Social Issues in the “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” by Tennessee William

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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof represents a title of a brilliant play composed by Tennessee William, an American playwright. The play focuses on a non-adaptive southern family that is pushed by life to handle concealed deceit and hypocrisy. The issues presented in this play transcend time and realm. William has succeeded in producing a modern tragedy which looks into the consequences of social change, human heart deception and portrayal of the ordinary tragedies that are faced by ordinary people in a dynamic world.

Generally, the play emphasizes tragedy in contemporary troubles such as alcoholism, mendacity, regret, betrayal, bitterness, greed, cancer and death. The play also explores homosexuality and infidelity which in part, play a role in bringing these terrible and sorrowful events. Cat on a Tin Roof is, arguably, A Tragedy. Yet, this is a somewhat a vague term; broad, certainly. This essay aims to discuss “tragedy” as presented in various ways in the play.

Kolin argues that, the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with its classic antecedents, share a basic principle: “Man is not the master of his soul. The great decisions are made by forces beyond control (1)”. In the play, superior forces that the characters fight against are biological, social, psychological and economic. As the play commences, one observes that there seems to be lack of communication among the characters as they appear to be suffering from lonesomeness.

Tennessee looks to be leery of the alterations in the social measures and household unit dissolution resulting from social and global modifications. This is a fear that is reflected by Big Daddy’s phrase; “Sometimes I think that a vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with”(122). This basically means that emergence and development is in accordance with nature but the result brought about by the change is often damaging and unanticipated.

Big Daddy, as a matter of fact is an American Dream embodiment and via his character. Tennessee depicts how the society of America has made a sacrifice of all values in the name of the most appealing value in the globe; money. Ambition has an atrocious aspect, and Big Daddy is an achiever in the world of business, but a failure in some other facets.

As a human, he has gone wrong by concentrating his small empire upon himself rather than becoming sensitive to the opinions and demands of his family. He acts as though money were his mere value as a man, as evidenced by this; “Y’know how much I’m worth? Guess Brick! Guess how much I’m worth!” His being a failure in other aspects and a sorrowful character is by itself a form of tragedy (Kolin 122).”

A conspicuous battle ensues in Big Daddy as he makes an effort as a father, to make advances Brick just as a caring dad goes up to his son, revealing his inmost affection and anxiety. The struggle is betwixt his great affection for his boy and his finding the facts, and the mindset of his miserable upbringing by which the dad was normally a removed and an unreachable figure.

The stage directions of the play hints this; “glancing quickly, shyly, from time to time, at his son”, “pressing his head quickly, shyly against his son’s head, then coughing with embarrassment…” this implies that he is embarrassed to display affection, which displays a form of tragedy within himself (Kolin 134).

Via the difficulties experienced by Brick and his father to freely converse about the matter, deficiency in message conveyance is exhibited thus resulting to desolation and closing off.

The two men continuously talk while saying nothing of importance and not paying attention to each other at all, as pointed out by Brick’s speech; “We talk, you talk in circles! We get nowhere, nowhere!” (124) Big Daddy is however determined to converse with his son and he says, “Don’t let’s- leave it like this, like them other talks we’ve had…it’s always like something was left not spoken”. To some extent, the two men are tragic characters.

At the earlier stages of the play, there is a family gathering aimed at celebrating the patriarch sixth-fifth birthday of Big Daddy when they barely discover that he had cancer and they start to quarrel and finally had to deal with many other prevarications and hypocrisy in their livings.

The destiny of Big Daddy is determined by cancer for which he battles his life against. Meanwhile, Mae and Gooper compete against Maggie for the inheritance that insures economic security in the materialistic society apathetic to the needs of the poor. Big daddy has never made a will and now he is on the brink of dying thus he might end up having inheritance disputes within his family (Kolin 127).

The tragedy of existence makes the troubles of Brick to look petty. Brick’s troubles however, are directly associated to the reality that exalted him at one time and he so much adored that he took on its entire preconception. When he had grown old and imperfect, the very world dropped him as a hot brick.

