No, she actually says that it looked like they put his flesh into "their gobbling mouths." The cannibalism does occur; it is a deliberate metaphor.
Williams drew from his family and his own life. Many consider the part of Sebastian to be autobiographical. I would say this refers to his own self-loathing and not being at peace socially with his homosexuality.
I did a little research on Williams and found this:
Tennessee was close to his sister, Rose, who had perhaps the greatest influence on him. She was a slim beauty who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and spent most of her adult life in mental hospitals. After various unsuccessful attempts at therapy, she became paranoid. Her parents eventually allowed a prefrontal lobotomy in an effort to treat her. The operation, performed in 1943, in Washington, D.C., went badly, and Rose remained incapacitated for the rest of her life.
Very sad. This is why mental illness is discussed often in his plays and why lobotomy is a theme in this play. His parents, by the way, allowed this to happen to Rose without telling Williams first; he was tortured by guilt after th is occurred. (Very much like the Kennedys: without anyone else's knowledge, Joe Kennedy approved a lobotomy on one of his daughters that was born with mild retardation. Her operation went very badly also and she remained incapaciated for the rest of her life.)
And I found this:
http://www.gatewayno.com/culture/TWilliams.html
For his next three plays, Orpheus Descending (1957, a revised version of Battle of Angels; filmed as The Fugitive Kind, 1960), Suddenly, Last Summer (1958; film, 1960), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959; film, 1961), Williams borrowed elements of the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to create violent modern plots involving murder, cannibalism, and emasculation.
Interestingly enough, I found a study guide for the play.
http://www.trinityrep.com/education/study_guides/study_guides.php
Read the study guide; it's rather interesting. It does address the question of whether Sebastian's death was martrydom or atonement. A director of the play says it is atonement for his guilt (see page 17), which is what I got out of the play also.
Another point in the study guide is that Williams believed that the very essence of life is cannibalistic, that man devours man in a metaphorical sense (see page 19 for more on this.) Hence the heavy symbolism.
Another thing, someone in an earlier post mentioned bathhouses. Catherine is the one who mentioned it, but she was not referring to gay bathhouses. Public bathhouses have been around for centuries, but gay bathhouses have only been around since the late 19th century. Catherine would not really have been aware of gay bathhouses (back in the 30s, this would not have been discussed with her); she is referring to straight bathhouses, meant for bathing.
reply
share
emily_threlkeld
18 years ago
Ah, okay. I must not have caught Elizabeth Taylor mentioning that. There was kind of a lot of information all at once at the conclusion of the film. I really want to see it again.
Interesting stuff on Williams. That story about his sister is horribly tragic.
reply
share
synergydesign2003
18 years ago
I know, isn't it horrible? He based many of his plays on his sister's life, including The Glass Menagerie. There's a lot on the internet about his family, especially as he portrayed them in many of his plays.
That line about gobbling mouths is almost thrown away (makes you wonder if they wanted to downplay it.) It comes slightly after her main description of his murder. If I remember correctly, she's sobbing and on her knees when she says that line.
reply
share
liltornado
17 years ago
<<That line about gobbling mouths is almost thrown away (makes you wonder if they wanted to downplay it.) It comes slightly after her main description of his murder. If I remember correctly, she's sobbing and on her knees when she says that line>>
"AS IF he had been devoured. AS IF they had torn his skin away with their hands and stuffed it into their gobbling mouths..." All of Catherine's lines are about what it looked like, not what actually happened.
reply
share