"Lots of people die, die," as the old rock song goes. (The song was wrong; everybody dies.)

And the older characters in Marty are obsessed with this fact—so much so, in fact, that they can't seem to stop talking about their buddies biting the bullet.

Catherine's News Bulletins

When Teresa comes over to ask her sister to move in, Teresa begins with the sunny tale of the honeymoon postcard she's received from her young son, married the weekend before. Catherine, however, is more interested in the macabre.

"I gotta letter from my husband's cousin in Abruzzi. His mother died," Catherine reports. And a moment later, she notes the death of the Abruzzi tavern proprietor, followed in quick succession by a story about the old Irishman neighbor who had died just the day before of "pleurisy" (a lung disease that's featured prominently in The Glass Menagerie).

While Teresa cracks wise, thanking her sister for her "cheerful news," you have to feel bad for Catherine. She feels so kicked to the curb by her son's new life that all she can think about is what she regards as her "next move." You know, the move that takes you off the street and into the coffin.

The Old Biddies at the Bar

In the film's most random-seeming non sequitur, it's Saturday night in the bar, and Angie's looking for Marty everywhere. Of course, we know Marty's with Clara.

While Angie waits impatiently to ask the bartender if he's seen his pal, a scene unfolds in the foreground: two ladies, drinking their beers and reporting the community news. One tells the other the story of a young woman they both know, who had six children. She got pregnant again, even though the doctor had said she wouldn't live if she had another. She goes on and has the baby, "a big healthy boy of nine pounds," and dies straight away. "That's a sad story," the other lady says, without much inflection.

The pair of older ladies makes us think of Teresa and Catherine. It's enough to make us wonder whether Chayefsky wrote the dialogue for Teresa and Catherine first, and then grafted it onto these Irish grannies.

But we think this weird old lady obsession with death speaks to something larger within the film's themes: that is, the fact that everyone is nervous and self-conscious at every stage of life. Marty is self-conscious about not getting married; Tommy is self-conscious about the fact that he's missing out on the single life now that he's married; the old women of the world are self-conscious about being that much close to the Great Beyond.

In short, everyone's nervous.