Critical Analysis of The Iceman Cometh Essay

It is a rudimentary law of storytelling that in order for an germ to capture and maintain the readers interest, the author moldiness create accreditedistic characters, ones that are relatable, genuine, and plainly likeable. In the works of Eugene ONeill, he takes that encounter of realistic character develop workforcet and proceeds to warp and twist it into a beautifully mangled ikon of raw humanity and pessimism. He formulates characters that are utter derelicts to society, each one desperately hanging on to their hopeless dreams, each one hauntingly familiar to us.ONeill, one of the more well-kn take in twentieth coke Ameri burn die hardwrights, borrows from the thinking of Nietzsche to strip away the fluff of human privateity, exposing the basic, etern eithery somber inner whole caboodle of the human psyche. In his plays, such as The Ice art object Cometh, ONeill consistently portrays a genuine nihilistic theme that in that location is no divinity fudge, one of the p rototypical in his field to toy with the idea. He talkes that t here(predicate) is no bang-up reward in life, that even after years, perhaps even a lifetime of suffering, there is no pay off the hardly thing you catch up with is the relief that is death.ONeills The Ice Man Cometh, a play brought to Broadway which went on to celebrated success, is the story of, more or less, drunken slobs. The plays epicenter is a prohibit/boarding house where a multitude of drunken derelicts seem to live. The hotel being named after the owner, Harry expect, is laughably ironic, seeing as how most every last(predicate) of the bar flies have little or no hope left in there lives, yet they all dream of their tomorrows paying their bills tomorrow, getting their job back tomorrow, making a freshly start tomorrow.The plot revolves around the many bar attendees, however sixty year old Larry Slade plays the habit of the bitter objective commentator, a person who has decidedly take himself from the anarchist group called The Movement and the responsibilities of mainstream life. He and his companions eagerly await the arrival of their salesman friend zit, who come abouts down twice a year to waste all off his money on buying everyone drinks. thus far before Hickey arrives, Don Parrit, the son of an ex-l everyplace of Larrys, a woman who was also in the Movement, comes to Larry seeking help.Apparently the Movement has nearly collapsed on account of soul selling the group turn out, resulting in the arrest of Parrits mother, Rosa. Shortly afterwards, Hickey arrives, which would usually put the men in good spirits. Hickey has changed though, and instead of being his usual enjoyable self, his is sullen and depressed, evangelically preaching to the others that they should kick their pipe dreams as he has that it is only when this is done can one truly obtain plain will, a doctrine that Larry has already put into effect.That night, they celebrate Harrys birthday, merely everyone has set out tender and quarrelsome, what with Hickeys grouchiness and unwillingness to drink. The story reaches its climax when Hickey announces the death of his wife, and all the character become infuriated with Hickey for reminding them of their lamentable grasp on pipe dreams, prompting them all to finally get moving towards turning those pipe dreams into realities. However their dreams deteriorate apart the second they start, and they all return to the bar in the end however their shreds of hope have been dashed by their confrontations with reality, and they all resent Hickey.Hickey therefore tells them that he actually killed his wife out of sheer hatred for constant forgiveness, and Parrit admits that he interchange out his mother and the movement for analogous reasons. Overcome with guilt, Parrit asks Larry to sentence his punishment, while Harry turns himself into the police, believing himself to be insane. Larry finally confronts his own fear of death by ord ering Parrits suicide, in the end leave Larry with his own desire for death.The characters in The Ice Man Cometh are essentially sad and entirely pathetic the dynamics that exist between them seem so raw and primitive that it borders on the unreal. Although containing a well-sized cast, the play mainly focuses on the interactions between Larry, Parrit and Hickey (Bogard 51). From the beginning of the play, we are introduced to Larry as a man removed from society, one who cares not to create any more bonds or relationships with the world and its inhabitants. Larry tells us this himself when he says So I said to the world, God bless all here, and may the best man win nd die of gluttony And I took a seat in the grandstand of philosophical detachment to fall asleep observing the cannibals do their death dance. (ONeill Plays of Our time 12)Larry attempts to play the part of the coolly detached demigod or Overman as proposed by Nietzsche. Nietzsche fall upons the Ubermensch as, the convey of the earth. Let your will say the overman shall be the meaning of the earth I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of nonnatural hopes (Towards the Ubermensch). What Nietzsche basically illustrates is a man who lives in reality, and does not expect anything more from it he does not expect an afterlife, nor any reward for his life he is a man living by his own morals, not buying into slave morality, the basic set of ethics impressed upon society (Wilcox 13). However it should be noted that Larry attempts to play this role he successfully does so, up until Don Parrit enters his life and tugs at the few heartstrings Larry has left.In the past, Larry was a father figure to Parrit, and now Parrit has come back trying to run across that paternal void in his life. After symbolically killing his mother by selling her out to the cops, Parrit yearns to find some semblance of a reliable parent. Although Larry clearly decl ares his new outlook on life, he is eventually convinced by Hickey to kill that pipe dream of his, his own fear of death, and takes certificate of indebtedness for Parrits betrayal by sentencing him to his suicide. In his stock certificate Go Get the hell out of life, God damn you, before I choke it out of youGo up- Larry is in