Tennessee Williams' Use of Truth and Truth Evasion
How do some characters in Suddenly Last Summer try to keep the truth from entering their lives' The truth has trouble entering the life of Mrs. Venable, Violet, Sebastian's mother, because she resists it, pushes it away, and lives in the world of her own comfort level beliefs. She wants to believe, in the worst way, that her late son was a great poet. Oh, he was a gourmet gardener, too, and he had those expensive fruit flies flown in from Florida to feed to the Venus flytrap, and his "life was his work," she explained to Doctor Cukrowicz. And what was his work' He was a poet, and she was going to "the defense of a dead poet's reputation." Violet wanted to believe he was clairvoyant, that he was a "legend," that he was "chased," celibate, "a creator," but what she doesn't want to believe is that he was a wild and demented homosexual. And who was it that tried to allow the truth to be seen by Violet' It was Doctor Cukrowicz (
Violent also did not want to accept at all the way in which her son died - and lived. And then Catherine wanted Violet to know the truth, as well; a drugged Catherine spills out the truth about her cousin Sebastian, that in fact he was wild and homosexual, notwithstanding the myth that Violet had been living with, the denial Violet had perfected. And in the end, the good doctor thinks "we ought to at least. Is Williams writing homosexuality into his plays because he is in effect writing "the truth" about himself' Is that "truth" a story within a story, a sidebar to the drama set in Cat's characters' And, meantime, Brick's issues, some hidden thing beyond his psycho sexual puzzle tend to add to that conundrum; and, who wants to wake him up to reality' Isabel, Mary Louise, Big Daddy, Maggie the Cat, the narrator - aren't they all trying, in various ways, to bring Brick out of his detachment' Or at least to offer clues about him' And, the question is posed, "does Williams see revealing truth as a good thing in both plays"; the truth is most certainly a "good thing" in Suddenly Last Summer, because it brings closure to the story. It is widely known and well published that in the Broadway version of Act Three, Williams altered Brick's character from the original play's characterization of him. But Doctor Sugar wanted to get some money for his office, and Violet wanted him to perform a lobotomy on the woman who was spreading stories ("babbling"), so there was a method to this madness between them, in her garden. But in reading the play, one can't help but feel that there is more truth about Brick than has been revealed by Williams (this is not unusual for Williams, to keep certain key traits and habits of characters cloaked in mystery). consider the possibility that the girls' story could be true. His acknowledgment of that is a revealing of a "truth" of another kind. AKA "Doctor Sugar"), who listened to her for long periods of time, occasionally questioning her veracity as to her son Sebastian's real self and real life. But in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, many critics have remarked that the final act is an afterthought; that when Maggie says she really loves him, it's not at all the truth, and Brick acknowledges that to the audience. " Cat on a Hot Tin Roof The lack of full candor in this Tennessee Williams play surrounds several people, but principally, it focuses upon the former football star and enigmatic character Brick.
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Acceptance Essays
