The Comfort of Lies Within Williams' "Cat"

An Introduction

As the “bird cage” of the Pollitt household becomes infected with the “black” and cancerous lies of the family, Williams distils the system of mendacity that sustained his 1950’s society, one built around a relentless public scrutiny yet simultaneous lack of self-reflection. In the “monumental monstrosity of the TV set that becomes a quasi-spiritual “shrine” for the characters, the playwright crafts the heart of performance that occupies even the privacy of this “bed-sitting room”, as well as the possibility of deception and escapism implicit in this motif. However, whilst such self-denial no doubt acknowledges the lamentable necessity of such lies in saving face under this intrusive public eye, it offers little in the way of genuine therapy. As Gooper asserts, it is the body’s “inability to eliminate its poisons” that bring about the physical death of Big Daddy, a sickness that figuratively attests to the macabre and broken figures left in the wake of these falsehoods. So, as Big Mama asserts that the “alcohol” in Skipper’s system for “months an’ months an’ months” was “too much for his heart”, the playwright implicates the extent to which this mendacity colludes with the constricted and utilitarian function of the individual in this world to provide no such good health as is laid claim to in the play, instead it becomes a toxic and corrupting agent that atrophies both the personal and familial spirit.

The Crutch and The "Click"

Brick’s alcoholism seems initially to function as a form of therapeutic relief not only from the oppressive and inexorable mandates of his prescribed identity but also from the “inadmissible” truths that rest hidden beneath his complacent exterior. Yet, as a recipient of society’s “early laurel” and as someone who “never liked bein’ kissed or made a fuss over”, a manifestation of his contempt for what he deems is performed affection of his family, Williams implicates how his performance constrict and cripple him under the weight of such pressures and withdrawal. The epithet ‘Brick’ allows audiences to figuratively glimpse an emotionally stunted and intransigent figure, one that, as the image of him “leaning upon the liquor cabinet with his faraway smile” suggests, can sustain a pretence of his “cool air of detachment” directly through his drinking – the alcohol appears therefore to not only buttress him physically but also enable his isolation and cold convictions, becoming in many ways his social “crutch”. Yet Williams undermines any lingering sense of genuine therapy found in the bottle, given how the stage directions allude to the violent and jarring “flashes” of “lightning” that threaten to spontaneously rupture his façade of certitude. Throughout the play, Brick seems to struggle painfully with the potential truths of not only his ambiguous sexuality, but also his culpability in Skipper’s death. Indeed, not only does he vehemently dislocate himself from these allegations – “his truth!” – but the tonal shift through Act Two from his initial apathy to the “volcanic flame” of vitriolic and pious disgust at the questions of his homosexuality projects forth the image of a man who is far from content to live out the life he is currently embroiled in. So, as he drinks in pursuit of the “mechanical” click that brings him peace, Williams depicts how lies in this household cannot be therapeutic, but painfully reside within the subject to the point where they necessarily search for something that “makes” them peaceful, an artificial endeavour, as the forced connotations of this verb suggest. In this moment, Williams subtly alludes also in this “click” to the final phone call between Brick and Skipper, thereby foregrounding a direct corollary between the possible lies which cover over the truth of their relationship and the desire for a therapeutic remedy for them. But as Brick painfully maps out the “glass box” he can only watch on from, the playwright captures figuratively, in this image of isolation and constriction, his “hobble[d]” and broken character, seated passively beyond the boundary of the “game” of life, thus communicating to audiences that such lies offer no form of longing escape, instead only atrophying away at the human psyche.

