A Study Of Ethical Anxiety And Construction Of Ethical Order In Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Tennessee Williams is one of the most outstanding writers in American drama circle with his fantastic imagination and unique style.Unlike other contemporary playwrights,Williams was known as a poet of extending his deep-hearted brushstrokes to the sensitive and vulnerable marginal groups in modern society,revealing the real anxiety hidden in human existence and conveying his own ethical thoughts.However,the ethical study of Williams's plays had always been a marginal field.Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is magnum opus of Williams's,which had won the Pulitzer prize for drama for the second time and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for the third time.By using the creative theory of Plastic Theater,Williams described the ethical anxiety in Pollitt's family in a subtle and profound way,which was under the guise of inheritance during the heritage battle.Therefore,it is feasible and innovative to conduct a study of this play with the method of Ethical Literary Criticism.From the perspective of Ethical Literary Criticism,in the political,economical and ethical backgrounds of American society in the middle of the 20th century,this thesis focused on the anxiety of the ethical relationship in this play,exploring and analyzing anxiety of each character,by using the close reading methods and the Plastic Theater theory of Williams's.Then,through analyzing the construction of ethical orders,the author finally revealed ethical values and thoughts.The thesis consists of three parts including introduction,the main body and conclusion.The introduction is the first part.In this part,the author mainly introduced the lifetime and creating history of Tennessee Williams and summarizes the plot of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,and then sorted out the current status of Williams research at home and abroad.At last,the author proposed innovative points and research methods,as well as defined relevant concepts of this paper.The second part is the main body,which is divided into three chapters.The first chapter mainly combines the creative theory of Plastic Theater to analyze the anxiety of ethical relationship in the drama,which mainly reflected the anxiety of the relationship between the two sexes and the two generations.With the interlacing of vision and hearing,Williams revealed Margaret's explicit loss anxiety,Brick's implicit anxiety of separation and Big Daddy's death anxiety in the tense and antagonistic sexual relationship.At the same time,Williams completed the psychological modeling of the main characters in the play by shaping the invisible man Skipper.Within the voice and violence of the game,the author also uncovered hidden ethical taboo in the relationship between the sexes,which resulting in the deep anxiety of Margaret's sin and penalty and Brick's trauma.In addition,Williams also revealed the returning anxiety of Big Daddy's in the ethical relationship of two generations in a poeticly writing way.In the process of violent behavior and reappearance of invisible people,the anxiety of Brick's estrangement in the ethical relationship between father and son is revealed.Under the foundation of the first chapter,the second chapter mainly explores the anxiety of ethical identities about Margaret and Brick in the relationship between the two sexes.One is that Margaret,who struggles on a hot tin roof as a "cat",suffering from the anxiety of the gay wife hidden in her mind and an unfaithful wife in the eye of others.The second is that Brick,who escapes in wine,experiences the anxiety of the potential cabinet and the identity of the escaped son.The third chapter mainly explains the construction of ethical order.Under the influence of the traditional social moral order,Margaret and Brick,who lived in the "homophobic" society,having completed the construction of the ethical order in the relationship between the two sexes through their adherence to the heterosexual marriage.In the process of practicing American pragmatic ethical norms and the returning of humanitarian,Big Daddy completed the persuasion of Brick,thus Brick returned to the mainstream society,and finally completed the construction of the ethical order in the father-son relationship in the process of the reconstruction of paternal authority.The conclusion is the third part,which mainly summarizes the ethical thoughts in this play and reveals the ethical values and thoughts.It mainly reflected the ethical consideration for the homosexuals and gay wife as the marginal vulnerable groups and besides with the ethical consideration on power and sexuality.