Cat on a hot tin roof

Tennessee Williams
Key notes
full title Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
type of work Drama
genre Tragedy
time and place written Written in New York, 1939
tone Tragi-comic
tense The play unfolds in the time of the present
setting (time) Summer, mid-1950s
setting (place) The bed and sitting room of Big
Daddy's Mississippi plantation home.
protagonists Maggie, Brick, Big Daddy

major conflict Big
Daddy has come home
from the clinic on his 65th
birthday, and his children
plan to tell him he is dying
of cancer. Mae and
Gooper have brought
their entire brood in an
attempt to jostle Brick and
Maggie out of their share
of the estate. Their
marriage is childless and
on-the-rocks; Brick has
quit his job and taken to
drinking upon the death
of Skipper, a friend for
whom he harbored sexual
desire.
climax At the end of
Act II, Brick admits
Skipper's confession
of love and reveals
Daddy's cancer.
Margaret
The play's cat. Maggie's loneliness and Brick's
refusal to make her his desire, has made her
hard, nervous, and bitchy.
The woman constantly posing in the mirror
Desperate in her sense of loneliness
Hysterical, dissatisfied woman
Maggie's loneliness lies in Brick's refusal to
recognize her desire. His refusal to make her his
desire has made her hard, nervous, and bitter.

More on Margaret
Shes a woman desperate in her sense of lack,
masochistically bound to a man who does not want her,
and made all the more beautiful in her envy, longing, and
dispossession.
Maggie literally begins to fall to pieces. Throughout Act I,
Maggie appears changing her clothes, posing before the
mirror, preparing for the party.
Maggie's dispossession also lies in her childlessness.
Her childlessness calls her status as wife and woman
into question. As a childless woman she is a woman who
lacks. Without a child, moreover, her and Brick's place in
Big Daddy's household is not assured
Brick

The favorite son and mourned lover. Brick
embodies an almost archetypal
masculinity.
At the same time, the Brick before us is
also an obviously broken man because of
his repressed homosexual desire for his
dead friend Skipper.



More on Brick
At the same time, Brick is an obviously broken
man. Turning from his homosexual desire for his
dead friend Skipper, Brick has depressively
withdrawn from the world behind a screen of
liquor. He is reduced to the daily, mechanical
search for his click that gives him peace
Brick's brokenness is materialized in his injury, a
broken ankle incurred while jumping hurdles on
the high school athletic field.
In a sense, it is an injury incurred out of
nostalgia for the early days of his friendship with
Skipper
Big Daddy
Affectionately dubbed by Maggie as an old-
fashioned "Mississippi redneck
Daddy is a large, brash, and vulgar plantation
millionaire who believes he has returned from
the grave. Though his coming death has been
quickly repressed, in some sense Daddy has
confronted its possibility.
In returning from "death's country," Daddy would
force his son to face his own desire.
Big Mama
Fat, breathless, sincere, earnest, Mama is a
woman embarrassingly dedicated to a man who
despises her and in feeble denial of her
husband's disgust.
She also favors Brick, investing him with all her
hopes for the future of the family. As she
implores in Act IV, Brick must carry on the family
line, he must provide Big Daddy with a grandson
Mama's moment of dignity comes upon the
revelation of Daddy's cancer. Here she becomes
a woman who, despite the humiliations, has
stood by her man.
Mae
A mean, agitated "monster of fertility" who
schemes with her husband Gooper to
secure Big Daddy's estate.
Mae appears primarily responsible for the
burlesques of familial love and devotion
that she and the children stage before the
grandparents.
Gooper
A successful corporate lawyer. Gooper is
Daddy's eldest and least favored son.
He deeply resents his parents' love for
Brick, viciously relishes in Daddy's illness,
and rather ruthlessly plots to secure
control of the estate.
The Children
Mae and Gooper's children. They appear
here as grotesque, demonic "no- necked
monsters" who interrupt the action on-
stage.
Under Mae's direction, they offer up a
burlesque image of familial love and
devotion.
Themes, motifs & symbols
Like many of Williams's works, Cat concerns itself with the
elaboration of a certain fantasy of broken manliness, in this case a
manliness left crippled by the homosexual desire
Brick is Cat's broken man. The favorite son and longed-for lover of a
wealthy plantation family, he possesses the charm of those who
have given up and assumed a pose of indifference before the world.
Bricka "brick" of a manembodies an almost archetypal
masculinity.
Brick's coolness," however, is the coolness of repression. Brick is
an alcoholic who cannot avow the desire in his relationship with his
dead friend Skipper. Turning from his desire, he has depressively
distanced himself from the world with a screen of liquor. He is
reduced to the daily, mechanical search for his click that gives him
peace.
Themes, motifs & symbols
The Lie
The two primary objects of repression in Cat are Brick's
homosexual desires and Daddy's imminent death.
After the men are forced to confront these secrets,
Mama will desperately invest all her future hopes in the
dream of Brick becoming a family man
The responsibilities of fatherhood would somehow stop
his drinking, the estate could go to the rightful heir
The idyllic fantasy of the family restored, however, is yet
another of the play's lies or Maggie's invention of a
coming child.
Themes, motifs & symbols
The Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The cat refers to a particular fantasy of femininity and
feminine desire. The play's primary cat is Maggie, a
typically hysterical, dissatisfied Williams heroine
Maggie's loneliness has made her a "cat," hard, anxious,
and bitter. The exhilaration of Williams's dramaturgy lies
in the force of the audience's identification with this
heroine, a woman desperate in her sense of lack,
masochistically bound to man who does not want her,
and made all the more beautiful in her envy, longing, and
dispossession.
Themes, motifs & symbols
The Father and Son
the father and son appear in a narcissistic relation.
Daddy's narcissistic love for Brick is clear.
Daddy wants above all that Brick provide him a grandson
who is as much like his son as Brick is like himself. Brick
is his rightful heir, his means of immortality.
Unlike the characters about them, they present
themselves as the only ones who have never lied to
each other. Both stand on polar limits of the system of
mendacity that is life, Brick being the drunkard and
Daddy the dead man.
Symbols
Brick and Maggie's bedthe place where
the rocks in their marriage lie
Second a gloriously grotesque console,
combining a radio-phonograph, television,
and liquor cabinet.
Brick's crutch. Its removal at the hands of
Maggie and Big Daddy symbolize Brick's
castration