846 O’Neill, Eugene
Hope in The Iceman Cometh
Fitting for a play steeped in alcohol, The Iceman
Cometh takes place in a boarding house and bar-
room, aptly called Harry Hope’s No-Chance Saloon.
Although the saloon is named after the proprietor,
hope is the quest, or as the play’s protagonist Hickey
would argue, the “pipe dream” that keeps all of the
boardinghouse dwellers alive. However, the concept
of hope, allied with the phrase no chance, hints at
the idea that the characters in the play are past their
prime, and Hickey would undoubtedly concur. Ever
the eternal dreamers and procrastinators, the saloon’s
regulars never stop believing that their yesterdays are
where their true glory lived, but that it is always pos-
sible for them to change their world tomorrow. All
the while, they never admit aloud, and perhaps not
even to themselves, that yesterday cannot be brought
back and sometimes tomorrow never comes: They
still have hope, however futile.
The regulars who congregate at Harry Hope’s
No-Chance Saloon are representative of a facet of
humanity that is so deeply immersed in illusions
that its members have lost touch with reality. Many
of them have sunk so far down into the depths
that they never even leave the saloon unless they
are forced to, as if they have completely forgotten
that another world exists outside. The concept of
Harry Hope’s saloon being a point of no return is
illustrated quite well in some of the play’s speeches.
Even though some of the regulars are aware deep
down that they are in a state of pseudo-death, most
persist in believing they are not. As Larry, perhaps
the regular who is the least immersed in illusion,
says at one point about the bar:
Café, the Bottom of the Sea Rathskeller!
Don’t you notice the beautiful calm atmo-
sphere? That’s because it’s the last harbor. No
one here has to worry about where they’re
going next, because there is no farther they
can go. It’s a great comfort to them. Although
even here they keep up the appearances of life
with a few harmless pipe dreams about their
yesterdays and tomorrows . . .In an ingeniously ironic twist, O’Neill places these
characters, whom one would consider either past
the point or altogether unworthy of redemption,
in a situation where they could be redeemed. The
would-be savior is their old friend Hickey, who has
recently experienced an epiphany, which, being the
salesman that he is, he tries to sell to the others.
Hickey desperately tries to convert his friends to his
new way of thinking because he believes that when
the others realize they do not have the ambition to
make their dreams or illusions come true, they will
face the reality that they have ruined their lives with
wishful thinking and alcohol. However, his pleading
only succeeds in removing the pleasure from their
existence by taking the hope out of their lives—and,
more significantly, out of their alcohol.
After Hickey realizes that he cannot persuade
his friends to abandon their last shred of hope, he
confesses why he has lost his: He admits he mur-
dered his own “nagging pipe dream,” his adoring
and forgiving wife, Evelyn. Although the audience
is not made privy to Hickey’s fate, O’Neill may be
suggesting that Hickey’s loss of hope, coupled with
his truthful confession, will ultimately lead to death.
Therefore, while truth is regarded as superior to illu-
sion, perhaps truth should not be so highly esteemed
because it can leave people virtually hopeless. Even
if there is a danger of ignoring the truth in illusions
or pipe dreams, having hope can be an asset because
it has the power to make our lives not only more
tolerable but perhaps more meaningful as well. On
the other hand, if people only dwell in a dream
world, they often lack the incentive for doing any-
thing significant with their lives, and consequently
they could drink their days away in a saloon. With
this rather ambiguous conclusion, the audience is
just left “weak fool[s] looking with pity at the two
sides of everything,” as O’Neill gives the audience
no definitive or tangible resolution as to whether
believing in truth or pacifying with illusion is more
satisfying when it comes to hope.
Trudi Van Dykeo’NEiLL, EuGENE Long Day’s Journey
into Night (1956)
Long Day’s Journey into Night, one of Eugene
O’Neill’s best plays, and certainly his most auto-
biographic work, was written in 1940 but was pub-