Williams’ relationship with religion was complicated. His family, and mother in particular, were very religious and so from a young age, like Brick, he was indoctrinated with certain ideals that he would later grow to reject. Despite there being points later in his life when he would accept and once again deny Christianity, at the time when Williams wrote the text he was clearly not approving of religion’s influence in society, a bias that manifests through the cowardly Preacher. Aware of Big Daddy’s cancer, Reverend Tooker’s objective is to ensure that the Pollitt family patriarch considers his church in his will. Similar to Maggie and Mae in this sense, Reverend Tooker is even more detestable than these two, as he is meant to be a representative of the highest level of morality. “Sincere as a bird-call blown on a hunter’s whistle,” Reverend Tooker is the embodiment of the character flaws that come with falsehoods of conventionality and by extension Williams uses him to critique the role of religion in perpetuating the use of self-contradicting value systems. Indeed, the preacher’s presence at the party is for no other reason than convention as characters seem to agree that he lacks “tact” and many of them, especially Big Daddy, having atheistic beliefs anyway. In this sense, Williams argues that “pious, conventional lie” that pervades the text is obsolete and mostly self-imposed.
