The Iceman Cometh 843his hometown, to find that there are no more Mote-
ses; in fact, the whole town appears to have died off.
By the novel’s end, Hazel’s only hope is to identify
with Christ, and to do this he must daily experience
the crucifying of his own self. Hazel’s “wise blood”
allows him to see that salvation comes through daily
suffering, and as part of his suffering and path to a
true vision of Christ, he eventually blinds himself
with lime, binds his chest with barbed wire, and
puts rocks and broken glass in his shoes, walking
around in them as a way to bear his own cross and
follow Jesus.
Before this transformative experience of suffer-
ing, Hazel spends much of the novel attempting to
escape the haunting figure of Jesus in his life. He
believes that the way to avoid Jesus and the dark,
blind faith that this entails is to avoid sin. When the
specter of Jesus, the “wild ragged figure motioning
him to turn around and come off into the dark,” does
not go away despite his efforts to remain pure, Hazel
makes up his mind to reject all that has formed
him in the past, especially his childhood belief in
Christ and sin. After his return from the war, Hazel
decides to banish the ragged figure by embracing
sin. “What do I need with Jesus?” he asks. “I got
Leora Watts.” He expects his sexual encounter with
Mrs. Watts will be transformative, but afterward he
feels neither more nor less sinful than he did before,
neither liberated nor damned. Because his sinfulness
is without efficacy, it must not be real.
After killing the lookalike false prophet Solace
Layfield, Hazel finally stops running from the
ragged figure. Initially he flees from the scene of
the crime, but when a policeman destroys his car,
he decides to return to Taulkinham. His behavior
resembles that of Saint Peter fleeing persecution in
Rome. As he approaches the city gates, Peter has
a vision of Christ, who says that he is coming to
Rome to be again crucified. “Coming to himself,”
according to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, Peter
understands that it is in his own passion that Christ
intends to suffer. The apostle then returns with joy
to meet his death. Hazel’s fate is similarly sealed.
Making the leap he has so long feared, accepting the
ragged figure’s invitation “to turn around and come
off into the dark,” he blinds himself with lime and
begins a regimen of self-castigation.
When his landlady, Mrs. Flood, asks Hazel,
“What do you walk on rocks for?,” he replies
“To pay.” Mrs. Flood asks, “Pay for what?” Hazel
responds, “It don’t make any difference for what . . .
I’m paying.” Mrs. Flood does not understand what
Hazel means because he does not have anything to
“show” for what he has been suffering. Mrs. Flood
cannot see what has become clear to Hazel: “That
I may know Him, and the power of His resur-
rection and the fellowship of His suffering, being
conformed to His death; in order that I may attain
to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3–10).
Hazel’s redemption can only be attained through
his suffering.
Susan Ampero’NEiLL, EuGENE The Iceman Cometh
(published 1940; first performed 1946)
The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O’Neill’s lengthy yet
spellbinding American drama set in New York City
in 1912, was first performed on Broadway in 1946.
The choice of the play’s setting is rather arbitrary—
in all likelihood due to the author’s personal prefer-
ences—but its subject matter in regard to the nature
of the human condition is universal and timeless.
The primary focus of The Iceman Cometh is on the
need to pursue dreams and the ramifications that
can occur if this quest is stripped from us. While
the characters may be down on their luck, most of
them have a dream, but they are apprehensive about
acting on it. Instead, they spend their time drinking
away the reality that their lives are not all that they
could be.
Fitting to the nature of the play, the action of The
Iceman Cometh takes place in a saloon aptly called
Harry Hope’s No Chance Saloon. At Harry Hope’s,
a colorful cast of ensemble characters—all of them
social outcasts or the dregs of society—congregate
to blur the boundaries between their realities and
their dreams with the old stand-by tranquilizer,
alcohol. The play’s main action occurs when Theo-
dore Hickman or “Hickey” arrives for his yearly visit
reformed and newly sober and tries to convert his
cohorts to the belief that they would be better off if
only they would give up their “pipe dreams.”
Trudi Van Dyke