Lesson Seven: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

1)  In 100-150 words provide a character analysis of Big Daddy.  

2)  In 100-150 words describe the relationship between Big Daddy and Big Moma.

3)  In 250-words, describe the relationship between Maggie and Brick.

4)  This fast moving, intense drama won a second Pulitzer Prize for Williams because of its ability to shine a light on social issues that had been in the dark.  In 100-150 words, discuss the various struggles in this family.

Bloom’s Literature
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

In his Memoirs (1975) Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) admits that if he had to choose his favorite play, it would be Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof; and since its opening on Broadway on 24 March 1955, it has remained, through all its permutations,
one of Williams’s most popular. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is among Williams’s “big three,” which also includes The Glass
Menagerie (1944) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). While Brian Parker points to several biographical parallels in
the play, he states that “real life models remain problematic.” The seed of the play comes from a short story Williams
published in 1952, “Three Players of a Summer Game.” The short story has little in common with the plot of the play, but
it does contain a husband named Brick who is an alcoholic and his take-charge wife, Margaret.

Williams, who was born Thomas Lanier Williams III in Columbus, Mississippi, and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in
1919, won his second Pulitzer Prize for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, having won the first for A Streetcar Named Desire. The
inspiration for the title of the play comes from an expression Williams’s father liked to use: “You’re making me as nervous
as a cat on a hot tin roof.” Critics have also noted the influence of Williams’s father in his creation of the domineering
character of Big Daddy.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of Williams’s most tightly wrought efforts. The action of the play primarily unfolds through
the dialogue; the play occurs mostly in one setting, Brick and Maggie’s bedroom; and it takes place in real time. The first
act belongs to Margaret, or “Maggie,” as she confronts Brick regarding his lack of sexual drive, their childless marriage,
the knowledge that Brick’s father Big Daddy, though he does not yet know it, has terminal cancer, and the problem of
Brick’s older brother Gooper and his wife May preparing to take Big Daddy’s plantation and wealth from him. Maggie has
had a brief liaison with Skipper, Brick’s former friend and teammate in professional football, who has committed suicide
after confessing his homosexual attraction to Brick. The second act belongs to Big Daddy as he confronts Brick with his
drinking and his relationship with Maggie and Skipper. During their argument, Brick reveals that Big Daddy has been lied
to and is going to die. In the third act, these elements come together as the family meets to discuss the crisis. Gooper, who
has children who are potential heirs of the plantation, wants Big Daddy to sign everything over to him; and Maggie, then,
lies, claiming she is pregnant with Brick’s child. In the end Big Daddy refuses to give up his plantation, wanting to spend
his remaining days touring his land; Maggie and Brick go to bed attempting to produce an heir.

In terms of human emotions and motivation, the play is more complex than can be captured in a brief summary. The play
concludes with an uneasy resolution: Big Daddy decides to spend the remainder of his days on the land he loves and feels
he belongs on while there is an uneasy peace between Maggie and Brick. Whether or not they have taken care of all of
their problems is left unresolved, since their only act of resolution is going to bed together. There is also the unresolved
situation with Gooper and May and how they fit into the future Big Daddy bequeaths to his family.

Modern criticism of the play tends to center on the issue of homosexuality in the relationship between Brick and Skipper,
but other studies of the play may prove more worthwhile. These studies include Jordan Y. Miller’s “The Three Halves of
Tennessee Williams’s World” (1977), Benjamin Nelson’s Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work (1961), and Roger
Boxill’s Tennessee Williams (1988). Signi Flack and Felicia Hardison Londre provide useful overviews of the play in their
critical surveys of Williams’s work, and Donald Spoto’s biography, published shortly after Williams’s death, is a fine
resource. Not to be missed is the 1958 film version of the play with Elizabeth Taylor as the definitive Maggie the Cat and
Burl Ives as Big Daddy.

Further Information

Tennessee Williams. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. (New York: New Directions, 1955).

Primary Works

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (New York: New Directions, 2004).

Williams’s “final” dramatic version of the play, completed in 1974.

Conversations with Tennessee Williams, edited by Albert J. Devlin (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1986).

Contains two dozen selections with numerous references to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Tennessee Williams: Plays, 1937–1955, edited by Mel Gusson and Kenneth Holditch (New York: Library Classics of the
United States, 2000).

Contains both the complete reading version and the acting version of act 3 of the play, which incorporates changes based
on suggestions by the director, Elia Kazan.

Memoirs (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975).

Details the rewriting of act 3 and explains why the play was Williams’s favorite.

“Three Players of a Summer Game,” in Tennessee Williams: Collected Stories (New York: New Directions, 1994), pp.
303–325.

Contains characters who appear in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Brick, an alcoholic husband, and Margaret, his domineering
wife.

Bibliography

George W. Crandell, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” in Tennessee Williams: A Guide to Research and Performance edited by
Philip C. Kolin (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1998), pp. 109–125.

A bibliographic essay that covers all aspects of the play from autobiographical references to individual characters and
symbols. The work contains an extensive bibliography.

Crandell, Tennessee Williams: A Descriptive Bibliography (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995).

Contains thirty-six entries for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Biography

Benjamin Nelson, Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work (New York: Obolensky, 1961).

A literary biography that sees the play as a series of dualities: “a world of mendacity, avarice and hypocrisy” paired
against a world of “nobility and dignity and tenderness and love and courage” in some of the characters in the play.

Donald Spoto, The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985).

An excellent biography of Williams, which includes discussion on the background and history of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Criticism

Roger Boxill, Tennessee Williams (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988).

Sees the central issue of the play as the “subject of the loss in time.” Big Daddy and Brick are relics of the past who have
no place in the world of a “modern corporate nation.”

George W. Crandell, ed., The Critical Response to Tennessee Williams (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996).

Contains Walter F. Kerr’s review of the original production of the play (1955), a John Simon review of a revival of the
play (1974), and a Frank Rich review of yet another revival of the play (1990). The section concludes with Paul J.
Hurley’s 1964 analysis of the play.

Signi Flak, Tennessee Williams (Boston: Twayne, 1978).

Reviews the major action of the play and the critical responses to it at the time of its first performance.

Felicia Hardison Londre, Tennessee Williams (New York: Ungar, 1979).

Analyzes the play and discusses its reviews and revivals.

Jeffrey B. Loomis, “Four Characters in Search of a Company: Williams, Pirandello, and the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Manuscripts,” in Magical Muse: Millennial Essays on Tennessee Williams, edited by Ralph F. Voss (Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 2002), pp. 91–110.

Reviews the different versions of the play, noting how each affects the differing perspectives about the play, its meaning,
and its characters.

Jordan Y. Miller, “The Three Halves of Tennessee Williams’s World,” in Critical Essays on Tennessee Williams, edited by
Robert A. Martin (New York: G. K. Hall, 1997), pp. 209–220.

Compares and contrasts Maggie and Brick with Stanley and Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire. Contends Maggie and
Brick’s struggle ends happily.

Brian Parker, “Swinging a Cat,” in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (New York: New Directions, 2004), pp.
187–192.

An excellent introduction to the play with several important biographical connections and commentary concerning the
different versions of the play.

Judith J. Thompson, Tennessee Williams’ Plays: Memory, Myth, and Symbol (New York: Peter Lang, 1989).

Sees the themes of the play as “life’s inherent corruption and ‘mendacity.'” Brick withdraws to a “psychological Death,”
while Maggie “embraces Life.”

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