You look so cool, so cool, so enviably cool.

Maggie mournfully remarks on Brick's inaccessibility in Act I. The favorite son and longed-for lover, Brick possesses the charm of those who have given up and assumed a pose of indifference before the world. Brick embodies an almost archetypal masculinity, that of the self-possessed, self-contained, untouchable, and phallically intact man. Before this indifferent "block," characters find themselves in the throes of desire (Maggie, Mama) or state of aggression (Daddy). Against "Brick" of a man, Maggie appears the hysterical, dissatisfied woman, prostrate before a man who refuses to recognize her desire.