in a person that restrains them from their aspirations. The writer, John Steinbeck, incorporates this ideology in his novella, Of Mice and Men by creating three pivotal characters. Lennie, Crooks, and George all have schemes that go wrong, and yet hope to illustrate their desires of fulfilling their American Dream and to be prosperous for their own independent purposes.

In the play, Brick tells his father, Big Daddy, why he constantly drinks saying, “This click that I get in my head that makes me peaceful. I got to drink till I get it. It's just a mechanical thing” (Cat, act 2). Twice throughout the play, Brick is forced to confront his relationship with Skipper once by his wife Maggie and once by Big Daddy. In Act one, Maggie starts to talk about the “mistake” she made with Skipper and Brick tries to stop her saying, “Maggie, shut up about Skipper. I mean it, Maggie; you got to shut up about Skipper” (Cat). Maggie continued on making the

Deception is the act of deceiving; it takes the shape of an underlying theme in each of the texts. It is a common occurrence in literature such as Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘On Chesil beach’ but in almost every incident, the degree of deception is different. Deception is performed by all characters to different extents and purposes, depending on the context of the situation. Othello displays deception between colleagues, whereby Iago uses deceit to cause carnage in the lives of his associates. Tennessee Williams illustrates deception within a family in his play A Streetcar Named Desire, as the main protagonist Blanche, lies to her own family about her sinful past. Finally, Deception is conveyed in Ian McEwan’s

Mark Twain states in his essay on the Decay of the Art of Lying that “No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances” The characters in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof often deny their circumstances and outright lie to one and another about their personal lives. However, these lies are spoken out of necessity, at the expense of social ranking and past remembrance. Tennessee Williams communicates to readers that verbal abuse and inabilities to tell the truth create unclear communication which breaks down relationships.

There is not one comic or movie, where Superman fails to save the day, where in the end he does not win. The Harry always defeats the Voldemort. This is because when a Christ figure is developed, there are certain expectations that go along with that. However, what happens when a Christ figure fails to fulfill their duty? In The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, Laura’s mother Amanda wants Laura to have a suitor. Finally, Tom —Laura’s sister— invites Jim O’Connor, one of his friends from work over to have a meal. Amanda goes into a frenzy preparing for him, and when he arrives he appears like the perfect suitor. As the night goes on, Jim eventually seduces Laura and then leaves in a rush. In Tennessee Williams’s play, The Glass Menagerie, Williams uses a ironic Christ figure to demonstrate how illusions tear a family apart.

   Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, describes three separate characters, their dreams, and the harsh realities they face in a modern world.  The Glass Menagerie exposes the lost dreams of a southern family and their desperate struggle to escape reality. Williams' use of symbols adds depth to the play. The glass menagerie itself is a symbol Williams uses to represent the broken lives of Amanda, Laura and Tom Wingfield and their inability to live in the present.

' so what are we going to do the rest of our lives? Stay home and

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams had ordinary people in an ordinary life that closely resembled the influences of Williams’ personal life while having reoccurring themes and motifs throughout the story. The play has been done by many with some variations in the scripts and setting while still clinging to the basic ideas of the original play.

As the play is a memory play the lighting is usually quite dim to give

Set in St. Louis Missouri prior to World War II, Tennessee Williams reflects back on his deeply tragic and dysfunctional familial experiences in, “The Glass Menagerie”. Williams brilliantly incorporates real aspects of society to reveal how they contributed to the nonreal aspects and the conflicts which affected his family. The real aspects of the play which had a significant impact on the lower middle-class families such as the Wingfields included, the economic hardships surrounding the Great Depression, the fall of the American south, society’s intolerance towards homosexuality, and many threats abroad. Although Williams play was merely a series of hazy memories, the nonreal aspects combined with the major societal conflicts contribute

Both William Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams use the theme of deception in King Lear and The Glass Menagerie respectively to illustrate the difficulty of characters in accepting reality either by their own volition or due to the fault of another. Firstly, both plays use deception to show how parental figures like Gloucester and Amanda are unable to see certain truths about their children due to the unconditional love a parent has for their child. In the case of Gloucester, he is deceived by Edmund into believing that Edgar is plotting against him. Gloucester is unable to see through Edmund’s deceptions, he says Edmund is “no dearer in his account” (I.i.19) meaning Gloucester’s unconditional love and trust as a parent has blinded him from Edmund’s true ambition. Likewise, in The Glass Menagerie, Amanda deceives herself in believing there is nothing at fault with Laura. Tom points this out, saying “Laura seems all those things to you and me because she’s ours and we love her. We don’t even notice that she’s crippled anymore.” (Williams 47). Unlike Amanda, Tom is not under any illusions about his sister and acknowledges that it is love that allows Tom and Amanda to overlook Laura’s shortcomings. Amanda on the other hand has internalized her self-deception and from her fundamental misunderstanding about Laura arises her delusions about her future. Another similarity in the way these plays handle thematic deception is its use to escape a horrible reality. In King Lear Edgar