Critical Analysis of "The Iceman Cometh" by Eugene
Critical Analysis of "The Iceman Cometh" by Eugene O'Neill
It is a basic law of storytelling that in order for an author to capture and maintain the reader’s interest, the author must create “realistic” characters, ones that are relatable, genuine, and plainly likeable. In the works of Eugene O’Neill, he takes that rule of realistic character development and proceeds to warp and twist it into a beautifully mangled paradigm of raw humanity and pessimism. He formulates characters that are utter derelicts to society, each one desperately hanging on to their hopeless dreams, each one hauntingly familiar to us. O’Neill, one of the more well-known twentieth century American playwrights, borrows from the thinking of Nietzsche to strip away the fluff of human personality, exposing the basic, eternally somber inner workings of the human psyche. In his plays, such as The Ice Man Cometh, O’Neill consistently portrays a classic nihilistic theme that there is no God, one of the first in his field to toy with the idea. He preaches that there is no great reward in life, that even after years, perhaps even a lifetime of suffering, there is no pay off – the only thing you get is the relief that is death.
O’Neill’s The Ice Man Cometh, a play brought to Broadway which went on to celebrated success, is the story of, more or less, drunken slobs. The play’s epicenter is a bar/boarding house where a group of drunken derelicts seem to live. The hotel being named after the owner, Harry Hope, is laughably ironic, seeing as how most all of the bar flies have little or no hope left in there lives, yet they all dream of their tomorrows – paying their bills tomorrow, getting their job back tomorrow, making a fresh start tomorrow. The plot revolves around the many bar attendees, but sixty year old Larry Slade plays the role of the bitter objective commentator, a person who has decidedly removed himself from the anarchist group called “The Movement” and the responsibilities of mainstream life. He and his companions eagerly await the arrival of their salesman friend Hickey, who comes down twice a year to waste all off his money on buying everyone drinks. However before Hickey arrives, Don Parrit, the son of an ex-lover of Larry’s, a woman who was also in the Movement, comes to...