The disillusioned selves and the pathological identities:

the quest for identity adjustment in O’Neill’s The Iceman

Cometh

Dr. Fatiha Kaïd BerrahalFaculté des lettres et des langues

Département d’AnglaisUniversité Amar Telidji

1. Introduction

In Eugene O’Neill’s late years of his dramatic career, he

observes that there are many people who live in temporal, spatial

or social displacement. In other words, they live on lies or pipe

dreams about the past, the present or the future. In O’Neill’s mind

such displacements are also related to the moral loss of the self;

but their functions are different. In a play such as The Iceman

Cometh he explores how people seek seclusion and hope in self-

displacement after they lose their moral orientation. Through

staging the aimless and meaningless existence of the black diaspora in

America, he joins the postmodern issue dealing with man’s identity

malaise of Western culture. In the aforementioned play O’Neill

returned to the study of the individual’s struggle against fate and

death, and the search for the true self behind self-constructed masks.1

Here it is the self, not the skin colour, which proves to be the worst

enemy of the characters. In this sense, the present paper seeks to

answer the questioning about the ‘Racial Other’ as well as the

ethnic groups’ sense of not belonging.

1. The identity malaise in the sickening modern world

Written between June 8 and November 26, 1939, The Iceman Cometh

mirrors a world that was shattered by the all kinds of social

changes. The dwindling of religious faith, the development of

science and the revelation of a universe indifferent to the

individual, the disintegration both of the social hierarchy and of

the family unit construct an overwhelming force to impair the modem

man’s identity. Disillusionment, anxiety and chaotic views haunt

the western world. According to Bogard’s record, the world crisis

made O’Neill retreat to his Tao House and to indulge himself in

introspection

In his way, he began to explore, as wereall serious dramatists, the sickness of hisworld; at the same time he exploredhimself, as if instinctively be knew thathis answer to the larger social questionwas to be found only through unrelentingself-analysis. The two problems of societyand the self had a single answer, for theywere the same sickness. (Contour in Time,

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1988: 367)

Bogard’s remark suggests that O’Neill has discerned the link

between the sickness of his world and the “homelessness” of the

individual self. Since the society is constitutive of individuals,

an anatomic analysis of the individual self may reflect the general

problem of the society. Another important clue to interpret The

Iceman comes from O’Neill’s own remarks. In a letter to Kenneth

Macgowan (13 December 1940), O’Neill proclaimed his intention to

write the play of The Iceman Cometh:After all, what I’ve tried to write is aplay where at the end you feel you know thesouls of seventeen men and women who appear- and the women who don’t appear - as wellas if you read a play about each of them. Icouldn’t condense much without taking a lotof life from someof these people and reducing them to layfigures. You would find if I did not buildup the complete picture of the group as itis in the first part — the atmosphere ofthe place, the humor and friendship andhuman warmth, the deep inner contentment ofthe bottom — you would not be so interestedin these people and you would find theimpact of what follows a lot lessprofoundly disturbing. (Bryer, 1982: 78)

Several words and phrases in this paragraph should be

considered seriously in order to interpret the play. First,

O’Neill intends to examine the inner world of a few characters.

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He will make the audience see “the souls of seventeen men and

women who appear - and the women who don’t appear.” Second,

indicating his plan to deal with “each of them” and to also to

present “the complete picture of the group,” O’Neill intends to

achieve a revelation both in breadth and in depth, that is, to

extend the range of his revelation from the individual to the

social.The revelation theme in Iceman can be interpreted from two

levels: first, the revelation of the lies about the past and

tomorrow, second, the revelation of Larry’s dream of a detached

existence. Both of these issues are relevant to the moral dilemma

encountered by the modem man.

This shabby place, Hope’s bar where the play is set, has made a

home to seventeen derelicts, each of them having a story to tell

and thus having a self to reveal. The characters can be divided

differently from the previous divisions, into three groups: Harry

Hope and his roomer and bartender,

Hickey and Parrit -the intruders, and finally Larry Slade- a self-

assumed observer. All of the residents at the Hope’s have pipe

dreams, either about the past or about tomorrow. As the plot

develops, their dreams are gradually revealed as merely lies, which

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purports to their reality to have nothing to lie on.

