Difficulty: Intermediate | Prerequisites: Read the full play (all three acts)
Tennessee Williams builds Cat on a Hot Tin Roof around a wealthy Mississippi Delta family tearing itself apart over inheritance, desire, and unspoken truths. Every major character is performing a version of themselves they think the others want to see, and the play's tension comes from what happens when those performances crack. If you understand why each character lies (and to whom), you understand the play.
Maggie "the Cat" Pollitt
Brick's wife, a former poor girl from a lower-class background who married into the Pollitt family wealth. She is fiercely determined to secure her place in the family and restore her sexual and emotional relationship with Brick.
Think of her as the character who refuses to accept the status quo, constantly fighting for survival in a household that would rather she disappeared.
Brick Pollitt
Big Daddy's favourite son, a former football star and sports announcer who has retreated into alcoholism following the death of his close friend Skipper. He is emotionally detached from Maggie and the family power struggle.
In simple terms, Brick is the character who has given up. His passivity is itself a kind of action in the play.
Big Daddy Pollitt
The patriarch of the Pollitt family and owner of 28,000 acres of the "richest land this side of the valley Nile." He is dying of cancer, though the family initially hides this from him.
Think of him as the play's engine of truth. His confrontation with Brick in Act Two is where the play's central themes converge.
Big Mama
Big Daddy's wife, who loves him despite his open contempt for her. She is loud, emotional, and desperately in denial about his illness.
In simple terms, Big Mama is the character whose love is most visible and least returned.
Gooper Pollitt
Brick's older brother, a corporate lawyer with five children (and one on the way). He and Mae are the play's schemers, manoeuvring to secure the inheritance.
Think of him as the "responsible" sibling who has done everything right on paper but still comes second in Big Daddy's affection.
Mae (Sister Woman)
Gooper's wife, relentlessly competitive with Maggie. She parades her children and fertility as leverage in the inheritance battle.
In simple terms, Mae is Maggie's mirror image: both are outsiders who married into the family, but their strategies are completely different.
Skipper
Brick's deceased best friend, never seen on stage. His death, and the unspoken nature of his and Brick's relationship, is the central wound around which Brick's character revolves.
Think of Skipper as the absent centre of the play. Williams uses him to explore what cannot be said in 1950s America.
Mendacity
The play's key thematic term, meaning lies and dishonesty. Brick uses the word repeatedly to describe what disgusts him about the world.
In simple terms, mendacity is the umbrella under which every character's self-deception and performance falls. It is not just lying to others; it is lying to yourself.
Maggie as survivor
Maggie's defining trait is her refusal to accept defeat. She opens the play mid-speech, dominating Act One with a long, largely one-sided conversation with Brick.
Her nickname "the Cat" captures her restless, desperate energy. She paces the bedroom, unable to sit still, constantly performing femininity and desire for a husband who will not look at her.
Key quote: "You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it." This line reveals her motivation is rooted in poverty, not greed. She has seen what life without money looks like and will not go back.
Maggie's sexuality and desire
Williams presents Maggie as openly sexual in a way that was transgressive for 1950s audiences. She speaks frankly about wanting Brick physically.
Her desire is not just physical. It represents her need for genuine human connection in a family defined by mendacity.
She challenges the 1950s ideal of the passive, contented wife. She is vocal, frustrated, and refuses to perform the role Mae plays (the dutiful mother producing heirs).
Maggie's lie at the end
In the play's final moments, Maggie announces she is pregnant with Brick's child, a lie designed to secure their inheritance.
This lie is complex: it is both an act of mendacity (the very thing Brick despises) and an act of love (she is fighting for their future together).
Williams leaves the audience to judge whether Maggie's lie is more or less moral than the family's other deceptions. The play does not resolve this cleanly.
Brick's withdrawal
Brick has retreated from life entirely. He drinks to reach a "click" in his head, a point of detachment where nothing can touch him. This is his central metaphor: the click is emotional anaesthesia.
He barely speaks in Act One, responding to Maggie with monosyllables. His silence is a form of power in the play; by withholding engagement, he controls the emotional dynamic.
Key quote: "I'm not living with you. We occupy the same cage." This line captures his refusal to participate in the marriage or the family.
Brick and Skipper
The central question of the play is the nature of Brick and Skipper's relationship. Williams deliberately leaves this ambiguous.
Brick insists their friendship was "pure," "true," and "clean." The insistence itself becomes suspect. Big Daddy pushes him on this in Act Two, and Brick's violent reaction (he swings his crutch at Big Daddy) reveals how unresolved the question is for him.
Whether Brick is gay, bisexual, or simply grieving a deep platonic friendship, the point Williams makes is the same: 1950s America left no room for any of those possibilities to be spoken.
Brick's moral stance
Brick claims to despise "mendacity," positioning himself as the only honest person in the family. But Williams undercuts this.