Constriction of Performance

Furthermore, for the woman of the text, lies function as a form of relief from the constrictive yoke of societal expectations, as their performances, a form of veiled deception, allow them to escape the critical public eye. Though at times intended to court the invasive male voyeurism of the household and Williams’ audiences, Mae, for her part, appears as epitomising the demand to be constantly “producin’” offspring, as her ostentatious display of “no-neck monsters” humorously makes clear the extent to which her existence becomes predicated around this function, a deviation from a truer form of self that may have otherwise taken stage. Indeed, in depicting her “organising her children like a chorus”, Williams imparts her gleeful and active, and as such partially tragic, participation in her own role of the contented housewife, a metatheatrical comment that reinforces the mendacity and superficiality that is inherent to such performances. Moreover, far from either guaranteeing the patriarch’s inheritance - which would grant her material satisfaction - or allowing her to ably sustain this act - a form of spiritual panacea - the lie of Mae’s conservative gentility and conformity is ruptured by her “sudden” and devolution/ “transformation” into a “hideous grimace”. Even as she dutifully attempts to suppress her pretence in her “burlesque ballerina” act, the syntactical proximity of this to the “quick, hard, pole” and sibilant “hissing” erodes any lasting sense of her civility and renders her performed lie violent and grotesque. By way of contrast, Big Mama is portrayed as a figure capable of genuine affection for her Big Daddy - “I even loved your hate and your hardness” - yet even she struggles to sustain this conceived statement of her loving marriage and the therapy it provides. As the past-tense construction implies, she seems subliminally aware of the inability for ‘her truth’ of their relationship to survive in her present experience. So, as the news of Big Daddy’s cancer is revealed, Big mama’s voice rings with a lamentable yearnfulness to downplay the news - “that’s all it is, it’s just an awful dream”. Of course the true nightmare for Williams that the household is caught up in is not that of physical illness, but rather the metaphorical corruption of the spirit that emerges when its members seek comfort for their pains in the form of lies.

Big Dreams

Ultimately, then, the evasion of truths in the Pollitt family serves only to provide a self-deceptive mask for the moral failings and lack of fulfillment inherent to their material lives. As his epithet suggests, Big Daddy embodies the 1950’s perception of a dominant virile male patriarch, one insistent on making his place “bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger”. In the five-fold repetition, however, Williams crafts not-so-subtly a sense of this character’s underlying hesitancy and uncertainties, discomforts he can only try, and ultimately unsuccessfully, to alleviate in this bombastic assertion of his wealth. Indeed, as he earnestly links to his “worth”, “close on ten million in cash and blue chip stocks”, the audience confronts a figure who unconvincingly reaches for material succour in keeping with his society’s veneration of the supposedly therapeutic spoils of the American Dream. Yet in the hollow fricative of the “puff” of fireworks and “eerie greenish glow” that lingers in the night behind them, Williams exposes, in this false light, the sun setting on Big Daddy’s delusions of security and material comforts which he is consoled and defined by. Similarly, earlier in the act when he repeatedly insisted he wasn’t “dying”, the incantatory repetition of this verb reminds audiences of a form of deceptive mantra, one that allows him to perpetuate a sense of his own immortality. This is of course a man introduced to audiences as “moving carefully not to betray his weakness…to himself”, depictions that evoke the artificial and in fact corrosive nature of his mendacious existence which invades not just his words, but is very identity. Contrary to finding any form tangible therapy in the lie of his good health, the “fox teeth” that pain him throughout the play make clear the message of self-denial central to the character, as he fervently distracts himself from the gnawing, dehumanising sickness of his own consumption that this image suggests. Thus, as the corruptive green nightscape returns in the moment after the truth of Big Daddy’s cancer comes finally to the surface, Williams implores audiences to cultivate the link between the lie of his cancer-free existence and the dubious remedy of materialism. As such, as Big Daddy’s “long drawn out cry of agony” is left off the stage in Act Three, the patriarch becomes the spectral embodiment of the myth of consumerist therapy that can potentially overcome the “inadmissible” things of one’s life, instead suggesting how such lies of self-denial metastasise into something worse, becoming, in the final, “malignant”.

Even as he acknowledges the “system” of mendacious performances central to his 1950’s America, Williams nonetheless offers in his text a rejoinder against such a society, in particular how such lies debilitate and fracture familial relationships and render the household void of “love”. In this way, therefore, the illusions of fulfillment that rest firmly at the heart of the clan portend no prevailing sense of therapy or closure, instead corrupting the members and leaving them detached and “alone”.