Harry, the owner of the bar, has never left home since his wife

Bessie died. Owing his withdrawal from political activities to his

deceased wife, he brags that he will renew his politician life

tomorrow. Harry says; “I have made up my mind I’ll go out soon.

Take a walk around the ward, see all the friends I used to know,

get together with the boys and maybe telI’em deal me a hand in

their game again. Yes, bejees, I’ll do it. My birthday, tomorrow,

that’d be the right time to turn over a new leaf...” (I, 593). Every

inhabitant at the Hope’s shares his pipe dream. His brother-in-law,

Ed Mosher plans to find a job with the circus. Pat McGloin who is

dismissed from police for taking bribes, dreams of being proved

innocent and returning to his position. Piet Wetjoen and Cecil

Lewis used to be foes in the Boer War. Now they hang together to

recollect their past glory and to imagine their honorable return to

their motherlands. “Jimmy Tomorrow” promises that he will regain

his former occupation as a journalist. The bartender Rocky claims

that he is a “business manager” while in fact he is a pimp for

Pearl and Margie, two prostitutes who insist that they are “tarts.”

There is only one inhabitant at the Hope’s who claims he has no

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pipe dream left. Larry Slade withdraws from the “Movement” out of

disillusionment. He tries to be a philosopher who is detached from

life.

Nevertheless, as the play develops, everybody will be forced to

face his pipe dream, including Larry. After completing Iceman,

O’Neill told Langner in 1940:

This play, as drama, is one of the bestthings I’ve ever done. In some ways,perhaps the best. What I mean is, there aremoments in it that suddenly strip thesecret soul of a man stark naked, not incruelty or moral superiority but with anunderstanding compassion which sees him asa victim of the ironies of life and ofhimself. Those moments are for me the depthof tragedy, with nothing more than thatpossibly be said. (O’Neill, Selected letters: 511)

Hickey is the man who is sent to strip the soul of the derelicts

“stark naked,” showing the most common and the most ignorable truth

in the existence of the modem men. The title of the play implies

the important role that Hickey plays. The word “iceman” is

associated with Hickey, for he brings the word to the Hope’s by

contriving it as the “hero” of his “gag” about the infidelity of

his wife Evelyn. As for the word “cometh,” O’Neill told S.J. Woolf

in an interview that the verb form “cometh” of the title was a

deliberate reference to biblical language, and the word itself had6

religious significance (Houchin, 1993: 177). According to the

biblical explanation Hickey, therefore, assumes a status of savior.

In this sense the title suggests that the derelicts at the Hope’s

expect that Hickey’s coming will bring some kind of hope or

salvation. Ironically when Hickey appears at the Hope’s he does

bring a self-assumed salvation that he intends to sell to the

drunks. What Hickey tries to give to the derelicts is the truth

about life and the truth about the self.

Hickey. [...] I mean to save you from pipedreams. I know now, from my experience,they’re the things that really poison andruin a guy’s life and keep him from findingany peace. If you knew how free andcontented I feel now. I’m like a new man.And the cure for them is so damned simple,once you have the nerve. Just the old dopeof honesty is the best policy — honestywith yourself, I mean. Just stop lyingabout yourself and kidding yourself abouttomorrows. (I, 610)

Spurned by Hickey, the derelicts fall into uneasiness. In their

arguments and confession, the truth about their life is gradually

unveiled.

As it has been evoked by Nietzsche and embraced by modern man,

God’s death has created a spiritual vacuum for the moderns. In the

moral domain, the chaotic ideas are exemplified in two aspects.

Some people fall into inner division because they value two or more7

moral goods which are in conflict with each other. Choosing to

pursue any good will result in self-mutilation. This is the problem

encountered by all dreamers, blacks and whites. For other

characters, the moral good is absent with the absence of the deity.

Without a moral good to anchor their soul, they are stuck in a life

of disorientation.

What O’Neill reflects about the modem self in Iceman involves

both of the above cases. First, from characters like McGloin,

Wetjoen, and Lewis, we can find that they once embrace conflicting

moral goods, and their predicament is caused by the irreconcilable

goods. When McGloin talks about his pipe dream, we can discern the

moral conflict within him:

[...]But I am telling you some day beforelong I’m going to make them reopen my case.Everyone knows there was no real evidenceagainst me, and I took all the fall for theones higher up. I’ll be found innocent thistime and reinstated. I’d like to have myold job on the Force back. The boys tell methere’s fine pickings these days, and I’mnot getting rich here, sitting with aparched throat waiting for Harry Hope tobuy a drink. (1, 596)

His language reveals that the honor and innocence are desirable for

him. But at the same time, money seems to have stronger appeal.

