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Learning Objectives 

Students will: 

• Probe possible causes of breakdown in relationships within families.
• Collect biographical information on the lives of two of America’s most valued playwrights.
• Exercise oral play-reading skills.
• Explore the nature of modern tragedy and modern concepts of the “heroic.”
• Add range to their understanding of ways dramatic force is achieved through structural patterns, diction, tone quality, rhythms of syntax, and pace of dialogue.
• Use the writing process to develop character relationships in a play.
• Research and gather information about the work of two of America’s most valued playwrights.
• Collaborate with peers to revise and edit writing. 
• Perform scenes from original play scripts.

Standards Alignment

National Core Arts StandardsNational Core Arts Standards

Common Core State StandardsCommon Core State Standards

Recommended Student Materials

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Teacher Background

Teachers should be aware that this lesson explores the complicated dynamics of families, as portrayed in American drama. Exploring this topic with students will require a heightened sensitivity to family issues faced by your students. Teachers should familiarize themselves with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, by Eugene O’Neill. Review , , , and to build background knowledge.

Student Prerequisites 

Students should be familiar with O’Neill and Williams’ plays and have a general understanding of their background.

Accessibility Notes

Modify handouts, text, and utilize assistive technologies as needed.

Engage

1. Have students read and discuss the , , and .

2.  Have a class discussion. Ask students: What are some of the major causes that can build tensions in and contribute to the breakdown of interrelationships within a family? Facilitate student discourse and generate a list of “causes” noticed by students. 

3. Discuss the master list with students. If the following “causes” are not generated by student contributions, consider adding them to the list: Lack of honest communication, addiction (alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc.), obsession, different outlooks on religion, politics, or people, the lack of fulfillment or erosion of expectations, jealousy, personality clashes, distrust, irrationality, guilt, prejudices, illness—physical and/or psychological, divergent interests, financial concerns, or problems related to the inheritance of money/property.

Build

1. Have the students read, either independently or in a series of oral readings, Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night.

2. Engage students in a discussion about the readings. 

3. Distribute and read through the . Have students choose one of the essay topics to complete.

Apply

1. Review with students Act 1 from both plays. Ask them to examine the sources and nature of tension in each family and individual family members. Have a class discussion about the different types of tensions from each play.

2. Review the following list of personality types: enabler, negotiator, victim, facilitator, oppressor, and appeaser. Ask students: Which character would they match to each of the following behavioral designations? What are some of the challenges when matching personality types to characters? One challenge is that characters seem to shift in and out of these designations in their conversations with each other, contributing to the complexity of each playwright’s attempt to capture the family tensions and relationships in the play. 

3. To further probe the tensions and conflicts between individuals in each play, point out to students that toward the end of Act 2 in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams interrupts the dialogue to explain how he wants the scene to be played. The interruption also includes a compelling editorial comment on what he strives to achieve in the play: “The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man’s psychological problem. I’m trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent – fiercely charged! – interplay of live human beings in the thunderstorm of a common crisis.”

    

   In his “Person-to-Person” prologue, Williams cites a line from his play Orpheus Descending: “We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins.” Williams says that this line helps explain the difficulty of capturing the “truth” and “honesty” of “interplay” in human communication.

4. Using these with the above quotes by Williams, to initiate comparative critiques of O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night and Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

5. Discuss the nature of tragedy. Arthur Miller, in his essay “Tragedy and the Common Man,” asserts that there is a prevailing idea that “tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism.” He counters this idea with the argument “that in truth tragedy implies more optimism than comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinion of the human animal.”

6. Initiate a group discussion in which students share opinions about whether or not O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night and Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof qualify as “tragedies” according to Miller’s requirements of optimism and final result. Encourage students to probe modern definitions of nobility, courage, the anti-hero, and the heroic in examining the two plays. Do the family dynamics contribute to or detract from the tragic nature of the play?

Reflect 

1. Review the list students generated about the “causes” of relationship breakdowns within families.

2. Have students select one of the “causes” as the thematic center for a one-act or longer playwriting script. As an optional follow-up, students can complete a full dramatic script.

3. Have students perform their scenes or acts for the class or an audience.

4. Assess students’ knowledge with a performance using the .

Extend

1. Have students research the lives of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams and discuss parallels between their lives and their plays.