In a plantation house, a family celebrates the sixty-fifth birthday of Big Daddy. The mood is somber, despite the festivities, because a number of evils poison the gaiety: greed, sins of the past and desperate, clawing hopes for the future. The knowledge that Big Daddy is dying slowly makes the rounds. Swarming around his son Brick and daughter-in-law Maggie are their intrusive, conniving relatives, all eager to see Maggie put in her place and Brick tumbled from his position of most-beloved son.