Even when he claims he is innocent, he longs for the chance to have8

“fine picking.” Being obsessed with materialistic wealth he equals

it not as a means but the purpose life. If there is anything that

can make his life grandiose, it is a red automobile, a symbol for

success in his eyes. McGloin epitomizes the typical figures created

by American tragedy in O’Neill’s point of view, which is

exemplified in his criticism on America as the greatest failure in

the world for “its main idea is that everlasting game of trying to

possess your own soul by the possession of something outside it”

(Sheaffer, Artist: 577).

When Wetjoen and Lewis brag about the past glory and their

glorious return to motherland, their language suggests that they

see bravery, loyalty and devotion as virtues. Such virtues require

self-sacrifice in many aspects. However, in Act Three, influenced

by Hickey’s magic, the two former Boer foes Piet Wetjoen, and Cecil

Lewis reveal the truth of their past in their mutual accusations.

During the wartime in South Africa, Wetjoen kept asking Cronje to

retreat from the battlefield out of his own cowardice. He was thus

disowned by his family and rejected by his motherland. Lewis lost

all the regiment money in gambling after he got drunk. His career

is ruined totally. And for them there is no home to return. The

self-revelation of the Boer foes shows their inner dividedness in

terms of moral goods. The derelicts like McGloin, Wetjoen, and9

Lewis exemplify those people who allow themselves to be corrupted

by the utilitarian and egoistic values. Being occupied with

egoistic and material desires, they betray the high ideals of

heroism and altruism. Their moral downfall is a consequence of the

dominant influence of the egoistic and utilitarian ideas.

The most striking inner dividedness is demonstrated by the major

character Hickey, the salesman. Citing the slang “Ministers’ sons

are sons of guns,” Hickey describes his nature as “restless.” For

him, “[h]ome was like a jail” (VI, 693). His restless nature falls

into conflict with his sense of responsibility as his love for

Evelyn ties him to wedlock. Hickey can’t give up drinking: “I liked

my booze every once in a while” (VI, 690). Nor can he stop meddling

with the prostitutes since he needs some “tarts” to cure his

“homesickness” when he was “bored as hell” at the hotel rooms.

Unable to convert himself into a dutiful husband, and especially

feeling that his actions have brought his wife endless suffering,

Hickey is thrust into guilt and self-hatred. He confides to his

pals at the Hope’s: “I hated myself more and more, thinking of all

the wrong I’d done to the sweetest woman in the world who loved me

so much” (VI, 699), Tom by his mixed emotion of guilt, love and

hatred, Hickey comes to the limit of his rational control. The self

that is lost the moral space may behave in very irrational way.

Hickey’s confession at the last Scene of the play uncovers the most

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horrifying truth about the self (11). Hickey’s splitting selves

derive from two moral impulses that co-exist in him; one leads

Hickey to seek for boundless individual freedom and self-

satisfaction, the other yields him to self-sacrifice and devotion

to his marriage. Hickey thus epitomizes the modern man who is

always in a situation of conflict. The lack of coherence between

the goods eventually leads Hickey to insanity and self-destruction.

It is, as Doris V. Falk points out, “[for him [Hickey] to commit

murder was to commit suicide” (160). Hickey intends to put an end

to the torture of his conscience by suicide. But in O’Neill’s plays

death as means to terminate the physical life does not bring

spiritual transcendence. Hickey’s frustration at his moral dilemma

remains unresolved when he is taken away by the police.

if Wetjoen, Lewis and Hickey are shown as the victims of the

conflicting moral values in Iceman, O’Neill presents a group of

characters who suffer from another kind of moral problem -moral

disorientation. The death of God brings the collapse of the center,

which has led to the break of the whole chain of values. The moral

goods that used to be attached to tradition, profession, family or

other social practice begin to lose hold on modem man. Thus the age

of disenchantment not only means the loss of religious belief; the

disillusionment extends to all the moral values that used to give

order and thus meaning to human life. Therefore, no relation is

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established between modern man and moral goods.