theory sucked back into the real world by acknowledging that bond he shares with Parrit (ONeill Plays of Our time 138). Hickey, like Larry, is another example of the influence Nietzsche had on ONeill. When Hickey finally returns, he preaches to the rest of the men to give up their dreams, and it is only then can one be totally salvage. This sudden quest to destroy the American dream is similar to Nietzsches rejection of the Judeo-Christian faith and its ideals of redemption (Orr 91).By refusing the notion of an afterlife, one is truly free in that you realize your actions have no real consequence. John Orr goes as far as to describe Hickey as both a Chri st and an Antichrist figure to the barflies. His preaching offers no one buyback because they all end up back at the bar, mentally worse off than before, symbolically dead, but he himself is crucified when he turns himself in to the police. Edmund Wilson said, Eugene ONeill, nearly always, with whatever crudeness, is expressing some real experience, some jounce directly from life. (382).And Wilson is right many, if not all of ONeills plays serve as a personal reflection of his thoughts and experiences in life. In cases like The Ice Man Cometh, Bogard suggests that the characters he writes about mimic the slew he encountered while he spent his days in the saloons of New Orleans. As one annotates in the early stage directions, the characters are described as specific types of people Joe Mott being mildly blackamoor in type Piet Wetjoen A Dutch farmer type and claiming McGloin has the occupation of policeman stamped all over him (51).There is no doubt these characters were based on people or groups of certain people he has encountered in his life. The motif of alcoholism is obvious in The Ice Man Cometh, and of course, ONeill had first top experience with alcohol problems. It was his constant drinking that mollified the shock of learning of his mothers morphine addiction, and what also got him thrown out of Princeton University. Even ONeills nihilistic rejection of Christianity stems from his early childhood, when he insisted that he no longer attend Catholic school, but instead go to a secular boarding school.Also, the suicide attempt of Jimmy Tomorrow and the successful suicide of Don Parrit are reflective of ONeills own struggle with suicide back in 1912, ironically the same year The Ice Man Cometh takes place. With this knowledge of ONeills troubled and mentally disturbed past, we are able to discern the basic themes of The Ice Man Cometh. However this in itself is no easy task, the play is multi-layered, dealing with themes that involve dreams of dea th, and the conception of God however they all stem from a focal point which is the inner turmoil that exists at bottom man.In the beginning of the play, Larry describes Hopes Hotel to Parrit, which coincidentally enough is a perfect metaphor for the mens lives What is it? Its the No Chance Saloon. The Bedrock Bar, The End of the Line Cafe, The Bottom of the Sea Rathskellar Dont you notice the beautiful calm in the atmosphere? Thats because its the last harbor. No one here has to worry about where theyre going next, because there is no farther they can go. Its a great comfort to them.Although even here they keep up the appearances of life with a few clean pipe dreams about their yesterdays and tomorrows, as youll see for yourself if youre here long. (ONeill Plays of Our Time 19). Larry repeats the idea that the hotel is the end of the line, that inside its walls there lies no chance, that its the last harbor. And so it is, the hotel symbolically becoming a sort of limbo, a hole i n the wall place where the burnouts and ruined lives come to kill some time as they subconsciously wait for their deaths.Even ONeill describes the hotel in the first few lines of his stage directions as The back manner and a section of the bar of Harry Hopes saloon on an early morning in summer, 1912. The right wall of the back room is a dirty black curtain which separates the barThe back room is crammed with round tables and chairs placed so close together that it is a difficult squeeze to pass between themThe walls and ceiling once were white, but it was a long time ago, and they are now so splotched, peeled, stained and dusty that their color can best be described at dirty. (ONeill Plays of Our Time 7).The hotel exists as a microcosm removed from society the fasten back room full of dirty furniture and even dirtier people, representing the grim reality of death that lies in the dark recesses of the inhabitants minds. To end up at this bar is to acknowledge your death. However a ll the hotels inhabitants chair on to their pipe dreams, their last great memories of reality, all making empty promises to get back on their feet. However, they still sit, waiting for the relief of death.Their relief is that they can finally end the suffering of day-to-day human beings and leave this earth. Nietzsche pushes the notion that the only world that truly exists is the physical one. There remains no great dramatic ending, no glorious redemption, there is no higher being that any of us must answer to or any grand jury that is weighing our every action, the apparent world is the only one the true world is mere added by a lie (Wilcox 73). These men finally cumulate their death-bringer when salesman Theodore Hickman, to them known as Hickey, enters the hotel.Yearly coming by for Harry Hopes birthday, always a bringer of life and vitality (and especially alcohol), Larry and the others notice a gross change in Hickey. He begins to unnervingly preach the glory of killing your pipe dreams. Hickey convinces the drunkards to forget those great memories of reality, forget those promises to start anew, and accept the position that they are physically and mentally paralyzed forever stuck in the limbo of Harry Hopes hotel until their death (Bogard 54).Travis Bogard best explained it by saying Their dreams hold at least an illusion of lifes essence movement in purposive action. Action, to be sure, will never be taken, but the dreams let on a basic human truth to foster life, man must preserve a borderline dream of movementshowing the dreamers that they will never take actionbrings the peace of death.