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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Destroy The Dream And You Destroy The Man, June 9, 2000
During one of the lowest periods of his adult life, from 1911 through about 1915, Eugene O'Neill lived, off and on, in three New York flophouses. These were Jimmy the Priest's, the Hell Hole, and the Garden Hotel. An amalgam of these three served as the model for Harry Hope's in THE ICEMAN COMETH. With the exception of Hickey, every character in the play was based on a friend or acquaintance from this period of his life.The play, written in the 1940's, is set in 1912. All, or almost all, of the down and out residents at Harry Hope's had once lived fairly normal lives with jobs, families, and plans for the future. Each man had a pipe dream, fulfillment of which, he thought, would give him a better life. Each man also had a reason why he could never fulfill his pipe dream. The high point of their lives would come each year on the eve of Harry Hope's birthday when a salesman named Hickey would arrive to begin his periodic binge, For the duration of his stay, the drinks would flow, on Hickey, of course, and an atmosphere of celebration would fill Harry Hope's His visit in the year of the play was different. A new Hickey showed up. This version of Hickey was a messianic salesman who had seen the light and was determined to sell his friends on the necessity of seeing the same light. He told them that he no longer needed the relief that booze had brought him in the past and that he was freed of his problem with pipe dreams. His message was that they could do the same. One by one, he dismantled their pipe dreams and pressured them into trying to make their pipe dreams real. He succeeded in sowing seeds of misery in each of them, and each soon discovered that his pipe dream was all he had. Without his pipe dream he had nothing to live for. They detected that Hickey might not really be as happy as he had let on and they challenged him to reveal how he had rid himself of his problem with pipe dreams so successfully. Hickey, in an almost manic mood, then described a life of drunkenness, dishonesty, and infidelity, including contracting venereal disease and transmitting it to his wife. She had always forgiven him for his infidelities and abuses because she had a pipe dream that he would reform. In his guilt, knowing that he would never reform, he began to hate her pipe dream and her along with it. Because of his fear that she would eventually be unable to forgive him further, he destroyed her pipe dream by murdering her in her sleep. While he was relating this, two detectives who had been searching for him had arrived and heard this confession. When he realized that they had heard, he immediately claimed that what he had just said was the result of insanity. Everyone seized on the word insanity and, convinced themselves that Hickey was insane, rationalized going back to the pipe dreams that he had destroyed, and thus back to their harmonious existence. Each character then narrated a face-saving version of what had happened when he had attempted to fulfil his pipe dream and failed. O'Neill has made a powerful case that each man must have his pipe dreams, and that if you destroy his pipe dreams you destroy him. Although some plays seem to be meant to be seen but are not particularly readable, THE ICEMAN COMETH is one that succeeds on both levels. Read it. See it. It's powerful either way.
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by Edward Albee
by Tennessee Williams
by Tennessee Williams
by Tennessee Williams