Therefore, modem man loses contact with moral goods. In Taylor’s

theory; it is “the most basic inspirations of human beings” to “be

connected to, or in contact with, what they see as good, or of

crucial”

Harry used to owe his drop of political life to the death of

his wife Bessie. He pretends to be a victim of his love. Hickey

breaks Harry’s lie by saying: “She [Bessie] was always on your

neck, making you have ambition and go out and do things, when all

you wanted was to get drunk in peace” (111,674). Harry is forced to

admit that his wife is a “nagging bitch” and he just loses the

motivation to stick to competitive political life. Another

pretended victim Jimmy once had a family and an occupation as a

journalist. But he gives up both. In the last act, Jimmy confesses

the real reason for his self-renouncement:

[...] It was absurd of me to excuse mydrunkenness by pretending it was my wife’sadultery that ruined my life. As Hickeyguessed, I was a drunkard before that. Longbefore. I discovered early in life thatliving frightened me when I was sober. Ihave forgotten why I married Marjorie. Ican’t even remember now if she waspretty.She was a blonde, I think, but Icouldn’t swear to it. I had some, idea ofwanting a homeperhaps. But, of course, I much preferredthe nearest pub. Why Marjorie married me,

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God knows. It’s impossible to believe sheloved me. She soon found I much preferreddrinking all night with my pals to being inbed with het So, naturally, she wasunfaithful. I didn’t blame her. I reallydidn’t care. I was glad to be free — evengrateful to her, I think, for giving mesuch a good tragic excuse to drink as muchas I damned well please. (VI, 692)

His words show that he was lost spiritually even before he lost his

job and marriage. For Jimmy, neither marriage nor job can offer a

mooring to his soul. He cannot relate his job and marriage with any

moral good. Drinking is a resort to kill the feeling of emptiness.

Similarly, Larry withdraws from the Movement as he discovers that

“mankind’s avarice exceeds its love of freedom.” He is determined

to sit back in “the grandstand of philosophical detachment,”

observing the cannibals do their death dance” (I, 570). Therefore,

Larry’s self-renunciation results his losing faith in the Movement

that is connected with a kind of moral good. The Movement, as an

embodiment of moral good used to offer an aim and meaning to his

life. Renouncing it means to give up the moral good that he used to

cling to. The confessions of Larry; Harry and Jimmy indicate that

the collapse of the moral framework have cast the modem man in a

world of meaninglessness and aimlessness. Their moral

disintegration brings about physical inertia in life. Without a

whole self, the derelicts retreat to the Hope’s as their last

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resort and take drinking and pipedreams as their last comfort.

2. Adjusting identity in dreams

In O’Neill’s early career, he concentrates on man in his

struggle between different moral imperatives in order to maintain

moral integrity. In his late years, O’Neill paid more attention to

the ailment of those who have lost their dreams and moral

orientation. One feature that O’Neill captures from these derelicts

is that as social outcasts they have no real life to live. When the

derelicts come to the Hope’s, they have been trapped in a moral

predicament which is particularly modern. Larry introduces the

saloon to Parritt in as he first enters this place:

It’s the No Chance Saloon. It’s BedrockBar, The End of the Line Café, The Bottomof the Sea Rathskeller! Don’t you noticethe beautiful calm in the atmosphere?That’s because it’ the last harbor. No onehere has to worry about where they’re goingnext, because there is no farther they cango. Although even here they keep up theappearances of life with a few harmlesspipe dreams about their yesterdays andtomorrows, as you’ll see for yourself ifyou’re here long. (I, 578)

Since they cannot find their identity in reality, they have to

resort to dreams of the past and the future. Displacement marks the

existential state of the self. Illusions, indeed, seem to be the

14

sole life that the roomers cling to better than nothing. The

derelicts share a dream of tomorrow. Harry’s dream is to win the

election. Jimmy dreams to find a new job. The Boer foes’ dream to

return to motherland as national heroes, Hugo dreams to join in the

violent revolution, McGloin’s dream to get back his position as a

police officer... A question arises: why do they create such

dreams? What do these dreams signify? In fact, different

psychoanalytical analyses show that the very need for each

individual is his attachment to other people, a community, or a

religion, which actually implies a moral stand and obligation. Such

a moral stand provides a reference for the individual to make

judgments and to behave accordingly. So the references, either your

roles in the society or your religious belief, are crucial to one’s

identity (12). The legitimacy of a pipe dream is well described in

connection with the identity problem of the modern men. All of the

derelicts at the Hope’s have suffered a loss: either losing their

social status as policeman, politician, journalist, or losing their

families and their political beliefs. They thus have lost their

“roles.” The loss has freed them from any obligations but also

deprives them of their moral orientation and the meaning of their

life. The pipe dream is a way to cope with this loss.