At once the reality sickened him, and was displeased for becoming its part, and therefore he set himself apart. Contrariwise, Big Daddy learned to assume the untruthfulness of living, and this hard-boiled and made him misanthropic. Brick attempts to define himself either as homo or heterosexual. Simultaneously, as an idealistic individual, he tries to wage war with a realistic society of America (Kolin 122).

Brick has become unhappy, unemotional, detached and hard to get on with ever since the death of his friend Skipper. He becomes a drunk and nobody, not even Maggie, his wife, could make him happy. He badly misses Skipper and blames himself on what happened to his friend thence sees alcohol as the only remedy to his sorrow.

The reason why Brick is very bitter toward life is that he feels there are lies all over in his life which are impossible to get away from. He believes that his wife betrayed him with his closest friend, Skipper. Moreover, everybody was lying about the condition of his father and his family including his brother, are doing all that is possible to make sure that they inherit his father’s fortune after he passes on.

With all this occupying his mind, he finds it best to become unemotional and detach himself from his entire family and life. He supposes that if he drinks into oblivion each day of his life, then it will come to pass or he will have nothing to deal with at the least. From his past happy life, Bricks life turned into hell- it had an unhappy ending which brings in the definition of tragic. Due to him not responding to his friend’s call for help, Skipper died leading to his tragic end (Kolin 122-126).

Another victim who suffers tragedy is Maggie, Bricks wife. She is constantly rejected by her husband who is supposed to love and comfort her as a soul mate; therefore she suffers that tragedy of rejection and loneliness. When Maggie complains about the trail that their marriage is taking, Brick coldly tells her to have an outside affair if she so wished to have sexual satisfaction.

He goes on to tell her that they only shared a roof because she wanted to and had agreed to do so only in name, “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to! Now, you keep forgetting the conditions on which I agreed to stay on living with you.” Such treatment is inappropriate regarding the reality that they were man and wife; hence Maggie continually suffered silently.

Maggie on her part is unwilling to go out and have an affair. She opts to remain “a cat on a hot tin roof” till her husband appreciates her. While being angry and frustrated with the entire situation, she hopes that her husband would change for the better. She does not seem to matter to Brick at all as he becomes bitter and cold toward her and is amazed that Maggie could actually want to bear child with a man who does not love her (Kolin 123). This is truly a tragedy in that it is an unhappy event in life.

Families are perhaps the most difficult to understand in human relationships. In the play, they seem to lend themselves towards tragedy naturally. Tennessee’s family greed tragedy is encountered when the news of Big Daddy’s illness is learned of. Mae and Gooper want to gain Big Daddy’s favor and they aim to achieve this by discrediting Maggie and Brick. They claim that they have five kids with the sixth one on the way while Brick and Maggie do not have any (Kolin 128-130).

This way, they are trying to impersonate that the estate of Big Daddy will be in good hands with the responsible family members, “Suspicious of her greedy, prolific relatives who have produced five grandchildren for Big Daddy, she explains to him why they have assembled – to battle over the vast inheritance of the 28,000 acre Mississippi cotton plantation/estate… (131)” The two form a team of public relations, blandishing Big Daddy as they tear down their contenders at every opportunity.

They always take caution in maintaining their polite and civilized appearance while betraying Big Daddy’s back. Doctor Baugh and Reverend Tooker also portray the same traits as Mae and Gooper while hoping to be included in the will (Kolin 122).

The characters’ stories in the play is in reality a mere means through which Tennessee delivers his message and captures the volatile depth of feelings experienced by groups of people during times of crises. Tragedy, basically defined as an unhappy ending of an event or a sorrowful character with a disastrous conclusion, has been dealt with by Tennessee in his play.

The discussed fateful events can be summarized as; the rich Big Daddy who is now facing a terminal illness and a broken family, Brick who once valued and enjoyed life but has turned to an alcoholic due to his friend’s death, Maggie who hopes to be loved and treated well by her husband but all is in vain, and finally Mae and Gooper who hope to acquire the inheritance.

They have been pushed to battle for the inheritance by their economic situation, thus it is unfortunate that they do not possess enough wealth given the fact that they have many children. Conclusively, the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is indeed a play filled with tragedy.

Works Cited

Williams, Tennessee. Tennessee Williams: A Guide to Research and Performance. Trans. Philip Kolin. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998. Print

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