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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
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==Themes== ===Falsehoods and untruths=== Mendacity is a recurring theme in the play. Brick uses the word to express his disgust with the "lies and liars" he sees around him, and with complicated rules of social conduct in [[American South|Southern]] society and culture. Big Daddy says that Brick's disgust with mendacity is really disgust with himself for rejecting Skipper before his suicide. Except for Brick, the entire family lies to Big Daddy and Big Mama about his terminal cancer. Furthermore, Big Daddy lies to his wife, and Gooper and Mae exhibit avaricious motives in their attempt to secure Big Daddy's estate. In some cases, characters refuse to believe certain statements, leading them to believe they are lies. A recurring phrase is the line, "Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?", said by both Big Daddy and Brick after Big Mama and Maggie (respectively) proclaim their love. The characters' statements of feeling are no longer clear-cut truths or lies; instead, they become subject to greater or lesser certainty. This phrase is the last line of the play as originally written by Williams and again in the 1974 version.<ref name="Williams-Cat-p173" /> ===Facing death=== How humans deal with death is also a focus of this play, as are the futility and nihilism some feel when confronted with imminent mortality. Similar ideas are found in [[Dylan Thomas]]'s "[[Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night]]", which Williams excerpted and added as an [[Epigraph (literature)|epigraph]] to his 1974 version.<ref name="Williams-Cat-p14" /> Thomas wrote the poem to his dying father.<ref name="Parker2004p177" /> Additionally, in one of his many drafts,<ref name="ParkerBrian" /> in a footnote on Big Daddy's action in the third act, Williams deems ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' a "play which says only one affirmative thing about 'Man's Fate': that he has it still in his power not to squeal like a pig but to keep a tight mouth about it."<ref name="ParkerBrian" />
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