Their ships will come in, loaded to the gunwales with cancelled regrets and promises fulfilled and clean slates and new leases!
Larry uses the metaphor of a loaded ship traveling to and then arriving in a port to explain the men's lives and pipe dreams. The ship is their life and the packages onboard are their hopes and dreams and promises, and the port is the end of their life. However, Larry doesn't think that the ship is really full of such hopeful and optimistic things; rather, the breeze that brings the ship in is tinged with alcohol and the ship will probably crash and sink before it arrives. As Hickey says later, they should all sink to the bottom of the sea anyway and be at peace. This quote is classic Larry as well, for it is mocking and sardonic but expressive of a deeper truth.
Don't waste your pity. They wouldn't thank you for it. They manage to get drunk, by hook or crook, and keep their pipe dreams, and that's all they ask of life. I've never known more contented men.
Regardless of whether or not Larry is being truthful in his assertion that he has no pipe dreams of his own, he accurately captures what the pipe dreams mean to everyone else. These men (and a few women) are happy enough. They drink and sleep and bicker and go about their limited business without caring much about the outside world. They comfort themselves with their dreams and delusions, sustaining themselves with the hope that one day they will go out and, for example, get their job back or move back home overseas. They have constructed these psychic defenses in order to protect themselves from the harshness of the outside world, which is certainly understandable. And, lest audiences or readers wonder at this point if perhaps the men would be better off being honest with themselves and giving up those dreams, Hickey's intervention almost definitively proves that that is not quite the best idea.
Would that Hickey or Death would come!
Willie might be speaking glibly here as he and the others anxiously await their friend, but his comment is actually very prescient. Hickey will come to symbolize death and to literally bring death. He killed his wife Evelyn because he thought she would be better off without him (to be more accurate, though, he killed her because he resented her). This murder will almost certainly bring him death by electric chair. His confession of the murder leads Parritt to fully cop to turning in his Mother and Larry to give Parritt the courage he needs to commit suicide. In another sense, Hickey almost succeeds in bringing death to the men's dreams and the small amount of meaning they have left in their lives. Only Larry ends up in this state, but the effects on the others before Hickey's insanity plea are dreadful to behold.
Be God, this bughouse will drive me stark, raving loony yet!
Larry complains about his companions' pipe dreams and their incessant whining, storytelling, and "tomorrows". Of course, he regards them affectionately as well, but wearies of them from time to time. The compelling thing about his "bughouse" comment, which means an insane asylum, is that to the outside world that label may very well seem fit. After all, these are delusional drunks, telling themselves falsities and platitudes. They cannot seem to engage with the outside world; Harry Hope doesn't even set foot outside for 20 years. When Hickey shows up it seems like perhaps a sane, thoughtful man has come into their midst, but the great irony is that Hickey brings a massive dose of the "bughouse" with him. He too is delusional; he too cannot live with himself and manifests his own mental duress through meddling and agitating.
"De Bull Moosers is de on'y reg'lar guys," one guy says. And de other guy says, "You're a God-damned liar! And I'm a Republican!" Den dey'd laugh.
This quote refers specifically to the election of 1912. After Republican William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, his vice president Theodore Roosevelt assumed office. Roosevelt also ran for his own term and won in 1904. He decided not to run again and his hand-picked successor, William Taft, won the presidency in 1908. Watching from the sidelines Roosevelt could only grimace and complain as Taft proved to be deeply unpopular. Since Taft would be the Republican Party's nominee in 1912, Roosevelt had to choose another party to run under when he decided to toss his hat in the ring - the "Bull Moose" Progressive Party. Finishing up the triad was Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic nominee. Wilson ended up winning partially thanks to the splitting of Republican votes. What makes this reference so interesting in Iceman is that is seems so deeply out of place: the outside world with its political parties and elections and voting and laws is so removed, so foreign. The men inside the saloon show no interest in current political, economic, or social events. And indeed, it's only Margie telling the story of what the guys she and Pearl met were saying; she isn't showing any interest herself. This small, perhaps throwaway moment, only serves to enhance the sense of isolation the characters are entrenched in.
You can let go of yourself at last. Let yourself sink down to the bottom of the sea. Rest in peace. There's no farther you have to go. Not a single damned hope or dream left to nag you.
Hickey's words and beliefs are actually rather strange when parsed. First, he comes into the bar as a whirl of energy and enthusiasm, encouraging the men to go outside, get their jobs back, stop drinking, etc. He promises peace and happiness and an honest life. However, he then says something like this, which is almost a nihilistic sentiment. Floating down to the bottom of the sea in a state of emptiness doesn't sound very meaningful, and it contrasts with Hickey's words of action. These contradictions may serve to emphasize the contradictions within Hickey himself, which are all laid bare at the end of the play.
I notice Hickey ain't pulled dat old iceman gag dis time.
Before the audiences even meets Hickey they hear about this famed "iceman" gag. It's simple, crass, and to the men in the bar, hilarious. Hickey appears to be the sort of man who excels in jokes like this even though they're at his own expense. However, he's not telling the joke when he arrives this time. The men speculate that maybe it was true but dismiss that because Hickey would be drunk and depressed. Hickey isn't telling the joke because the joke was part of the past version of himself and because in some way it actually was true. Hickey is identified with the iceman and the iceman is death; thus, Hickey brought death to Evelyn and it wasn't funny at all.
She was always getting the Movement mixed up with herself...I remember her putting on her high-and-mighty free-woman stuff...
There is more than a whiff of the Oedipus Complex about Parritt. Yes, the young man had a nontraditional and obviously difficult childhood. His mother was a busy woman, engaged in a radical movement for change. She embraced progressive ideas regarding love and sex. She seems to have ignored her son. However, Parritt's rage and despair are obsessive and seem to center around her sexual behavior. He laments what she did to Larry and equates her with a whore, while at the same time talking about his own whores. He then swings back wildly to overwhelming love for her. It is volatile, irrational, and reminiscent of the Oedipus tale because he unconsciously wishes he could be with her intimately, there is no father, and Parritt's fate seems utterly out of his own hands.
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!
Hugo is the most enigmatic character, and his pipe dream is a bit more difficult to pin down. He was a radical anarchist who spent ten years in prison for the Movement, and in the aftermath of that trauma spends his days (understandably) drinking and sleeping and joking. At first it seems like Hickey might not get to him; after all, he never said anything about wanting to go back to anyone or anything. But here, though, he finally cracks. In his confused, wheedling mumbling he actually condemns the proletariat and says what he wants to do to them: enslave them and be a God to them. Deep down he is not a pure adherent to the Movement. He is like most men in that he desires power and may be willing to oppress others to get it. If given the opportunity, Hugo knows in the bottom of his soul, he might be the very sort of bourgeois tyrant he always denounced.
Ah, the damned pity - the wrong kind, as Hickey said! Be God, there's no hope! I'll never be a success in the grandstand - or anywhere else! Life is too much for me! I'll be a weak fool looking with pity at the two sides of everything until I die!
Larry's fate is quietly, desperately tragic. Thanks to the pervasive meddling of Hickey and his final realization of what Parritt needed from him, Larry moves into a state where he cannot pretend that he is blithely unafraid of death. He is not a nihilistic philosopher, a man immune from pipe dreams. He can no longer tell himself that he hates life and wants the great sleep of death. He has seen death in Hickey and Parritt and he does not want it. As Parritt deduced earlier, Larry will cling to life as long as he can. He is the true convert to Hickey's vision and he has no way to make it palatable. His staring off at the end of the play is all he can do for his remaining days.
