Act Four
Summary
The act opens with Larry, Parritt, Hope, Joe, Wetjoen, Captain Lewis, Jimmy, Willie, McGloin, and Mosher sitting dispiritedly around the bar and in the back room. Rocky is tending bar, grumbling about taking Chuck’s shift so Chuck could marry Cora.
Chuck enters the bar, disheveled and drunk. He didn’t go through with the marriage, he says, because Cora was ragging on him and she was drinking too much and it wouldn’t look good for him to marry a girl like her.
Chuck and Rocky both decide they’re done working at the bar. Chuck wants to take a punch at Hickey for riling him up but Rocky tells Chuck to keep away. He adds that it seems that Hickey killed his wife. Chuck is immediately fascinated and asks who else knows. Rocky replies only Larry, but proclaims he wants to stay away from Hickey so he doesn’t have to go into mourning. Hickey angered him by throwing in his face that he was a pimp and with the way he treated Hope.
Chuck sidles up for another drink. Joe mumbles in his sleep and the two white men grumble but then relax. Joe staggers up and says he is going to leave, but sits in another chair.
Chuck and Rocky leave, the former looking for Cora and the latter done with working. Chuck finds Cora in the other room and she throws the wad of money at him, laughing that she was only kidding herself that she would marry a drunken pimp. Rocky sits down next to Larry and asks if he’s still with them. Parritt, who is lingering next to Larry, spits out that Larry is but keeps ignoring him. He adds that Larry wants to get out of helping him but he has to because he loved Mother too. He begs Larry to say something, which Larry refrains from doing until he bursts out that he isn’t Parritt’s executioner. For a moment Parritt is frightened but retorts that he ought to get a medal for turning in all the old cheaters and suckers.
Rocky cares very little about this and muses to himself that he ought to be a real pimp. He asks Parritt if he wants in but the young man says he’s through with whores and they ought to all be dead or in jail. Rocky asks Larry but all Larry says is that the contentment Hickey promised Rocky isn’t enough. Mildly annoyed at first at Larry, Rocky’s face hardens and he says they ought to throw a party when Hickey goes to the chair. Larry agrees vehemently but then slips into pity, then back to angry contempt.
After a moment Rocky wonders if Hickey will be back and Larry says of course he will; he hasn't finished talking yet. As Larry comments that Hickey’s lost the confidence that the peace he is selling is real, Hickey himself appears. He no longer looks self-assured but rather appears baffled, weary. He yells at Larry that he hasn’t lost his confidence but calms down a second later. Rocky backs away.
Hickey looks at the men and affably asks how they are all doing. Hope moans that Hickey has to do something about this booze because it isn’t strong enough. Resentful, Hickey asks Hope why he isn’t contented yet. He goes on with his speech, asking them if they are just stubborn and wondering why they can’t appreciate what they’ve got. He wonders morosely if they are doing this because they hate him, and he reminisces about when he used to hate everyone back when he was a drunken bastard. Now, though, he has faced the truth and figured out how to free Evelyn and gave her peace as well.
No one seems to want to listen but Hickey presses on. He explains how he had put her through so much and needed to do something about it, but that killing himself would be too painful for her. She loved him so much that the only generous thing to do was to kill her. The room is hushed and dread fills everyone’s countenances.
Larry exclaims that they don’t want to hear any more but Hickey doesn’t listen. Parritt calls out that he deserves the chair himself and would be glad to have it, but Hickey seems disturbed and tells Larry to get rid of the kid. Larry bitterly says he wishes he could, and Hickey soothes him that once Larry makes peace with himself, death won’t frighten him anymore.
Hickey turns to the group and tells them he must talk about the pipe dream and what it did to him and Evelyn. They yell out that they don’t want to hear it and, sad and confused, Hickey says he won’t tell them even though he feels no guilt and cares only about them.
Jimmy, who looks more waxen and ill than the rest, speaks up about how foolish it was to think he could get his job back. He was fired for drunkenness, which ruined his relationship with Marjorie and caused her to cheat on him.
