How do some characters in Suddenly Last Summer try to keep the
truth from entering their lives' The truth has trouble entering the
life of Mrs. Venable, Violet, Sebastian's mother, because she resists
it, pushes it away, and lives in the world of her own comfort level
beliefs. She wants to believe, in the worst way, that her late son
was a great poet. Oh, he was a gourmet gardener, too, and he had
those expensive fruit flies flown in from Florida to feed to the Venus
flytrap, and his "life was his work," she explained to Doctor
Cukrowicz. And what was his work' He was a poet, and she was going
to "the defense of a dead poet's reputation." Violet wanted to
believe he was clairvoyant, that he was a "legend," that he was
"chased," celibate, "a creator," but what she doesn't want to believe
is that he was a wild and demented homosexual.
And who was it that tried to allow the truth to be seen by
Violet' It was Doctor Cukrowicz (AKA "Doctor Sugar"), who listened to
her for long periods of time, occasionally questioning her veracity as
to her son Sebastian's real self and real life. But Doctor Sugar
wanted to get some money for his office, and Violet wanted him to
perform a lobotomy on the woman who was spreading stories
("babbling"), so there was a method to this madness between them, in
her garden. And then Catherine wanted Violet to know the truth, as
well; a drugged Catherine spills out the truth about her cousin
Sebastian, that in fact he was wild and homosexual, notwithstanding
the myth that Violet had been living with, the denial Violet had
perfected. Violent also did not want to accept at all the way in
which her son died - and lived. And in the end, the good doctor
thinks "we ought to at leastâ&
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