The Pollitt Love Languages

A unique story of love (or lack thereof), family, and mendacity, Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" leaves many things left unsaid.  Although the story is full of [mainly] women talking non-stop, is anything real being said?  Both Big Mama and Maggie can both yap their lives away, but their husbands pay them little attention, and it seems as though talking is simply a way for the two women to fill the emptiness that is so apparent in their relationships.  Talking, therefore, could be seen as the only thing left for the Pollitt women to do, as they both seem to have given up everything else to have a family with their significant others.  Maggie, for instance, who has married up in society, struggles throughout the play to keep her marriage alive.

What, then, does marriage signify?  Success?  Power?  Certainly not happiness.  And yet, everyone in the story creates lies and attempts to cover up the unhappiness that they feel.  Brick uses alcohol, Big Daddy uses material goods, and even Gooper can hide behind his financial and familial stability.  Further, the Pollitt men eventually reach a breaking point, telling their wives to shut up and giving them the freedom to find other men.  Despite these obvious, verbal gifts of independence, the women pretend as if they are either joking or are appalled and refuse altogether.

The 1958 film adaptation with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman takes a firm stance on Brick, showing him as heterosexual and simply being deprived of love from his family, specifically his father.  This position is possibly a result having of big stars in a Hollywood movie, thus needing to take the safer route in order to succeed.  Big Daddy is shown to be a materialistic husband and father; his way of showing love to his family.  Brick and Big Daddy have a big blowout in the basement about the definition of love.  Big Daddy believes he is showing love through what he will leave behind -- much of his energy has been spent trying to make sure  that his family can live comfortably, without worrying about money.  Brick, on the other hand, believes that love from his father should be about time, conversing, and getting to know each other.  I think both Big Daddy and Brick are correct in their understandings of love languages (although Big Daddy's materialism is portrayed in an extreme way by Brick), but it does not seem that they ever come to understand each other; that they are stubborn, in a sense, and will not give into the other person's definition of what love is.

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

Group #1: COAHTR

I was in the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof group that presented on Tuesday, September 14th.   We had a difficult time meeting as a whole group because of all of our busy schedules, but I was able to be at the first group meeting where we brainstormed the themes we wanted to explore and all the possible ways to present our discoveries.  Knowing that we could be a little adventurous with our presentation, I thought we could stray away from the traditional discussion presentation of simply having each person speak to present specific topics.  After failing to do a Dating Game-esque presentation in a previous class, I saw the ability to integrate six characters into a Jerry Springer-esque presentation, especially with all the dysfunctional aspects of relationships within the play.  From that, and the fact that we had a 4:2 ratio of girls to guys, sprung our episode of  "Kerry Springer", where we would explore how each character feels like a cat on a hot tin roof; caught in a relationship that they can't get out of, and oftentimes, don't even want to get out of.

Each person had a role for Kerry Springer -- I was Big Mama, coming out towards the end to make sure to emphasize the fact that Big Mama believes there are no secrets to be had in the Pollitt family and to continue to be disillusioned to the reality of Big Daddy's distaste of her.  Most importantly, Big Mama is continues to deny any notion of Big Daddy dying, leading to an argument about the will that Gooper (represented in our show by Mae) has sketched out.

If we had had more time to work on the presentation, I feel like we could have really polished it up, and I had hoped to add an audio/visual element to the presentation, with pre-show interviews, pictures, and music, but eventually decided there wasn't enough time to do any of that.  So I settled on making a poster to hang up instead :)

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.