Moran and Lieb, two men who are clearly detectives, saunter in. They ask for Hickey, Rocky glumly points him out, and the two stand in the back near the door.
Hickey cannot control himself and announces he has to tell his story. He commences with how he was a troubled son of a minister who rejected religion, sought out the pool rooms and tarts, and joked all the time. Regardless, the sweet and kind Evelyn loved him and he loved her back (as he speaks, Parritt cries that he loved his mother too no matter what she did, and that Larry has to say something). Everyone tried to tell Evelyn that Hickey was no good but she never listened and stuck up for him through everything. She stood by him when he decided to become a traveling salesman and often left her alone. She stood by him when he got involved with tarts and caught a disease from one. She always forgave him and believed him and said she knew it would be the last time.
The others grumble but Hickey persists. He always warned Evelyn of his faults, especially his drinking, but she loved him unconditionally. He began to feel exceedingly guilty and pitiful towards her. The guilt weighed him down and he even thought he hated her sometimes, then felt guilty for thinking that. As his yearly visit to this bar approached, he realized something would have to be done beforehand. He considered simply telling her it was the end but knew that wouldn’t work. He looked at her sleeping and decided he could kill her; it would be painless in her sleep.
The listeners shift about and comment that they don’t want to hear this. Hickey finally says, simply, “I killed her” (203). The men are dead silent - but then the anguished Parritt turns to Larry and says he did turn his mother in because he hated her, not for the money. Hickey goes on, oblivious to his audience's extreme discomfort. This was the only way to give Evelyn peace from loving him, he intones. He tells them, though, that he did say, “Well you know what you can do with your pipe dream now, you bitch!” (205) as he stood over her, but a moment later he frantically tells the listeners that there’s no way he could have said that – he loved her too much.
Hickey looks at Hope imploringly and asks him if he knows that he’s insane. Hope grumbles a “who cares” until suddenly his expression changes. His eyes light up and he haltingly asks Hickey if he was going insane. Hickey nods his head vigorously and says of course he was or he couldn’t have said that to Evelyn.
Moran places a hand on Hickey’s shoulder and says that it’s enough. He handcuffs him. Hickey claims they ought to give him a break; after all, he was the one that turned himself in. He turns to Hope again, who eagerly repeats that Hickey is insane. For a moment Hickey slips into indignation but when he sees Hope’s face begin to harden, he hastily agrees that yes, he is insane. Moran is annoyed and tells the group not to fall for this.
Hope is even more alert now and says they’ve known Hickey for a long time and they all knew he was nutty from day one. The group bursts into cries of how they knew Hickey was crazy, which disgusts Moran. Hope insults Moran and tells Hickey to keep standing up for his rights. Furious, Moran tells Hickey it’s time to go.
Serenely, Hickey says he is ready. He knows Evelyn has forgiven him and knows he was insane. Also, he says to Moran with a touch of exasperation, he doesn’t have any pipe dreams left and doesn’t care about life. He just wants them all to know he loves Evelyn and must be crazy or he wouldn’t have said what he said to her. Moran guides him out.
Hope calls after him that he will be okay and they won’t give him the chair. A few others echo this. Hope sighs and says the crazy bastard is gone and he needs a drink. Rocky and Chuck pour.
Larry’s eyes are filled with pain and pity and he mutters that the man finally has peace. Parritt turns to him, clearly tortured. He says he is jealous because it is decided for Hickey and not for him. He’s never been good at deciding things, especially with a Mother like his. He feels worse than Hickey because at least Evelyn was dead but his Mother is still alive and she has to live in jail when she loves freedom more than anything else. She will never have peace.
Larry cannot handle it anymore and spits out to Parritt, “Get the hell out of life, God damn you, before I choke it out of you!” (209). Immediately Parritt is transformed. He thanks Larry happily and smiles that this ought to comfort Mother because she will be the “incorruptible Mother of the Revolution” (209) as she always wanted.
