Love and Lies

While reading Tennessee Williams's play, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", it is almost too hard to focus at times because you can really sense the noise, disillusionment, and intensity of this family living in the Mississippi Delta in, presumably, the mid-1900s.  Just in the first few minutes of the play, Maggie and Brick reveal a lot about themselves, both through what they say and what they don't say.  Brick is utterly emotionless, and his name even suggests his apathetic attitude towards life and Maggie especially.  Maggie, on the other hand, feels the constant need to fill a void no doubt created by the expectations (and, as a result, the disappointments) she had regarding her future with Brick.  She verbally makes it known that she is lonely and victimized, and seems to be desperately seeking any attention from Brick.  Maggie almost seems like a psycho at times, obsessed with Brick, and it makes you doubt if Maggie is really in love with Brick or if she's only in love with the idea of Brick.   Just like a cat on a hot tin roof, Maggie is uncomfortable where she is, yet looking for security within the Pollitt family.

Mendacity is a key concept that forms most of the play.  Each relationship experiences it: Brick/Maggie and Big Daddy/Big Mama are lying to each other, everyone lies to Big Daddy and Big Mama about Big Daddy's condition, Mae and Gooper's intentions for returning to the plantation are concealed, and Maggie tells everyone that she's pregnant with Brick's baby.  Further, Big Daddy and Brick state how mendacity is simply a part of their lives; something they can't live without.  While Brick is busy attempting to experience the click he seems dangerously trying to attain, Big Daddy exclaims "I've lived with mendacity!--Why can't you live with it?  Hell, you got to live with it, there's nothing else to live with except mendacity, is there?" (81), to which Brick begins talking about how he tries to run away from life by way of alcohol.  Brick later affirms his belief in the power of the bottle, by stating that calmly stating that "[m]endacity is a system that we live in.  Liquor is one way out an' death's the other..." (94).  The plot centers around the lies that they tell one another, whether verbal or indiscreet -- it's no wonder that Brick sees liquor and death as the only ways out.

Williams, Tennessee. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. New York: Penguin, 1955. Print.