Tennessee Williams Essay

For most people, writing about one’s past or real life experiences may be difficult. The Personal Statement for college applications is one example of that; high school seniors often cannot put themselves into it because it causes them to revisit that particular memory, which may not have been written exactly as remembered. Tennessee Williams, however, is a natural at integrating himself into his plays as one can easily identify connections between Williams’s life and his works. Some of his most famous plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Rose Tattoo, and The Night of the Iguana, showcase his life in both the same and different lights, for they convey the multiple meanings through similar themes, such as ones based on sexualities

Before he died, Skipper confesses that he has romantic feelings for Brick. Brick’s manliness and masculinity mitigates his homosexual desires for Skipper while utilizing alcohol to find a “click” that keeps him calm and distances himself from the memory. During a fight with Maggie, Brick once exclaimed, “One man has one great good true thing in his life. One great good thing which is true! - I had friendship with Skipper. - You are naming it dirty!” (Williams Cat 59). Here, Williams portrays the effect of society on Brick’s sex and homosexuality as he associates it with filthiness. Brick’s lack of sexual desire for Maggie prevents him from securing his spot as the heir to Big Daddy’s land, since he is the favorite child and in competition with Gooper and Mae. The pair lies to the family at the end of the play by announcing their pregnancy as they further suppress their childlessness as well as Brick’s homosexuality within the patriarchal role that Big Daddy sets up for Brick. The overall idea of Brick exploring and suppressing his homosexuality and putting forth his sexuality with Maggie mirrors Williams’s repression of his own homosexuality with his partner Frank Merlo during the 1950s (Poetry Foundation). Through Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Williams highlights the negative effects of the need to hide one’s sexuality from society, as Brick still has to subdue his feelings for Skipper with the