Character Analysis in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

¶ … Big Daddy," in Tennessee William's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

BIG DADDY POLLITT

Big Daddy" is one of the most important characters in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." The story revolves around him and his family, and their reaction to his pending death from cancer. Big Daddy wants to make sure the estate he owns will stay in his family, and he wants his son Brick to produce the heir that will eventually inherit the estate, there is just one problem, Brick does not have any children, and he may even be a bisexual. The two men have to discover each other, admit they love each other, and try to bring the family together.

Big Daddy was just a drifter when he first came to the plantation owned by two gay men, Jack Straw and Peter Ochello. He only intended to stay long enough to do some yard work and make some pocket money, but he ends up becoming the overseer of the plantation, and inherits it when they die. He loves the "twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile," and he is determined it will stay with Brick, who he thinks is the better and more deserving of his two sons.

Big Daddy is of course a big man, powerful, with a big booming voice, and bravado to match. He eats too much, he drinks too much (although not as much as his son, Brick), and he loves other women too much. He is the "epitome of Southern masculine virility and assertiveness (158)" (Crandell 112).

He is also crude, tells dirty jokes, treats his wife like a dishrag, and is clearly not a member of the "genteel" South. He cannot tell his sons that he loves them; he has trouble even saying he "likes" them. "The greatest example of this lack of communication and the attempt to overcome it, can be found in the relationship between Big Daddy and Brick. Big Daddy and Brick love each other and yet they hurt each other deeply. They lacerate each other as each makes the other face a terrifying truth-Brick, in a bitter and shameful defense against his father's probing, and Big Daddy, because his love for his son will not allow him to throw his life away" (Editors).

During the play, the characters are celebrating Big Daddy's birthday, and Gooper will not tell Big Daddy he is dying until after the party, so no one knows except the son that is "practically salivating in his hunger for this power" (Editors). When Big Daddy does find out the truth, at first he does not believe it, but he does finally recognize that he is dying, which makes him even more determined to make sure Brick takes over the land, because he is the son that is most like his father, for better or worse.

He makes no apologies for his crude behavior, including the comic-rude treatment of his wife. He has no background in genteel courtesies and no interest in cultivating them...His language is as salty as the audiences would allow -- shocking for the period. Though a redneck who dropped out of school at the fourth grade, he is shrewd and sensitive in many ways. Having lived and worked in a variety of places, he is more worldly wise than the more sheltered members of the family. He recognized, when he first arrived at this plantation, that his employers were gay, but made no moral judgments"

Tischler 84).

Big Daddy interacts with all the other characters in the play; they are all "depicted 'largely in terms of their relationship to him' (136)" (Crandell 112). He is the one that tells Brick he is drinking himself to death because he cannot face himself. Cat (Maggie) kneels to him in the last scene, relating to him as if he were a king, and telling him that she is pregnant, although she has not yet slept with Brick. She treats him like a god, and indeed, Big Daddy is somewhat like a god in this play, he is the god of his own little kingdom, and like any god, he wants to make sure it will go to the next god who can do it the most good.