The Iceman Cometh Essay Questions

What role does storytelling play in the characters' lives?

Most human beings have the impulse to tell stories and to listen to them; stories connect us to our shared humanity and allow us to place ourselves within our own narrative, as well as the world around us. The characters in Hope's saloon are no different. They tell stories about their past and what they plan to do in their future; they use stories to explain and justify the present. Interestingly, though, most of the stories told are, to some degree, false. Hope didn't think his wife was really as perfect as he seems to now, Hickey didn't murder his wife because he loved her, McGloin will never be found innocent, Lewis and Wetjoen will never return home. Larry is full of stories about being done with the Movement, not caring about anything, and desiring death - all of which are false, but exist to contextualize and excuse his current state. As critic William Davies King writes, "the importance of the stories is not so much in their content as the dramatic fact that they need to be told now and the telling will have an effect on others."

What are the religious elements of the play?

Though the 12 men at Harry's birthday may be a reference to the 12 disciples with Hickey as Jesus, Parritt as Judas, and the three whores as the three Marys, religion in a traditional sense seems to be absent in this play. No one goes to church or prays or talks about God or seems to possess deep religious convictions. That absence is not an oversight on the playwright's part, of course. The absence of God is the point of the play. Larry articulates this most frequently, speaking of the lack of meaning in life and death. The characters thus occupy an existential, empty world and their pipe dreams are all that protect them from having to look directly into the abyss.

How do we view Hickey at the end of the play?

Hickey's more disconcerting character traits were apparent early on: he is meddlesome, holier-than-thou, and pushy. However, it isn't until the end of the play that we realize the extent of his hypocrisy and depravity. Far from being immune to the lure of pipe dreams, Hickey has been nurturing the massive dream that he loved his wife and only killed her because he was saving her, and his spitting out cruel words because he was insane. Hickey was a monster to his wife, never trying to change his bad behavior even though he could see what it did to her. He began to resent her kindness and forgiveness, and rather than give her any choice in the matter, killed her to "save" her from him. His hypocrisy also frames his intention to disrupt the men and disabuse them of their pipe dreams as destructive rather than freeing.

Is this play a tragedy?

The answer to this is yes, but as is customary with O'Neill, there is a lot of nuance in that "yes". The tone is stark and unrelenting, the structure much like that of Greek drama. Daniel Burt notes, "[it contends] not with a family's tragedy but humanity's." The characters are alienated and outsiders, unable to make their way economically, politically, or socially in a cruel and meaningless world without the help of pipe dreams and delusions. The American Dream is a beautiful lie; it is unattainable and maybe not even worth the trouble. Trudi Van Dyke states that the play is definitely a tragedy but "the reasons why it constitutes a tragedy are not entirely clear. Is it tragic because a man murdered his wife? Or because it shows the effects of delusion, not only related to the American dream but also the addiction of alcoholism? Or is there more to it than that?...[it] is a tragedy of the greatest kind because it demonstrates that most of us will never take the necessary steps to pursue our own American dreams, whatever they may be."

What separates Larry from the others at the end of the play?

From the very beginning Larry maintained that he was different. He had no pipe dreams, he saw the world as it was. He knew there was no point in believing in anything or anyone. Of course, he did have his own pipe dream, which was that he cared about nothing. The audience comes to see that Larry has feelings about leaving the Movement, feelings about Parritt, fears of death and living. By the end of the play Larry has come to understand what Hickey did to everyone including to himself. He sees the meaningless of life and the falseness but significance of dreams; he is condemned to live in the present rather than the future or the past, condemned to hate both life and death. He has no hope anymore and he cannot escape.