The second question to be discussed here is about man’s need fora belonging

which is phrased by O’Neill as a “primitive religious instinct.’

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Larry Slade is the only inhabitant who claims that he has no pipe

dream left. He is determined to live a life without caring for

anything. Nevertheless, as the play develops, Larry is brought to

realize that his self-assumed stance as a philosopher is also a big

lie. Through Larry’s self-recognition O’Neill will illustrate that

the need far a belonging is an ontological nature of human beings.

O’Neill mentioned in his Work Diary in early 1940 that he would

use an “orchestral technique for a play -playwright as leader

symphony, characters, chorus and orchestra” (Floyd,

A New Assessment: 513). On the basis of O’Neill’s design Floyd

proposes an idea that the four acts of the Iceman serve as the four

related movements of the symphony; the repetitious injections of

the personal stories of the characters are variations of the work’s

major interconnected themes” (513). If the play is composed as a

symphony, we may find that the music is composed of a three-layer-

structure: a surface primary melody, a hidden primary melody and

the chorus. Representing the characters and their dialogical

relations with the others, the three melodies move in both a

parallel and an interactive way, which finally concludes with a

climax of self-revelation.

On the first layer, the derelicts at the Hope’s and their

interactions with Hickey consist in the basic rhythm of the music -

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the chorus. The development of the chorus involves a revelation of

the secret of each of the derelicts’. On the second layer, Hickey

and Parritt and their interaction with others particularly with

Larry constitute the surface primary melody in the symphony of the

whole play. Both of them are outsiders at the Hope’s. Hickey, with

his assumed role of a savior holds the attention of the derelicts

and thus occupies the central position at the stage, while Parritt,

known only by Larry at the Hope’s, is ignored by the derelicts and

thus stays in almost obscurity at the stage. However, to examine

the play more carefully, we will see that, though assigned

different positions at the stage, Parritt and Hickey play similar

roles in the play. Hickey is an iceman of death who has murdered

his wife. Parritt is another “iceman” who has sent his mother Rosa

to life imprisonment - a spiritual death. Hickey comes to the

Hope’s to deprive the life-sustaining pipe dream of the derelicts.

Parritt will force Larry to face his undying moral sense by

crushing his last self-illusion of a kind of detached existence. If

we take self revelation as the major motif of the play, then the

action of revelation is initiated and propelled by these two

icemen.

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On the third layer, Larry and his interaction with Hickey and

Parritt as well as the other derelicts consists in a hidden primary

melody of the symphony. Many critics have noticed the special

function that O’Neill assigns to Larry. Doris Falk recognizes the

important role that Larry plays, and holds that he should be seen

as “the actual protagonist of the play” (159). Manheim takes Larry

as “a sort of narrator early in the play” and he “relates something

of what has brought each figure to his present state”

(”Transcendence of Melodrama in The Iceman Cometh” 146). Larry is the

character who “sees and is articulate about [the] real meaning of

what is going on” (Floyd, Eugene O’Neill at Work: 261). More noticeably

Eisen claims while Hickey dominates the stage as its central

theatrical figure, Larry has an equally compelling role as its

center of perception (160).

O’Neill himself has manifested his intention to create a

character that will be the real centre of the dramatic attention

even if he seems secondary during most of the play. He foresees

that the short story of “Tomorrow” which is to be dramatized in The

Iceman Cometh is “the first in a series of Tommy the Priest’s yarns

in which the story-teller was to hog most of the limelight - a sort

of Conrad’s Marlow — and once I had that idea I couldn’t let it go,18

and it rode me into the anti-climax” (Selected Letters: 78). So by

O’Neill’s intention Larry will play a role more than an observer,

like that of Nick Caraway and Marlow. He occupies the central stage

consciousness, taking O’Neill’s persona to be a speculator and a

mediator on stage.

