The Iceman Cometh (Style)

Style

Setting

The Iceman Cometh is set in the summer of 1912 in Harry Hope’s saloon, a seedy establishment on the downtown West Side of New York. All of the play’s action takes place either in the bar or the back room of the saloon, visually affirming O’Neill’s intention that the bar is a world unto itself. The condition of the bar reflects the hopeless squalor of the roomers’ lives. O’Neill describes the walls and ceiling as once white but “now so splotched, peeled, stained and dusty that their color can best be described as dirty.” Adding to the play’s themes of alienation and isolation, the windows are so filthy that it is impossible to see the outside world through them. The bar is crowded with tables and chairs “so close together that it is a difficult squeeze to pass between them.” This crowded condition adds to the suffocating nature of the bar, its atmosphere of hopelessness and despair. Because the setting changes little throughout the play, the audience gains a gradual sense of the saloon’s oppressiveness.

The only major change in the setting occurs in Act II, when the saloon is decorated for Hope’s birthday party. The room has been cleaned, and a space has been cleared for dancing. Added props, such as a piano, presents, and the birthday cake, contribute to the festive atmosphere. But this lighter setting stands in sharp contrast to the anger and accusations that evolve later in the act, as the camaraderie is destroyed by Hickey’s proselytizing. In this case, the party setting heightens the effect of the stage action with a visual contrast to the dark emotions that present themselves. In the final two acts, the saloon resumes its atmosphere of dirt and despair. In fact, in the final act, when the roomers have come full circle and returned to their pipe dreams, the set is once more as it appeared in Act I, heightening the sense that — save Larry’s situation — little has really changed.

Time and the Theater

A recurring criticism of The Iceman Cometh is that, at nearly four hours running time, the play is simply too long. This begs the question: Is it proper to fault a play for its length? Such a criticism may seem petty and is rarely leveled at novels or poems. It is this sort of criticism, in fact, that brings into relief an important difference between drama and other forms of literature. Unlike other genres, a written drama is not the play’s finished form. The final work is the production (resulting from the work of actors, directors, set dressers, and others involved with the staging) that emerges from the text. A play exists in time in a way that other forms of literature do not. A production of The Iceman Cometh cannot be set aside like a paperback novel, to be picked up later at the viewer’s leisure. An audience’s ability to focus on the play over a continuous time period is a factor that must be taken into consideration.

Directors do consider attention spans. It is not at all uncommon for a director to provide his own “criticism” by cutting the playwright’s dialogue. One director, in fact, managed to shave the running time of The Iceman Cometh by one hour through extensive script edits. It is important, however, that the student of drama not arbitrarily set an “ideal” length for a play. It is more useful to consider the ultimate effect of the play’s length. Does that length serve a useful purpose? In The Iceman Cometh the length of the play adds to the feeling of oppressiveness and hopelessness. The continued repetition in O’Neill’s dialogue, which is sometimes cut by directors who fail to grasp the meaning in its iterations, emphasizes the redundant, looping quality of the characters’ lives. The extreme length of the play contributes to the suffocating atmosphere of Hope’s saloon.

Symbolism

A symbol is something that stands for or suggests something other than itself. In The Iceman Cometh the iceman is a symbol of death. In the time period of the play, before there were electric refrigerators, people owned iceboxes which kept food cold by keeping it in an enclosed space with large blocks of ice. The ice was delivered by the iceman, who traveled from door to door.

From the beginning of the play, the roomers look forward to Hickey’s running gag about leaving his wife in bed with the iceman. When they discover how much Hickey has changed, some begin to suspect that he did find his wife with the iceman. The figure of the iceman is easily associated with death. In western culture, death is traditionally associated with cold. In addition, it was once customary to use ice to preserve corpses until they could be buried. From this practice comes the slang expressions “to put someone on ice” or “to ice someone,” both of which mean “to kill” that “someone.” The iceman Hickey left Evelyn with is Death. When used in the title with the word “cometh,” the implication is that Death comes in the present tense — it is always arriving for someone. At the end of the play, Death comes for Parritt. Larry expresses a longing for Death, the iceman, who will eventually come for everyone in the bar.

The Unities

The unities are the three rules that govern classical drama. They are unity of time, unity of place, and unity of action. Unity of time generally means that the action of a play should take place within a twenty-four-hour period. Unity of place means that the action of the play should take place in one location. Unity of action means that events must follow logically from one another.

The concept of the unities originated in the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his treatise Poetics. Many, however, consider Aristotle’s discussion of the unities descriptive; he is simply describing the dramatic style of his own time. During the Renaissance, however, the unities became prescriptive — rules for playwrights to follow — particularly in Italy and France. Following the rule of the unities was supposed to make a play more believable for the audience.

In The Iceman Cometh O’Neill adheres to the three unities. The play takes place in one location, within a relatively short period of time, and with events following logically from one another. O’Neill, greatly influenced by classical drama, may have used the unities in order to create an association between The Iceman Cometh and classic Greek tragedy. The unities can contribute to a sense of realism. The audience lives the events as the characters live them and thus experiences the stagnation and despair of Hope’s saloon as if it were real.