Big Daddy is, in fact, the embodiment of the American Dream, and through his character Williams shows how the American society has sacrificed all values in the temple of the most popular value in the world, money. The American Dream has an ugly face, and Big Daddy is a commercial success, but a failure in every other way. He has failed as a human being in that he centered his little empire around himself and became blind to the needs and feelings of those around him. Big Daddy himself acts as if money is his only value as a human being, or perhaps he is afraid. An invisible struggle takes place within Big Daddy as he tries to approach Brick, as a loving father approaches his need child, exposing his innermost tenderness and insecurity. The conflict is between his love for his child and his determination to get to the truth, and the mentality of his upbringing in a poor family where the father was usually an unapproachable, distant figure.
Through the difficulty of Big daddy and Brick to talk openly and not around the subject, Williams displays the lack of communication between people, which leads to loneliness and isolation. They talk and talk while saying nothing of essence and not listening to each other most of the time: gCommunication is awful hard between peopleh. As Brick says, gWe talk, you talk in circles! We get nowhere, nowhere!h However, Big Daddyfs care and willingness to understand is fierce and so is his determination to communicate with his son. gDonft letfs-leave it like this, like them other talks wefve hadcitfs always like something was left not spokenh. Both men are about to find out that when they donft avoid talking of the truth itfs gpainfulh, and as Big Daddy says, gYea, itfs hard talkh. Big Daddy and Brick are to some extent tragic characters, but if the play were a typical tragedy, they wouldnft be leading figures; the world as a whole would have the leading part.
The Term Paper on Big Daddy Maggie Brick One
This title manages to capture the essence of the story in one sentence as it becomes increasingly evident that almost every character in the play is on edge about something or like cats on a hot tin roof. The whole family are trapped by their circumstances, no one more so than Maggie and her deteriorating marriage to Brick. Maggie is essentially a good person who loves her husband despite the ...
The tragedy of the world makes Brickfs problems seem petty. However, Brickfs problems are directly related to the world. A world that overestimated him, a world he loved so much that he adopted all its prejudice. When he was no longer young and perfect, this same world dropped him like a hot brick. Now hefs disgusted with the world, disgusted with himself for being part of it, and so he isolates himself from it. Big Daddy accepted the ugliness and mendacity in the world, which made him hardened and cynical.
Though their dialogue, Big Daddy does manage to penetrate to the truth. The violent confrontation with the truth results in both father and son losing their gcrutchesh, the safety device, which helped them avoid the truth. Brick feels guilty for killing the false hope of life within his father, and tries to excuse his truthfulness by saying, gbeing almost not alive makes me sort of accidentally truthfulh. By: Mika Mokko.
