Illusion and Mendacity - 1706 Words

Peter Tim Soriano Mr. Chalmers ENG 4U 16 December 2013 Illusion and Mendacity In Tennessee Williams’ plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire, several characters suffer by lying and by being unaware of reality. Both plays demonstrate and signify the themes of illusion vs. reality and mendacity through past trauma, alcohol abuse, and through strained family and marital relationships. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brick is an example to all of these factors through his past with his friend skipper, his abuse of alcohol, and the lack of love he shows for his wife, while in A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche encounters similar problems as Brick with her past trauma and her alcohol problem. The two plays share many similarities†¦show more content†¦She could not give him the help he needed and as a result, he committed suicide. Since then, Blanche has been living her life based on lies and does not know what reality is anymore as she says, â€Å"I don’t want realism. I want magic!† (117) After Mitch fi nds out that she has been hiding her age from him, Blanche confesses that she does not want reality instead she wants magic. In the same quote, she also confesses that she does not tell the truth, but tells what ought to be truth. Blanche’s past traumas relates Brick’s past trauma’s in a way that they both lost someone important in their lives. When Blanche lost her husband, and when Brick lost his friend Skipper, both Brick and Blanche find themselves living in illusion to escape reality, through abuse of alcohol. The abuse of alcohol is shown in both plays with Brick, and Blanche. From the beginning of the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it reveals that Brick is an alcoholic. He uses alcohol to escape from reality ever he lost his friend Skipper. At one point, Big Daddy talks to Brick about his issues and he asks Brick if the doctor had lied to him about the cancer results, Brick answers by saying that â€Å"Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one wa y out an’ death’s the other†¦.† (94) Brick reveals to Big Daddy that the doctors lied to himShow MoreRelatedSymbolism, Imagery and Allegory in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire2119 Words   |  9 Pages`American Dream at a higher level. He is also symbolic of the old world in contrast to the new world of `no-neck monsters.    Big Daddys cancer is a microcosm of the mendacity eating away at the Pollits. This could be Williams way of commenting on how the old spirit of America is dying through the mendacity spreading throughout it.    This way of thinking would certainly encapsulate the post-depression feeling of the time found in plays such as Millers Death of a SalesmanRead More Big Daddy and the American Dream in Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 890 Words   |  4 Pagesradio-phonograph, TV set and liquor cabinet. He seems incredulous at the size and symbolism in this possession. He writes, This piece of furniture (?!), this monument, is a very completer and compact little shrine to virtually all the comforts and illusions behind which we hide from such things as the characters in the play are faced with . . . (Williams 660). He is quite right. Not only does Brick hide behind the liquor in the cabinet, his true crutch, but the furniture does exemplify all theRead MoreThe Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald2182 Words   |  9 Pages The promise of riches and success that comes on the back of hard work: the American Dream. Did it wither away? Was it lost in a sea of greed and mendacity, the roots of its vision forgotten amidst material success? Furthermore, if the American Dream is stripped away of its tangible aspects, acquired solely upon wealth; one is simply left with an idealistic concept that is unattainable. Such are the big questions posed to the reader in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby. Published inRead More The Power of Money in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby1789 Words   |  8 PagesGatsby ignorantly, but elegantly, tells him San Francisco, geography losing to the pretensions of the romantic imaginations (Lehan 60). These and numerous other lies prove how James Gatz tries to recapture the past through the use of enamorous mendacity. There is one reason only why Gatsby tries so desperately to alter his past, his pursuit of one money stained Daisy. Jay tries to buy Daisy in various ways. Not only does he buy many material items to impress her, but he continues to accumulate asRead MoreThe Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald1840 Words   |  8 Pagesbeing born into a poor family generated an obsession with wealth and status that he has worked to attain his whole life. In Daisy he sees wealth, explaining the motives behind Gatsby’s desire while incorporating themes of the American Dream and mendacity. Jay Gatsby epitomizes the American dream which necessitates his obsession with Daisy Buchanan, the personification of wealth. Gatsby’s failure to achieve his goal of winning Daisy illustrates the hypocrisy of the American dream. Jay Gatsby playsRead More The Characters Of Samson And Dalila in Miltons Samson Agonistes2392 Words   |  10 Pagestrim . . . and streamers waving. She even smells sweet, being followed by a damsel train and amber scent of odorous perfume. It seems as if the Chorus has fallen under Dalilas spell as Samson had.    Samson, however, is under no such illusions. Perhaps his blindness prevents him from capitulating to her beauty, in the same way that in Greek mythology, sailors, having blocked up their ears, saw the Sirens for the evil creatures that they were, rather than be charmed to their deaths byRead More Displacement and Don Juan Essay5873 Words   |  24 Pagescounters the flesh’s dictates—avowals of innocence, justifications, explanations, protests—that proves frail. Almost caught by her old husband in flagrante, Julia stuffs Juan deep down in her bed and launches into some seventeen stanzas of bravura mendacity, one of DJ’s most sustained set pieces. â€Å"Ungrateful, perjured, barbarous Don Alfonso,† Julia declaims, â€Å"How dare you think your lady would go on so?† The rhetorical steam only builds from there: â€Å"’Yes, search and search,’ she cried, / ‘Insult onRead MoreExistentialism vs Essentialism23287 Words   |à ‚  94 Pagestheir â€Å"ideality,† the fact that they arise entirely through the projects of human beings against the background of an otherwise meaningless and indifferent world. Existential moral psychology emphasizes human freedom and focuses on the sources of mendacity, self-deception, and hypocricy in moral consciousness. The familiar existential themes of anxiety, nothingness, and the absurd must be understood in this context. At the same time, there is deep concern to foster an authentic stance toward the human