Larry bitterly urges him onward for his own sake, which makes Parritt teary. He thanks Larry and tells him he is the only one who could understand. As Parritt makes his way out Hugo drunkenly calls out to him and Parritt smiles and says they’ll have a drink soon under the willow tree.
After Parritt departs Larry stands listening by the window. Hugo says he is glad Hickey is gone because he made him tell lies about himself and he felt like he was dying.
Hope chimes in that he too is feeling life again. After all, they were seduced by an insane man’s pipe dreams. It was never the right thing for him to go outside that day; it was too hot and there were so many automobiles. He tells the now-tipsy Rocky that he is and always will be a bartender.
They all begin to drink and Hope grows sentimental about Hickey and says that they'll remember him the way he always was - kind and big-hearted. Everyone cheers and drinks. Larry, though, is anxiously awaiting the sound from outside and wonders, anguished, why Parritt hasn't done it.
Cora and Chuck talk about how it was silly to get married before they get their farm but that’s what they’ll do. Lewis and Wetjoen toast to their friendship. Joe says he was right not to start a new game while Hickey was around. McGloin and Mosher agree it wasn’t the right time to get back on the force and in the circus, respectively.
Hugo asks Larry what is wrong with him and concludes he is crazy like Hickey. He joins the others, who are joyfully drinking. Hugo sneers about the damned bourgeoisie and the Day of Judgment. Rocky embraces Margie and Pearl who are happy to be back as “tarts” with their “bartender.”
In the corner Larry is still tortured and tense, but hears something hurtling down followed by a crash - Parritt has jumped off of his fire escape to his death. No one else gives it much thought, but Larry whispers to himself about the poor devil and that he hopes Parritt has peace now. He shudders that life is too much for him and that “I’m the only real convert to death Hickey made here” (218).
When Hope calls over to Larry for him to join them, Larry ignores them all. Hope is effusive, saying it’s his birthday celebration. Everyone begins to sing various songs. Hugo denounces them all in his fiery style and they laugh uproariously. He sings of days growing hot but being cool under the willow tree. Larry sits alone, staring and oblivious to the commotion.
Analysis
O’Neill’s Iceman has certainly come, but for some of the characters it is back to the status quo while for others – Hickey, Parritt, Larry – there is no going back.
Hickey finally admits to the men what happened to Evelyn. He detailed how he always gave her trouble although “I never loved anyone else. Couldn’t if I wanted to” (199). Instead of reforming his behavior, though, he continued to let Evelyn forgive him over and over again. Hickey grew more and more resentful over his ever-loving wife, commenting, “I began to hate that pipe dream! I began to be afraid I was going bughouse, because sometimes I couldn’t forgive her for forgiving me!” (201). He considered killing himself but told himself that Evelyn would be too depressed without him; thus, he killed her instead. When he tells the men this he explains it thusly, “And then I saw I’d always known that was the only possible way to give her peace and free her from the misery of loving me” (203). Tellingly, though, he adds, “I saw it meant peace for me, too, knowing she was at peace” (203) and a moment later he cannot control himself from admitting that he stood over her and cursed, “Well, you know what you can do with your pipe dream now, you damned bitch!” (203). Immediately after uttering this, which is clearly the truth, Hickey realizes he’d gone too far and begins to promote his insanity claim. O’Neill’s stage directions regarding Hickey’s face and tone after Hope seizes on the idea of insanity is a final, revealing indication that Hickey is a liar and he truly hated his wife: “For a moment he forgets his own obsession and his face takes on a familiar expression of amusement and he chuckles…Then, as HOPE’S expression turns to resentful callousness again and he looks away, he adds hastily with pleading desperation. 'Yes, Harry, of course I’ve been out of my mind ever since!'” (205). The disgusted Moran realizes this for what it is – an attempt to avoid the chair.
