For my character analysis, in the play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” by Tennessee Williams, I intend on researching and analyzing the character Brick Pollitt. I chose to write about Brick because I found that he goes through more emotions and conflicts than anyone else in the play and its seems that he is more captivating that any other character because he just keeps the reader’s attention while they are reading the play and the reader never knows what he is going to do or say because Brick is so unpredictable.
I would like to explore more about his best friend Skipper and what happened between them both, and the reasoning behind Brick being such a drunk. I am going to explore Brick’s relationship with all the other main characters of the play, including Maggie, Big Daddy, Big Mamma, Mae, Gooper, and the Doctor. I’m going to write about how he treats his wife Maggie by not wanting to have a child with her and how he mentally and physically abuses her, and also I want to write about how he treats the rest of the family so badly as well.
My working thesis is: In the play, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, by Tennessee Williams, the character of Brick is a very broken man, who goes through a loss of his best friend, and he takes it out on his family by being disrespectful to everyone, especially his wife Maggie, and he also takes up heavily on drinking liquor. I would like to find some discussions or articles that show some arguments on how Brick ended up the way he is in the play. The main reason is because he lost his best friend Skipper and he may have actually been a homosexual and fell in love with his dead friend, but there may be something else behind it that I missed.
A character analysis I have already been researching “Brick and the Ghost” talks about how Brick is haunted by his dead friend Skipper and how he is haunted to the point to where he has to drink, and also discusses how readers can’t figure out if Brick is haunted by Skipper or what Skipper represents to him, his lover. Brick, in my opinion, is the character that brings out every aspect of the play and without him in the play it would be kind of boring because the more conflict that is in a story line, the more entertaining the story is, and Brick definitely brings conflict to the play.
