Character analysis
Reverend Tooker
in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
Reverend Tooker is a minor yet symbolically significant supporting character in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He acts as the family's clergyman and attends Big Daddy's birthday celebration, but his role leans more towards comic irony and social critique than active drama. Williams uses Tooker to critique the empty pieties of Southern gentility: the Reverend remains on the fringes of nearly every group scene, constantly seeking a donation or a new church-facility pledge from the Pollitt estate, all while the family quietly deals with Big Daddy's terminal cancer and a tangled web of lies about his prognosis.
Tooker's main characteristic is his obliviousness—or possibly his willful ignorance. He cheerfully talks about memorial windows and air-conditioning for the rectory while those around him are preoccupied with issues of mortality, greed, and despair. His poorly timed comments about church finances highlight the play's theme that social institutions, including religion, contribute to the denial of truth. He naturally pairs with Doctor Baugh, another figure of professional authority who, like Tooker, is involved in the collective deception surrounding Big Daddy's illness.
Tooker does not experience any personal growth; he finishes the play precisely as he started—smiling, self-serving, and spiritually stagnant. His flatness is deliberate: Williams uses him as an emblem of the comfortable, corrupt social fabric that both Brick's alcoholic despair and Maggie's fierce honesty are, in their own ways, working to unravel.
Connected characters
- Big Daddy Pollitt
Tooker courts Big Daddy's patronage throughout the birthday gathering, repeatedly steering conversation toward church donations and building projects. He is among those kept ignorant—or who chooses to remain ignorant—of Big Daddy's true diagnosis, making his solicitations darkly comic.
- Big Mama Pollitt
Big Mama is Tooker's most receptive audience in the household; he gravitates toward her social warmth. His presence at her side during the family crisis highlights how she, like him, initially retreats into social performance rather than confronting hard truths.
- Doctor Baugh
Tooker and Doctor Baugh function as a paired set of 'official' figures who orbit the Pollitt family. Both are complicit in the atmosphere of denial—Baugh through his medical evasions, Tooker through his cheerful indifference to the family's suffering.
- Gooper Pollitt
Gooper tolerates Tooker as part of the respectable social world he is eager to cultivate, but Tooker's presence is ultimately irrelevant to Gooper's inheritance scheming, illustrating how shallow the family's religious observance really is.
- Maggie Pollitt ("The Cat")
Maggie's sharp, unsentimental worldview stands in silent contrast to Tooker's platitudinous manner. She has no meaningful direct exchange with him, but his oblivious cheer throws her desperate honesty into sharper relief.
- Brick Pollitt
Brick's alcoholic withdrawal and contempt for 'mendacity' represent the polar opposite of Tooker's breezy social engagement. Tooker's inability to perceive—or care about—Brick's anguish exemplifies the mendacity Brick finds suffocating.