Maggie and Brick exemplify the mendacity of life – of what
love, family and happiness really mean – or the lack thereof. A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof shows how the role we
take on in society can be a detriment to our happiness if we don’t follow our true
desires.
Maggie may be this selfish cat clawing her way through the
Pollitt family trying to protect her share of the inheritance, but it’s her
true desire to end the caged life with Brick that matters most. She lets her own greed and jealousies cloud
her mind, comparing herself to Sister Mae and the zoo of a family her in laws
have become. It’s this false notion that
because Mae and Gooper have children and that they’re professionally and
socially established, Maggie feels this desperate need to bear a child with Brick.
It’s the countless failed attempts at
establishing some sort of intimacy with Brick that shows Maggie’s true desire
is to regain that love, and then the future baby. Although she may want to guarantee her financial
future, Maggie has a stronger desire to be released from the cage and to regain
that intimacy with Brick that rules her actions, unfortunately her other goals
tend to cloud her mind. Money is at the
top of her list, but her relationship with Brick is vital for more than just
one reason.
Big Papa’s inheritance, a raggedy suitcase containing his
dad’s uniform, turned into a cold reminder that there was no one to care for
him anymore, no permanent home to go to.
Despite becoming a successfully rich man, he wasn’t that much to be
envious of. Having led an opulent life
filled with material things, he forgot what it was like to appreciate what
matters most, family. Everyone in his family
is a stranger to each other, each playing their respective expected role, playing a game of chess trying to outsmart the other
to gain control of Big Papa’s money. And
it’s the fantasy that having money will bring happiness. It didn’t bring Big Papa much happiness now
that he has a plantation and all this junk in his house. These things are just that, things, incapable
of showing and giving him love. He lost
the meaning of love the day that his father died. If it weren’t for facing his own future
death and Brick reminding him of what his father gave him, Big Papa wouldn’t
really be able to put his own life into perspective and value what matters
most, his family.
Although Brick plays his own role of superiority, dispensing
words of wisdom and truth for the other characters, he’s unable to see his own
life without a bottle of liquor magnifying the lies. Despite being a 30 year old child, rebelling
against the social norm by doing as he pleases, Brick escapes his own
reality. He’s more than willing to shove
the truth into everybody else’s face yet when the other characters attempt to
do the same to him, he uses excuses to escape his own set of responsibilities,
his own reality, his own feelings. Brick
consumes himself with the shortcomings of others to entrap them in their own lies
so that they won’t get to his own. It’s
as if he blames everyone else for his own set of troubles. It seems appropriate that Big Papa is the one
character whose just as strong as Brick to dispense his own set of truths to him,
to be relentless with him until Brick is able to look into a mirror and see his
own lies, his own reality.
It makes me wonder about our own lives, our own value
systems and the lies and excuses we make to get what we want. I think we become our own addicts feeding
into the emptiness of things, of obtaining those goals that we think will make
us happy. Maybe we need to take on that
role of Big Papa and Brick, dispensing and receiving truth to one another,
helping one another to put the liquor bottle down, or smashing all the glasses
long enough for the sobriety of reality to settle in. Or is that just being to ideal and I’m seeing
things through a drunken lens?
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