The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill

 Source of book: I own this.

 

The last few years, I have been collecting various Library of America hardbacks, mostly from library sales. This one, O’Neill’s late plays from 1932 through 1943, was one I found online for a very low price. 

 

This was my first experience of O’Neill, and I picked The Iceman Cometh both for the interesting name, and because the premise sounded interesting. And interesting it was, although I must say, it is hard to imagine a bleaker play. 

 

The setting is a dive bar and rooming house in 1912 Greenwich Village. Harry Hope runs it, but he hasn’t been the same since his wife died. The residents are a bunch of down-and-out sorts, from a retired British soldier and his Boer counterpart, to an ex-cop fired for corruption, to a former anarchist. The bartender, Rocky, moonlights as a pimp - his two girls also frequent the saloon. The group wastes their days and nights drinking themselves into a stupor and boasting about what they will do tomorrow. 

 

The one change to the routine is when Hickey, an itinerant salesman, shows up for Harry’s birthday party. 

 

Except this year, two things have changed. A younger former anarchist, Parrish, shows up after the arrest of his mother (who he turned over to the cops), and hints that he may be Larry the ex-anarchist’s son. 

 

And then, when Hickey arrives, he has changed in a big way. He no longer drinks, and he is now a missionary for his new idea: that everyone would be better off if they let go of their “pipe dreams” and faced reality. Exactly what has caused Hickey’s change of heart isn’t revealed until the end, but he claims to be a new man now that he has understood that his pipe dreams will never come true. 

 

His attempts to convert everyone else cause nothing but misery, of course. For the denizens of Harry’s bar, pipe dreams are the only way they are able to live, and to give up all hope for their futures, or face the truth about who they are would mean a total loss of functionality. By the denouncement, they are all at each other’s throats, miserable, and furious at Hickey. 

 

The reason the play is so bleak, at least to me, is that it offers only horrible alternatives. I mean, existing in a constant state of stupor is not exactly a good life - and the only way it is possible is the small pensions these guys have. While I suppose all of us do have our delusions and “pipe dreams,” relying on them to function is hardly healthy either. So in that sense, Hickey is right - that manner of living is pretty toxic. But Hickey doesn’t offer a solution either. Is it really better to be a loser with delusions or a loser who knows you are a loser? Is disillusionment better than illusion if it doesn’t lead to anything positive? 

 

And, as we find out, Hickey himself is a fake - he hasn’t solved anything with his ideas: all he has done is destroy his own life and that of others. 

 

So where does one go from there? O’Neill never seems to have figured it out. He endured an abusive childhood, suffered from alcoholism and depression all his life, had multiple failed marriages, his children were also troubled and in some cases estranged from him. For years, it was believed that some combination of alcoholism and general ill health killed him, but it was later discovered (with the advent of genetic testing) that he had suffered from a rare neurological disorder that caused him great discomfort and loss of function for at least a decade before it killed him. So yeah, a rough life, and a lot of untreated issues. 

 

The play itself is interesting to read, but I wonder how difficult it would be to stage. It is almost absurdly “talky.” Characters ramble on and on and the conversations seem to go in circles and repeat later in the play. At reading speed, it is already a bit mind-numbing. But sustaining the interest at the slower speed of speech seems like quite a challenge. Nevertheless, the play was actually a success. 

 

Also interesting was incredible detail in the stage directions at the beginning of each of the four acts. I mean, like five pages of small print each time, with details such as the angle of tables and the physical descriptions of the characters. It seems a bit of a micromanagement, but I suppose since he is dead, a director could ignore most of it. Reading it, I found it an odd mix of helpful and distracting. I think understanding the basic layout of the bar is good, and some parts of the characters’ personalities are indicated. But other parts seem to be unnecessary and unhelpful in trying to imagine the scene. 

 

As a lawyer, I found the legal background fascinating. Harry’s establishment is a “Raines Law” hotel. This New York law prohibited the sale of alcohol on Sundays, except in certain hotels or boarding houses with at least 10 rooms, who served food with the alcohol. The “food,” as depicted in the play, was usually inedible and not intended to be actually eaten - it was just there to comply with the law. As an unexpected consequence, these establishments ended up attracting prostitution and gambling as well. (Note: this lesson was definitely not learned, as Prohibition amply proved.) 

 

So, a few quotes. Larry the ex-Anarchist is the most cynical of the bunch. He half-heartedly promises to kill himself, but of course he never does. He describes the situation pretty well, after the other denizens manage to mooch some free drinks off of Harry with the promise to pay. 

 

LARRY: (grinning) I’ll be glad to pay up - tomorrow. And I know my fellow inmates will promise the same. They’ve all a touching credulity concerning tommorows. (a half drunken mockery in his eyes) It’ll be a great day for them, tomorrow - the Feast of All Fools, with brass bands playing! Their ships will come in, loaded to the gunwales with cancelled regrets and promises fulfilled and clean slates and new leases!

