All the symbolic meaning

"Nature red in tooth and claw" seems to be both Violet's and Sebastian's view of a god without compassion. The ending is foreshadowed in the Venus flytrap scene (the flesh-eating plant, which has to be satisfied), the birds of prey attacking and devouring the turtles as they desperately race to the sea, Violet's almost proudly flaunting her quasi-incestuous relationship with her son as both being users, of each other and others. Their idea of human relationships is to use people until they wear out their usefulness, then discard them like old shoes. Sebastian uses both his mother and Cathy as procurers, which he has no compunction about, because that, to him, is the natual order of things -- to use or be used. As Violet says, "His life is his work and vice versa" -- Sebastian expresses no objection to the violence in the natural and/or human world. Rather, he simply accepts it, produces one poem per summer (except for the last), and lives his "principles" (if you can call them that), thus expressing and exemplifying the "natural order" without judging or protesting it until HE becomes the sacrifice on the temple ruins, with the young boys appropriately making those "horrible gobbling noises" (shrieks Cathy) reminiscent of the birds of prey that ate the turtles. Sebastian has become part of the inexorable food chain -- the law of Karma is satisfied ("what goes around, comes around" or something like that).

on 1 level the sea turtle and the birds made me think of how playwrights like Williams feel when they get a bad review. they 'hatch' out a new play, then here come the critics to rip it apart. the playwright pretends not to care about critics, or the readers (symbolized by the poor tribesmen), and maybe doesn't care half the time. but in
the end the self-agrandizing playwright is 'killed' by the poor (not talented) tribesmen.
the movie came across as a self-pitying poor me, i'm attacked by critics who aren't as talented as i am whine fest of Tennesse Williams.
i liked the movie, however, and thought Elizabeth Taylor and Katherine Hepburn did a great job delivering the overwrought dialogue. Their performances make the movie for me.


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Thank you folks for kindly doing something dropping in-Cartoon Planet

One thing about the sea turtles is that it allows Violet to say that Sebastian saw the face of God, and that it was hideous and cruel. This later segues into Catherine saying that Sebastian saw something hideous .... inside himself. Well, at the time Catherine says that we have no idea what she means, but of course by the end of the film we know that Sebastian/Catherine meant his homosexuality, which Tennessee Williams viewed as hideous and evil.
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