Sitting among a group of drunks, Larry alone remains sober and

meditative. Unlike the other derelicts who delude themselves in

seeking an identity in the pipe dreams, Larry, to a certain degree,

fully aware of the futility of such dreams, tries to escape from

this dilemma by retreating to a self-assumed detachment. To a

certain degree he reflects O’Neill’s despair at “the sickness of

today,” finding that no religion or modem science can provide a

spiritual home for human beings. He doesn’t want to be bothered by

anything or be involved in anything: “To hell with the Movement and

all connected with it! I’m out of it, and everything else, and

damned glad to be” (1, 575). To cut off his relation to the Movement

and to live without care for anything indicates that Larry intends

to live a life without any spiritual pursuit. However, in the

process of watching, Larry’s stance of a watcher gradually

dissolves. Although he refrains himself from interfering with the

other’s business, his frequent sardonic comments on the other

drunks and his pity for the haunted always betray his inescapable

entanglement in the moral marsh.

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All the derelicts can see the true face of Larry; behind the mask

of an indifferent persona, Larry is a man with deep sympathy for

the others. Jimmy tells Larry: “No, Larry, old friend, you can’t

deceive me. You pretend a bitter, cynic philosopher, but in your

heart you are the kindest man among us” (I, 589).

Through interlocution with the other derelicts, Larry achieves

a self-interpretation: his moral sense and his affection for human

beings have become an inseparable part of himself The derelicts’

words enhance his affinity with them and thus heighten his ‘~pity”

for others. As long as he lives, his emotion will stay with him,

and the moral sense that is hidden in his emotion will always get

him involved with life. Larry discerns his impossibility to get out

of the entanglement of life. He curses himself: “I’ll be a weak

fool looking with pity at the two sides of everything till the day

I die!” (VI, 710).

The more radical changes that Larry experiences have been

brought about by Parritt and Hickey. Ever since Parritt enters the

Hope’s, Larry has been trying to keep away from him because he

feels that the young man may expect something of him. He warns

Parritt: “I have no answer to give anyone, not even myself’ (1,

581-82). Larry doesn’t want to be disturbed by any obligations. He

wants to be contented with his supposed “peace.” But Parritt takes

Larry as his “priest.” He forces Larry to listen to his confession

20

and thus imposes responsibility on Larry. He points out to Larry,

“And you’re the guy who kids himself he’s through with the

Movement! You old lying faker, you’re still in love with it!” “It’s

really Mother you still love — isn’t it?” (III, 666) Parritt

repeats his mother’s comment on Larry, saying that “Larry can’t

kill in himself a faith he’s given his life to, not without killing

himself’ (11, 634). Rosa’s words help Larry to see a truth about

himself; that is, he is a man whose life is tied to belief. He

can’t be a man without any faith as long as he has the last breath.

His deserting of Rosa and of the Movement can’t free him from his

sense of justice and obligation. To a certain degree he is as self-

deceiving as Hickey If Mickey’s murdering of his wife is a false

escape from his haunting conscience, Larry’s intention to divorce

himself from any faith is also a fake liberation that frees him

from his futile struggle for a belonging.

Larry’s delusion of being a detached philosopher is shaken by

Parritt’s insistent pleading. Eventually be has to take his

responsibility of a “priest” to give a sentence to Parrit:

Larry: [snaps and turns on him, his faceconvulsed with detestation. His quiveringvoice has a condemning command in it.] Go!Get the hell out of life, God damn you,before! choke it out of you! Go up -! (VI,704)

21

In this way, Larry’s pipe dream of philosopher is broken. He is

entangled in life and thus in the moral dilemma again.

Through Larry’s experience, O’Neill transfers to the audience a

message that he has symbolically embodied in his earlier play The

Hairy Ape. Man needs to belong, that is, to have a faith or spiritual

home. To live without a faith makes man suffer pathologically.

Finding that the faith is unobtainable in reality, Larry is trying

to step out the moral framework by retreating to a detached

existence. The revelation of Larry’s self-delusion shows that in a

world where the old god is dead, and science and materialism fail

to give any satisfying new one for people to anchor their soul at,

man is inescapably trapped in moral predicament. Life in this

predicament is soul-destroying and meaningless. Larry’s final

wailing of “Be God, I’m the only real convert to death Hickey made

here” accounts for his awareness of his being stuck in “death in

life” (Nathan, 1989: 95).

22

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