SOURCE: May, Charles E. “Brick Pollitt as Homo Ludens: ‘Three Players of a Summer Game’ and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” In Tennessee Williams: 13 Essays, edited by Jac Tharpe, pp. 49-63. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1980.

In the following essay, May investigates the cause of Brick's malaise and alienation in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, arguing that Williams's story “Three Players of a Summer Game” offers insight.

If Maggie the Cat is one of Tennessee Williams' most dramatically engaging characters, her husband, Brick Pollitt, is one of his most metaphysically mysterious. Brick's enigmatic detachment in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been the subject of more problematical commentary than either Maggie's feline restlessness or the spirit of mendacity that dominates the thematic action of the play itself. With his cool ironic smile and relative immobility (suggested both by his literal crutch and by the crutchlike...