Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Signet)
by Tennessee Williams
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tennessee WilliamsEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1958-09-01
ISBN: 0451171128
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Signet
Book Reviews of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Signet)
Book Review: "Skipper Is Dead But I'm Alive! Maggie The Cat Is Alive!"
Summary: 5 Stars
Only Williams could have gotten away with naming his hero "Brick," as names were always his strong suit. He found comfort in names, and a wild exotic beauty, and even in his last faltering years was usually able to pull a final name out of his hat, something perfect. I remember seeing CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF on stage, with Elizabeth Ashley, some time before I read the play, so naturally my experience of the text is colored by Ashley's sizzling interpretation of Maggie the Cat, all hisses and feral screams. She was so strong I can barely remember who played Brick or Big Daddy in that production. I think it was Keir Dullea from DAVID AND LISA. Maybe Big Daddy was the man from the MUNSTERS TV show. What we, the audience, cared about was if Maggie was going to get her wway and triumph over all the mendacity and the "no neck monsters" that were swarming the plantation.
Maggie gets angry, but mostly we value her for her tenderness. Even when she knows her husband has lost his heart over a long-gone teammate, and that he's probably gay, she never gives up the ship. She knows that without her in his corner 100 per cent, he'll give up, drown in his own sorrows. He needs her to kick his ass and bring him back to the land of the awake. She wasn't going to be an enabler, she would always discourage him from drinking from the time he got up in the morning till he passed out at night, his crutches tangled up in his boxer shorts. For Brick, drinking is a way out of his tortured memories of Skipper, the boy he loved in high school and college. Taking a drink is "like a switch, clickin' off in my head. Turns the hot light off and the cool one on and all of a sudden, there's peace." Secretly the family has a plan to ship his butt off to Rainbow Hill, sort of a Betty Ford Clinic without the mercy.
We love Maggie trying to semaphor the truth into his thick skull by screaming, "Skipper is dead but I'm alive! Maggie the Cat is alive!"
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