Brick's own refusal to confront his feelings about Skipper is itself a form of mendacity. His disgust at the world's lies is a deflection from his own.
He is the play's most passive character but also its most destructive. His withdrawal causes real damage to Maggie, to Big Daddy, and ultimately to himself.
Big Daddy as patriarch
Big Daddy built the family's wealth from nothing. He inherited the plantation from Jack Straw and Peter Ochello, two men who lived together as partners (another layer of the play's engagement with homosexuality).
He is crude, domineering, and contemptuous of Big Mama, yet Williams also gives him a genuine hunger for truth that makes him sympathetic.
Key quote: "The human animal is a beast that dies and if he's got money he buys and buys and buys and I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind he has the crazy hope that one of his purchases will be life everlasting."
Big Daddy's confrontation with Brick (Act Two)
The Act Two confrontation between Big Daddy and Brick is the play's emotional and thematic centrepiece.
Big Daddy forces Brick to discuss Skipper, peeling away layers of deflection. He is the only character willing to push past the family's collective mendacity.
The confrontation is mutual: Brick retaliates by telling Big Daddy the truth about his cancer diagnosis, the one truth the family has conspired to hide. Both men are forced to face what they have been avoiding.
Big Daddy and mortality
Big Daddy's terminal cancer is the engine that drives the plot. His impending death raises the question of inheritance and forces every character to reveal their true priorities.
Williams uses Big Daddy's illness to explore how people deal with mortality. Big Daddy's initial relief (believing the tests were clear) and then his devastation mirror the audience's own discomfort with death.
Big Mama
Big Mama's reaction to Big Daddy's cancer diagnosis is one of the play's most emotionally raw moments. She shifts from denial ("It's just a spastic colon!") to devastation, and Williams uses her grief to expose the genuine love beneath her overbearing exterior.
She is repeatedly mocked and dismissed by Big Daddy, who openly says he never loved her. Despite this, her devotion does not waver.
Big Mama serves as a foil to the other characters' calculated manoeuvring. Her emotions are unfiltered and public, which makes her both sympathetic and vulnerable.
Gooper
Gooper has done everything "right" by conventional standards: he is a successful lawyer, has produced children, and stayed responsible. Yet Big Daddy openly prefers Brick.
His resentment is understandable, which complicates how audiences view him. He is not purely villainous; he has a legitimate grievance.
However, his eagerness to present a legal plan for the estate while Big Daddy is still alive reveals a calculating pragmatism that Williams frames negatively.
Mae
Mae functions as Maggie's antagonist. She is constantly eavesdropping, reporting, and using her children as weapons in the inheritance battle.
Williams gives Mae very little interiority. She is presented largely through Maggie's hostile lens, which raises the question of how reliable Maggie's perspective is.
Mae and Gooper together represent the play's picture of conventional respectability, the kind of surface-level propriety that masks self-interest. This is the "mendacity" Brick claims to despise.
Maggie and Brick
The play's central relationship is defined by asymmetry. Maggie wants Brick (physically, emotionally, financially); Brick wants to be left alone.
Their bedroom is the primary setting, and Williams uses it symbolically. The bed they no longer share represents the dead centre of their marriage. The room belonged to Jack Straw and Peter Ochello, the plantation's former owners who were a same-sex couple, which layers the space with unspoken meaning.
Key quote from Maggie: "Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you, gently, with love, and hand your life back to you." This captures both her love for Brick and her frustration with his passivity.
Brick and Big Daddy
Their Act Two confrontation is built on mutual recognition: both men see through each other's defences.
Big Daddy is the only character who pushes Brick on Skipper, and Brick is the only one who tells Big Daddy the truth about his diagnosis. This mutual truth-telling makes their relationship the play's most honest, even though it causes pain.
Williams suggests that Big Daddy's preference for Brick over Gooper stems from seeing something of himself in Brick, including, possibly, a capacity for the kind of love Brick refuses to name.
Gooper/Mae vs Maggie/Brick
The inheritance battle sets these two couples against each other. Gooper and Mae have the stronger legal claim (more heirs, more responsibility). Maggie and Brick have Big Daddy's emotional preference.
Williams frames this as a contest between two kinds of mendacity: Gooper and Mae's respectable, calculating dishonesty versus Maggie's desperate, survival-driven lies.
The audience's sympathy typically falls with Maggie, partly because Williams gives her more stage time and interiority, and partly because her motives (love, desire, survival) feel more human than Gooper and Mae's cold pragmatism.
Big Daddy and Big Mama
One of the play's most painful relationships. Big Daddy is openly cruel to Big Mama, yet she loves him completely.
Their dynamic illustrates the theme that love and truth do not always coexist. Big Mama's love is real but built on denial; Big Daddy's honesty (about not loving her) is truthful but destructive.
Students often think Brick is the play's hero because he claims to value honesty. Williams undercuts this throughout. Brick's "honesty" is selective and self-serving; his refusal to confront his feelings about Skipper is its own form of mendacity.
