Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Question 1

Truth

Answer 1

“You have to fool them. They have to fool themselves”
“Never should have confessed it, a fatal error, tellin’ you about that thing with Skipper”
“Wouldn’t it be funny if that was true…” (BD)
“Uh—huh. Expecting death made me blind”
“No!—It was too rare to be normal, any true thing between two people is too rare to be normal”

Question 2

Dreams, hopes and plans

Answer 2

“she notices that he is not looking at her but into fading gold space with a troubled expression”
“But those high hurdles have gotten too big for me, now”
“Life is important. There’s nothing else to hold onto.”

Question 3

Visions of America

Answer 3

“I can’t stand TV, radio was bad enough but TV has gone it one better”
“Worked like a nigger in the fields…. place got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger!”
“Slept in hobo jungles and railroad Y’s and flophouses in all cities before I—”
“Big Mama, the liver’s affected and so’s the kidneys, both!”

Question 4

Mortality

Answer 4

“Nobody says, ‘You’re dying.’ You have to fool them.”
“But Brick?!—Skipper is dead! I’m alive!”
“That’s why I’m talking.–the sky looks diff’rent to me….”
“Ignorance—of mortality—is a comfort.”
“pair of old sisters slept in a double bed where both of ‘em died!”

Question 5

Sex and sexuality

Answer 5

Stage Direction:”it is gently and poetically haunted by a relationship that must have involved a tenderness which was uncommon.”
“I had a friendship with Skipper.—You are naming it dirty!”
“You two had something that had to be kept on ice, yes, incorruptible, yes!”
“Yes boy… I still have desire for women and this is my sixty-fifth birthday.”

Question 6

Memory and past

Answer 6

“When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don’t work…”
“You’re—you’re—you’re—foolin’ with something that—nobody ought to fool with”
“You!— dug the grave of your friend and kicked him in it!”

Question 7

Alcohol

Answer 7

“I always thought drinkin’ men lost their looks, but I was plainly mistaken”
“My daddy loved his liquor”
“Receptacle for liquor and drugs” (skipper)

Question 8

Wealth

Answer 8

“Big Daddy’s made no will? Big Daddy’s never made out any will in his life,”
“Born poor, raised poor, expect to die poor unless…”
“Oh, but St. Paul’s in Grenada has three memorial windows,”

Question 9

Gender

Answer 9

“Her voice has range, and music; sometimes it drops low as a boy’s”
“That monster of fertility”
“Way he always drops his eyes down my body”

Question 10

Communication

Answer 10

“Just keep your voice down!”
“You scribble something Maggie”
“It’s got to be your handwriting”
“Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?”
“somehow between you and me, it just don’t—”