Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Wealth Quotes

Maggie is the only one fighting the battle against Gooper and Mae. She is acutely aware of their plan, even before they hatch it and relay it to the family. She does not want to be at the mercy of Gooper and Mae's power.

Despite Gooper and Mae's efforts to make Maggie feel like the outsider, Maggie and Mae are not so different after all. Both know what it's like to not have any money, and both are hoping they never have to be without it again. This moment also makes us realize just how carefully Maggie has paid attention to the plights and business affairs of others. She is attuned to the gossip that society gleefully churns out.

The fact that Big Daddy's wealth is not safely protected or parceled out through a will creates insecurity for the rest of the family. However, drafting a will, in Big Daddy's mind, would involve surrendering to the notion of death, both socially and internally. He intends to outrun death. In this way, his wealth is more legendary than real, and in a household that is in many ways rotting, it is easy for us to doubt the sheer existence or size of this wealth.

Maggie doesn't hide her motives from us or from Brick. She has her own ghosts that haunt her, and these ghosts have to do with the poverty that she knows so well.

Wealth and religion intersect in Cat through a Reverend who seems more concerned about luxury and enhancements to his church than about the spiritual well being of his flock. He's acutely aware of the wealth around him and, instead of helping to support a family haunted by death, he discusses material possessions and must leave when the talk turns to Big Daddy's cancer. Big Daddy points to the human tendency to buy and buy and buy in the hopes of finding life everlasting. It would seem the world of Cat is bereft of a spiritual center or of belief in higher power.

Maggie has grown up poor. While she definitely knows how and when to fight for her stake in Big Daddy's wealth, she does so not out of greed, but out of a complete understanding of what it means to scrape by and to live in poverty.

Avarice and greed, the desire to buy things and outwit death by one day coming upon life everlasting, and the desire to hold power over others, all compel Mae, Gooper, and Maggie so much that they nearly resort to physical violence. The play is riddled with instances of characters resorting to striking others in order to get what they want.

Big Mama's consumption of material goods reflects a gluttony, and also echoes Big Daddy's assertion that when people buy and buy and buy, they are hoping life everlasting will one day fall into their hands.

This is the first instance in which we get a concrete sense of just how wealthy Big Daddy is. Ten million dollars in the year 1952 would equal about $79,000,000 dollars in the year 2008. Yowsa. And that's not including the 28,000 acre property value.

Again and again we see humans compared to animals throughout Cat. Big Daddy, the millionaire, understands humans' actions and desires in an animalistic sense, offering a profound explanation for the way in which humans feel the need to buy things constantly: the pursuit of eternal life. Big Daddy posits that humans use money as a weapon against death or against the great fear of death's sheer animal nature. Humans buy in the hopes of escaping death, in the hopes of becoming more than a "beast."