A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
Mendacity: a nine letter word that signifies all that is ugly in the world. That signifies untruthfulness, lies, hiding the truth. And what could be more beautiful (if not as beautiful) than simply truth itself. I believe that is the message Tennessee Williams tried to communicate in A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Written in the fifties, this play was define as one of the greatest work in American theatre, giving its author his second Pulitzer Prize. The play is about a wealthy southern family’s struggle with that very concept of mendacity: a possibly homosexual ex pro footballer, his seductive and tenacious wife, his dying father and his mother in denial and his brother and wife, both as cunning and devious as one another. In a play where all the themes line up towards one, and where that one key element is falsehood itself, the question (maybe a bit too solemn) can be asked: Will truth ever conquer?
The play starts in Maggie and Brick’s room. She is undressing while he is taking a shower. And she talks. She is telling him how much is brother and sister-in-law are lurking around his father’s will, Big Daddy’s will, knowing that he is going to die soon. It is Big Daddy’s 65th birthday and everyone is celebrating. Celebrating what? Big Daddy is going to die and everyone knows it except the victim himself, and his wife.
«What's that smell in this room? (…) Didn't you notice the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? »
In the very beginning of the play, we come in that mendacious world. Everyone wants that inheritance: Big Daddy owns one of the biggest plantations in the country, and everyone is ready to do a whole lot to get it, however hypocritical it may be. Except Brick who is disarmingly disinterested (or simply drunk, one might say), aloof. He doesn’t care what Maggie says he doesn’t care what his brother does, what his brother wants; Brick is tormented.
Tormented with what? One of the many brilliances of the play is how the story is built: the plot will expand to dimensions you wouldn’t even have imagined, or have cared to imagine in a small gap of time, revealing whatever it might have been hiding. It is in this way that we uncover Brick’s history. Why does he drink so much? Why doesn’t he want to sleep with his wife (whom is quite attractive) and why is he not the responsible human being everyone is hoping he would be? Brick is troubled with his friend Skipper’s death. A friend who might have been more then a friend: a friend who might have gotten too close to the ex pro footballer. A possibly homosexual footballer—there’s something that would have been kept silent in the fifties, in a southern state of America. And there’s another mendacious relationship, another lie, or series of lies, which is circumscribed in the atmosphere of the play.
Whether the lie is implicit or explicit, whether it is purposely stated or a simple omission, the word mendacity takes as much place in the play as it does the first time Brick mentions it. I do not believe truth has conquered by the end of the play. Even though everything was said, the play ends on this final statement from Brick, right after his wife tells him she loves him, which, I believe, was Williams’ way of telling us we would always live in a fallacious world. : «Wouldn't it be funny if that were true? »
Mendacity: a nine letter word that signifies all that is ugly in the world. That signifies untruthfulness, lies, hiding the truth. And what could be more beautiful (if not as beautiful) than simply truth itself. I believe that is the message Tennessee Williams tried to communicate in A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Written in the fifties, this play was define as one of the greatest work in American theatre, giving its author his second Pulitzer Prize. The play is about a wealthy southern family’s struggle with that very concept of mendacity: a possibly homosexual ex pro footballer, his seductive and tenacious wife, his dying father and his mother in denial and his brother and wife, both as cunning and devious as one another. In a play where all the themes line up towards one, and where that one key element is falsehood itself, the question (maybe a bit too solemn) can be asked: Will truth ever conquer?
The play starts in Maggie and Brick’s room. She is undressing while he is taking a shower. And she talks. She is telling him how much is brother and sister-in-law are lurking around his father’s will, Big Daddy’s will, knowing that he is going to die soon. It is Big Daddy’s 65th birthday and everyone is celebrating. Celebrating what? Big Daddy is going to die and everyone knows it except the victim himself, and his wife.
«What's that smell in this room? (…) Didn't you notice the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? »
In the very beginning of the play, we come in that mendacious world. Everyone wants that inheritance: Big Daddy owns one of the biggest plantations in the country, and everyone is ready to do a whole lot to get it, however hypocritical it may be. Except Brick who is disarmingly disinterested (or simply drunk, one might say), aloof. He doesn’t care what Maggie says he doesn’t care what his brother does, what his brother wants; Brick is tormented.
Tormented with what? One of the many brilliances of the play is how the story is built: the plot will expand to dimensions you wouldn’t even have imagined, or have cared to imagine in a small gap of time, revealing whatever it might have been hiding. It is in this way that we uncover Brick’s history. Why does he drink so much? Why doesn’t he want to sleep with his wife (whom is quite attractive) and why is he not the responsible human being everyone is hoping he would be? Brick is troubled with his friend Skipper’s death. A friend who might have been more then a friend: a friend who might have gotten too close to the ex pro footballer. A possibly homosexual footballer—there’s something that would have been kept silent in the fifties, in a southern state of America. And there’s another mendacious relationship, another lie, or series of lies, which is circumscribed in the atmosphere of the play.
Whether the lie is implicit or explicit, whether it is purposely stated or a simple omission, the word mendacity takes as much place in the play as it does the first time Brick mentions it. I do not believe truth has conquered by the end of the play. Even though everything was said, the play ends on this final statement from Brick, right after his wife tells him she loves him, which, I believe, was Williams’ way of telling us we would always live in a fallacious world. : «Wouldn't it be funny if that were true? »
Word Count: 593
