what is the theme of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof??

Question

it's the drama by tennessee williams and my summer hw is due tomorrow...so please help!

well actually i did read the play but thinking of themes is hard for me. it for an honors english class and i want to have a good answer. maybe your students suck because you're a bad teacher.

Answer 1

Why in the hell didn't you just read the play?? This was SUMMER homework? What a lazy idiot you are ... no wonder my college freshman students are so clueless half the time. You are going to be in for a rude awakening once you try to further your education unless you stop being a ******* slacker.

Answer 2

"What's that smell in this room? Didn't you notice it, Brick? Didn't you notice the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?"

On the surface, the theme of the play is mendacity, for all the characters (except maybe Maggie) are deceiving one another, and all of them are believing, or trying to believe, a lie. Big Daddy is dying of cancer, and no one is telling him. Brick, the all-star, macho son, is probably homosexual and homophobic, and therefore unable to fulfill his role as first son or husband. The whole celebration is designed to show a "big, happy," wealthy, united family, but it's a disintegrating family, as poor in spirit as it may be rich in property.

So the real underlying theme is the interdependence of family, the simultaneous loyalty and faithlessness of each husband and wife, each parent and child. As selfish as each character may be in one way or another, they are all together, dependent on one another.

"I'm not living with you! We occupy the same cage, that's all."

Each character needs others to be dependent upon him/her just as each, including Big Daddy and Brick, are dependent upon the others. But just as family unity and survival depend upon this dependence, upon both the loyalties and deceptions, what the family most admires and desires is honesty and independence. The ultimate confrontations, especially between Big Daddy and Brick and between Brick and Maggie, are moments of independence on the part of the son and wife, but they are also moments of warm though subtle, sometimes unstated, loyalty and dependence.

How one survives in such a family tangle -- in any family tangle, Tennessee Williams would probably have us believe -- is by maintaining an incredible, delicate balance, between dependence and independence, honesty and deception, self-knowledge and self-deception, loyalty and rebellion, self-esteem and self-sacrifice.

"Maggie: I'll win, alright.
Brick: Win what? What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?
Maggie: Just staying on it, I guess. As long as she can."