Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Brick Pollitt is Maggie’s husband and the Pollitts’ youngest son. In his youth, he was a star athlete and turned down job offers after college to start a football team with his best friend, Skipper. However, he sustained an injury that left him unable to play, and Skipper died—but not before making a drunken declaration of love. Now, Brick struggles with alcoholism, desiring nothing but the peaceful “click” that he feels when he has had enough to drink. He is a broken man, both literally and figuratively: His broken ankle, injured while jumping hurdles on a high school track, symbolizes his failure to reclaim the glory and simplicity of his youth.

Brick is described as handsome with a “cool air of detachment” (209) that makes him irresistible to women like Maggie and Big Mama. He is the family favorite, and Big Daddy sees much of himself in Brick. However, as Maggie’s traditionally feminine exterior belies her inner strength and determination, Brick’s traditionally masculine exterior disguises his inner weakness and passivity. He is a man who has completely “given up the struggle” (209) and cares about nothing besides drinking. He relies on a literal crutch to support his ankle and a metaphorical one through alcohol, with Skipper being the exception to his detachment. Brick and Skipper shared a deep friendship, which Brick refers to as the “one great good true thing in his life” (1011). However, he vehemently rejects Big Daddy’s suggestion that there was romance involved. When Skipper confessed his love in a drunken phone call, Brick hung up and never spoke to him again. Now, Brick drinks out of disgust for the “mendacity” in the world, the need “to pretend stuff you don’t think or feel” (2066) to maintain decorum.

While the nature of Brick’s relationship with Skipper is open to interpretation, Brick is disgusted with the fact that whatever existed between them had to be “[disavowed] to ‘save face’” (2201). He became complicit in his friend’s death by failing to accept him or admit his own possible attraction. He is so entrenched in heteronormativity that he, too, labeled his relationship with Skipper “dirty” and now drinks to obscure the painful reality of life without his friend.

Big Daddy Pollitt is the wealthy patriarch of the Pollitt family, married to Big Mama and father to Gooper and Brick. As a young man, he came to work on the plantation, becoming overseer, co-owner, and eventually owner of “twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile” (1604). He has recently been diagnosed with cancer, but his family keeps the diagnosis a secret to protect him. Believing he has survived a brush with death, Big Daddy is ready to take up life with renewed gusto, particularly by taking a new lover he hopes to “choke […] with diamonds and smother […] with minks” (1811). He tells Brick that he has lived a life of lies, feigning affection for his wife, Gooper, Mae, and his grandchildren—with the lie about his health being the icing on the cake. His birthday party is largely for show, as his family members compete for his affection, not out of love but greed. However, Big Daddy is complicit in this lie, as he hides the persistent pain in his stomach.

Brick is the only person Big Daddy feels affection for, and he dreams of his youngest son inheriting his estate. Thus, he unpacks Brick’s turmoil to make him a fitting heir. Despite his crude conduct with other characters, he is gentle and sensitive with Brick, seemingly unconcerned that he might have had a romantic relationship with Skipper. However, because Big Daddy sees himself in Brick, his affection could read as narcissism rather than love. Brick’s reveal of his father’s cancer could stem from retaliation against this sentiment as much as it does their shared disgust for mendacity.

Ida “Big Mama” Pollitt is married to Big Daddy and mother to Gooper and Brick. She is a large, unrefined woman known for her “almost embarrassingly true-hearted and simple-minded devotion” (2734) to Big Daddy, despite his cruel jokes. She especially loves Brick, even though he remains indifferent. Big Mama is perhaps the most genuine of the characters, as she lacks ulterior motives—which makes her sympathetic and almost pitiable given the lies surrounding her. Because of her innocence, she is also gullible, believing the lie about Big Daddy’s health and Maggie’s pregnancy. However, this authenticity grants her a certain dignity at the end of the play.

Mae Pollitt is Gooper’s wife. Described as “monstrous” for her fertility, she is the mother of five children and pregnant with a sixth. While simpering and sweet on the outside, she is, in reality, cruel and conniving. She shamelessly schemes with her husband to inherit Big Daddy’s estate, including organizing her children into elaborate demonstrations of family affection. Mae and Maggie are rivals, with Mae spying and using Maggie and Brick’s childlessness to argue they are unsuitable heirs to Big Daddy’s plantation. When the time comes to reveal Big Daddy’s cancer, she doesn’t bother to hide her eagerness, illustrating the self-serving nature of her exaggerated affection towards Big Daddy and Big Mama.