Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Character Sketch of Big Daddy and His Tactics With Brick

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 …

…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 "crutches", 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, "being almost not alive makes me sort of accidentally truthful". By: Mika Mokko