From the Bookshelf of “My Library [is] Dukedom Large Enough”…

The Iceman Cometh

Eugene O'Neill

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

May 21, 2009 Lynne rated it really liked it

The setting in The Iceman Cometh is a run-down tavern/hotel in NYC run by Harry Hope. The play features a motley crew of characters who spend most of their days and nights drinking and deluding themselves that they will get out of the bar “tomorrow,” stop drinking, and reclaim their respectable positions in society. When the curtain rises, they are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Theodore Hickman, Hickey, a traveling salesman who comes around at least once a year for Harry’s birthday, and he a The setting in The Iceman Cometh is a run-down tavern/hotel in NYC run by Harry Hope. The play features a motley crew of characters who spend most of their days and nights drinking and deluding themselves that they will get out of the bar “tomorrow,” stop drinking, and reclaim their respectable positions in society. When the curtain rises, they are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Theodore Hickman, Hickey, a traveling salesman who comes around at least once a year for Harry’s birthday, and he always brings the party with him.

This visit, however, Hickey has an unusual purpose; he has reformed and is selling inner peace rather than a good time. Hickey sees himself as a kind of savior for these poor drunks who keep talking about what they will do “tomorrow.” All they need to do is abandon their delusions, their “pipe dreams,” and contentment will be theirs. Hickey exclaims, “it's exactly those damned tomorrow dreams which keep you from making peace with yourself. So you've got to kill them like I did." (Incidentally, how Hickey killed his pipe dreams is a revelation that comes toward the end of the play and is ultimately quite shocking.) I love the way that Hickey’s speeches to his friends splendidly combine the styles of a gifted traveling salesman and a preacher: Steady patter merged with missionary zealotry.

Brilliantly using reverse psychology, Hickey painstakingly exposes the “pipe dream” of each barfly by getting them off their respective bar stools to reclaim their former lives. Each sad sack who lives in the hotel upstairs marches out the door dressed in his finest clothing, eager to get back to being a lawyer or a reporter or to buy a little farm in “Joisey.” Then, in dramatic fashion, each one slinks back in the door at the end of the day looking more broken than ever. Not only do they not have their old lives back, they have lost all hope that this would ever be possible. They no longer even have this lie to help them get out of bed in the morning and their drinks now taste like “dishwater.” They have lost the dignity that existed in clinging to the idea of a better tomorrow. What Hickey and we readers right alongside him ultimately learn is that these delusions, these illusions, are absolutely necessary and what makes life bearable for all of us. As Larry says in Act I, “The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.” A pipe dream is better than no dream at all.

As a sidenote, I saw a production of this in NYC in 1999. It starred Kevin Spacey as Hickey, and he perfectly encapsulated the pathos required for this character. The play also featured Michael Emerson, AKA god’s gift to acting, as Willie Oban, and very minute of the over-four-hour production was riveting.
...more

Like · see review

Group Home Bookshelf Discussions

Photos Videos

Send invite Members Polls