ROCKY: (cynically) Yeah, and a ton of hop!

LARRY: (leans toward him, a comical intensity in his low voice) Don’t mock the faith! Have you no respect for religion, you unregenerate Wop? What’s it matter if the truth is that their favoring breeze has the stink of nickel whiskey on its breat, and their sea is a growler of lager and ale, and their ships are long since looted and scuttled and sunk on the bottom? To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober. And that’s enough philosophing wisdom to give you for one drink of rot-gut.

 

Larry later explains why he left the Anarchist movement - and I think he has a point. 

 

LARRY: (frowns) Forget the anarchist part of it. I’m through with the Movement long since. I saw men didn’t want to be saved from themselves, for that would mean they’d have to give up greed, and they’ll never pay that price for liberty. 

 

Part of the problem for Larry, as he later explains to Parritt, is that he “was born condemned to be one of those who has to see all sides of a question. When you’re damned like that, the questions multiply for you until in the end it’s all question and no answer.” 

 

Another former anarchist - although I think he is more of a Communist in the vein of Emma Goldman, who influenced the plot elements of play - Hugo, usually passed out, often has the few amusing lines, such as this one. 

 

HUGO: Hello, leedle peoples! Neffer mind! Soon you vill eat hot dogs beneath the villow trees and trink free vine - (abruptly in a haughty fastidious tone) The champagne vas not properly iced. (with guttural anger) Gottamned liar, Hickey! Does that prove I vant to be aristocrat? I love only the proletariat! I vill lead them! I vill be like a Gott to them! They vill be my slaves! (He stops in bewildered self-amazement - to Larry appealingly) I am very trunk, no, Larry? I talk foolishness. I am so trunk, Larry, old friend, am I not, I don’t know vhat I say?

 

One of the ongoing subplots is that of Joe, the only black character in the play. He is mostly accepted by the others, at least until Hickey shows up, and the racial tensions ratchet up along with the rest. O’Neill is fairly progressive in how he treats race, even though the characters use slurs without shame. (See also “Wop” above.) Staging this now would be problematic, because of the retrograde attitudes of the characters, honestly. Joe eventually calls some of this out, in his dramatic monologue about leaving to go re-open his gambling house. He drinks his whiskey, then smashes the glass. 

 

JOE: (with a sneering dignity) I’s on’y savin’ you de trouble, White Boy. Now you don’t have to break it, soon’s my back turned, so’s no white man kick about drinkin’ from de same glass. (He walks stiffly to the street door) I’s tired of loafin’ ‘round wid a lot of bums. I’s a gamblin’ man. I’s gonna get in a big crap game and win me a big bankroll. Den I’ll get de okay to open up my old gamblin’ house for colored men. Den maybe I comes back here sometime to see de bums. Maybe I throw a twenty-dollar bill on de bar and say, “Drink it up,” and listen when dey all pat me on de back and say, “Joe, you sure is white.” But I’ll say, “No, I’m black and my dough is black man’s dough, and you’s proud to drink wid me or you don’t get no drink!” Or maybe I just says, “You can all go to hell. I don’t lower myself drinkin’ wid no white trash!” 

 

In the end, when Hickey finally confesses everything, he tells of his childhood and later life. I found the bit about his dad to be interesting. 

 

You’ve heard the old saying, “Minister’s sons are sons of guns.” Well, that was me, and then some. Home was like a jail. I didn’t fall for the religious bunk. Listening to my old man whooping up hell fire and scaring those Hoosier suckers into shelling out their dough only handed me a laugh, although I had to hand it to him, the way he sold them nothing for something. I guess I take after him, and that’s what made me a good salesman. 

 

Hickey is more right than he realizes. His selling of “face the truth” is very much the same as what his father did. Neither actually promised hope. Gin up a problem to go with the “solution” you have, and sell nothing for something. As I noted, the play offers no solutions either - and O’Neill is up front about that. We are, perhaps, invited to imagine one. Or perhaps the point is that no solution actually exists and we should stop looking for one. That’s veering into nihilism, and is bleak indeed. I don’t see life as that meaningless, obviously. (I mean, read my blog, right?) But it is also easy to see how O’Neill ended up in that place. 

 

One final thought. The title comes from a running joke that Hickey used to tell, about how he was worried that when he was gone on sales trips his wife would be making it with the iceman. (Kind of its own version of the mailman…) In reality, though, Hickey’s wife is faithful to him, and the joke is pure projection: Hickey himself is a shameless philanderer on his trips. In the end, despite his claims to epiphany, Hickey ends as deluded as ever - he hasn’t even realized that he is the Iceman. I believe that O’Neill intended this by his choice of title.

 

I’m not sure if I like Eugene O’Neill or not. There were some good moments, but a lot of repetition and wordiness. So far, I would say that of the 20th Century American playwrights, I am inclined to prefer Tennessee Williams and Thornton Wilder. But perhaps I will like his other plays better.