Hickey is a Messiah-figure who cannot bring salvation. He also gives his old iceman gag new and perverted meaning; he is the iceman who has brought death for Evelyn and nothing at all for the others. Terry Mackey offers a few other points here: “Ice is suggestive of death: Corpses were once preserved in ice, and in the slang of O’Neill’s time to ice meant “to kill”…Ice is also suggestive of inaction…In a sense the characters are frozen in both ways.” Hickey ends up being just as frozen in his own pipe dream of loving his wife and being a good person.
Parritt has been trying to face up to what he did for most of the play. Like Hickey, he feels an immense sense of guilt. Unlike Hickey, he wants to take responsibility for his actions. He knows he’s not strong enough to do so on his own and has to have Larry, a father-figure and symbol of, to Parritt at least, justice, sentence him. After confessing to Larry and cursing his Mother's pipe dream of freedom, he takes his own life in a sort of self-imposed death sentence. His death is tragic, but O’Neill allows the audience/readers to see that there is something fitting in it as well.
As for Larry, he cannot slip back into his pipe dream. He released Parritt and fully engaged with the concomitant pity and horror. He saw what Hickey did to himself and to the others. He, as critic David Aaron Murray writes, “alone is ‘condemned’ to live fully in the present, freed finally from his own pipe dream of detachment by his final, value-creating act that feed Parritt.” Larry is the only character strong enough to live in his world.
There are two final topics to discuss at the close of the play. The first is the echoes of Greek drama and philosophy in content, style, and structure. Critic Peter Egri writes of O’Neill’s Greek tendency to have “events narrated rather than directly presented.” Robert Dowling mentions that “Strong parallels have been made between Harry Hope’s bar and Plato’s metaphor of the cave…in which prisoners chained to the inner wall of a cave see only shadows until they exit to the blinding sunlight of reality.” Mackey lauds the “Aristotelian unities of time and place: All action takes place within a single place, in a single day.” William Davies King’s astute article looks at the triad of tragic characters (Hickey, Larry Parritt) and the chorus led by Hope; this is a common element in Greek tragedies. Both Iceman and Agamemnon begin with a “group of impotent men awaiting the imminent return of their hero. As a chorus they are submerged in stories of the past, punctuated by outbursts of hope for the future.” Hickey had promoted faith but lost it, betraying his wife and the men; this is mirrored in Agamemnon’s murder of Iphigenia to remain leader of the Greek armies. The Oresteia is also a relevant work here. In Iceman, which King says, “finally and fully detached the dramatic from the epic as a distinct species of poetry,” Parritt can be viewed as Orestes, a son who is opposed to his mother. Rosa Parritt exiled Parritt as Clytemnestra did to Orestes; Parritt goes to Larry like Orestes goes to Apollo and Athena later.
Second is the treatment of women – more specifically, just how misogynist is The Iceman Cometh? First of all, the three main female characters never set foot on stage. Evelyn Hickman, Rosa Parritt, and Bessie Hope are given dimensions only through the stories of their men. Critic Christopher Glover notes, “Bessie’s personality changes as the situation demands, running the gamut from devoted to nagging. She is constantly being reinvented, re-‘other’-ized whenever necessary, not only by her former husband but by her brother and even men with whom she had had no significant contact.” Also, there is a clear virgin-whore dichotomy. Evelyn and Bessie are the sweet, long-suffering mother figures while Rosa’s inability to be that gets her in trouble. Cora, Margie, and Pearl are, unambiguously, whores. Nearly all the female characters are punished: the whores are beaten and mocked; Parritt commits near-matricide against Rosa; Hickey kills Evelyn. However, as Glover writes, the three absent women are closer to being moral than any other characters. Rosa defies traditional feminine behavioral norms, and all three “appear to be of superior intellect than their male counterparts, and they appear to have greater autonomy than the men as well…the women in the play are by far the more favorable and positive characters.” In conclusion, O’Neill, as with most of his work, does not present us with a definitive answer to the question of his views on women. All of the characters in The Iceman Cometh are in turn pitiable, despicable, and universally flawed.
