Summary:
Brick remains a mystery at the heart of Tennessee Williams' play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." He does not develop and ultimately he remains a bitter, withdrawn enigma. The lack of communication on Brick's part means that we, as an audience, find out very little about him; this merely adds to his enigma status.
Brick is the most silent of all the significant characters, although when he speaks, his words have more content than those of others. Big Daddy, in his onstage conversation, or argument, with Brick he laments about the way in which nobody really talks to each other. He claims that although everyone talks to each other they don't really carry any meaning in their words, as if all conversation in the house since his illness has been trivial and almost phatic ("Communication is - awful hard between people"). For Big Daddy Brick, he believes, is the only "honest" person left and he says, "Then there is at least two people that never lied to each other." Much of what Brick says throughout the first act of the play is inconsequential fillers such as "Oh ...", "Uh-huh" and.....
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