Students sometimes read Maggie as purely manipulative. Her final lie about the pregnancy is more layered than simple scheming. Williams gives her genuine love for Brick and genuine desperation, which complicates any straightforward moral judgement.
It is tempting to see Gooper and Mae as straightforward villains. They are antagonists, but their claim to the estate is not unreasonable. Williams asks the audience to consider whose selfishness is more forgivable, not whose is absent.
Some students assume Brick is definitively gay. Williams wrote the ambiguity deliberately. The point is less about Brick's sexual orientation and more about a society that made it impossible for him to explore the question at all.
The assignment asks you to identify a character with a cited quote and a 4-5 sentence explanation. Choose a character whose quote connects to a major theme (mendacity, desire, mortality). Maggie, Brick, and Big Daddy all have strong options.
The relationship section on the Literary Analysis Square requires a quote that illustrates a dynamic between two characters. The Maggie-Brick relationship and the Brick-Big Daddy confrontation are the strongest choices.
Three of the five analysis questions deal directly with Maggie: how she challenges 1950s ideas, whether her actions are justifiable, and how she compares to Mae/Gooper. Prepare detailed notes on Maggie's motivations, her poverty background, and her final lie.
The question about Big Mama's reaction to the cancer diagnosis requires attention to Williams' dramatic methods, including stage directions, dialogue interruptions, and the contrast between Big Mama's emotional outpouring and the family's calculated responses.
The "Connection to Author" section requires linking the play to Tennessee Williams' life. Key connections: Williams' own struggles with sexuality, his difficult relationship with his father, his sister Rose's mental illness, and his alcoholism.
True or False: Brick's alcoholism began after Big Daddy's cancer diagnosis. (False. It began after Skipper's death.)
Fill in the blank: Maggie's nickname "the Cat" refers to her ______ energy and refusal to give up. (restless, desperate, survival-driven)
True or False: Gooper is Big Daddy's favourite son. (False. Brick is the favourite, despite Gooper's greater responsibility.)
Fill in the blank: The word Brick uses repeatedly to describe what he hates about the world is ______. (mendacity)
True or False: Williams confirms definitively that Brick is gay. (False. The ambiguity is deliberate and central to the play's meaning.)
Q: How does Maggie challenge traditional ideas of love and relationships in the 1950s?
A: Maggie refuses the role of the passive, contented wife. She speaks openly about sexual desire, fights for her marriage on her own terms, and makes a calculated lie to secure the inheritance. Unlike Mae, who performs conventional femininity through motherhood, Maggie uses her intelligence and determination. Williams presents her as a woman who has no power except what she can take, which challenges the 1950s assumption that women should wait to receive.
Q: To what extent are Mae and Gooper presented as villains?
A: Williams makes them antagonists but not simple villains. Gooper has a legitimate grievance (he is the responsible son who is passed over), and Mae's competitiveness mirrors Maggie's own ambition. However, their eagerness to discuss the estate while Big Daddy is dying, their eavesdropping, and their use of children as leverage all position them negatively. Williams suggests that their real offence is not selfishness (everyone in the play is selfish) but their lack of self-awareness about it.
Q: What is the significance of the bedroom setting?
A: The bedroom belonged to Jack Straw and Peter Ochello, a same-sex couple who previously owned the plantation. Williams uses this detail to connect the space to the play's themes of hidden sexuality and unspoken desire. The room that once held an honest (if concealed) love now holds a marriage defined by avoidance and silence.
Q: How does Williams present Big Mama's reaction to Big Daddy's cancer diagnosis?
A: Big Mama's reaction is the play's most emotionally unguarded moment. She moves from denial to raw grief, using repetition and broken syntax that contrasts with the measured, strategic language of Gooper and Mae. Williams uses stage directions to show her physical collapse, underlining that her love for Big Daddy is genuine even though he has never returned it. The contrast between her emotional honesty and the family's collective mendacity is one of the play's most pointed ironies.
This material connects to the broader study of Southern Gothic literature, which uses decaying settings and dysfunctional families to explore social anxieties. Williams' work sits alongside Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner in this tradition.
The play's treatment of repressed sexuality connects to queer theory and the history of LGBTQ+ representation in American theatre. Compare with Williams' other works, particularly A Streetcar Named Desire (Blanche DuBois shares Maggie's desperation and performativity).
The inheritance plot connects to broader literary themes of patriarchy and primogeniture: who inherits, on what basis, and what that reveals about a family's values.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams, ENG 201, Periods in English Literature, Maggie the Cat, Brick Pollitt, Big Daddy, Big Mama, Gooper, Mae, Sister Woman, Skipper, mendacity, Southern Gothic, 1950s American drama, repressed sexuality, inheritance, mortality, alcoholism, dramatic irony, stage directions, Literary Analysis Square, Florida International University