Eugene O'Neill's Philosophy of Life in ‘The Iceman Cometh’

Eugene O’Neill’s Philosophy of life,
in ‘The Iceman Cometh’

JAGDISH V. DAVE
Dharmendrasinhji Arts Collge, Rajkot

In the month of July, 1948, O’Neill wrote to Carlotta, his wife, in her copy of The Iceman Cometh that a “new vision of deeper love and security and above all, serenity, to bind us ever closer in our old age” had dawned upon him after long experiencing pain and sorrow of their life. So report Arthur and Barbara Gelb in their O’Neill, a definitive biography of the author. (Dell Publishing Co., Inc., New York, N. Y. 10017) O’Neill chose to write it on a copy of this play, perhaps because it embodies the profound confusion and despair of his soul, the clarity of which he later achieved, and the maturity of his moral and spiritual thought. A closer study of the tragedy, which I proposed to attempt here, will, I hope, only convince us that this is not a baseless assumption, but a fully substantiated statement, and that at the end of the drama we do realize a clear vision as well as well-spelt out attitude of O’Neill to life.

            The Iceman Cometh is a tragedy. But it is a tragedy as an established fact of human life in general rather than a result of some miscalculated action. It does not spring from action or from character. We wake into it as an actual state of things and fumble our way out of it but fail. All humanity is groaning under the burden of life, and its representatives here are a few drunkards and debauchees. They try to drown their present grief in the bottles of drink and live when its kick dwindles into “pipedreams” of yesterday and tomorrow, pining ever after what is not. The bar of Harry Hope which is the scene of action throughout the play symbolically represents the world. The clownish antics of the characters here are pitiable and wretched and no less senseless than the sane activities of politicians and intellectuals in the world. But neither the bums here nor the majority of mankind they represent realize that their life is wretched and worthless, and therefore their plight is at once comic and tragic. Forgetfulness on their part of life’s absurdity and wretchedness and consequent action are comic; the awareness of it is deeply tragic.

Larry Slade with “mystic’s meditative pale-blue eyes” is a retired anarchist revolutionary. He is thoroughly disillusioned, has grasped the human predicament in the nihilistic world, and therefore there is darkest despair clouding his soul. Life has tired him, and his one great longing is liberation that death brings. All his “pipe-dreams” are “dead and buried.” He says:

“What is before me is the comforting fact that death is a fine long sleep, and I’m damned tired, and it can’t come too soon for me.” (Eugene O’Neill, ‘The Iceman Cometh’, P.16) He has realized that no political movement can make man happy so long as greed is rooted in his heart:

“Forget the anarchist part of it. I’m thorough with the movement long since. I saw men didn’t want to be saved from themselves, for that would mean they’d have to give up greed and they will never pay that price for liberty. So I said to the world, God bless all here, and may the best man win and die of gluttony! And I took a seat in the grandstand of philosophical detachment to fall asleep observing the cannibals do their death dance.” (Ibid. P. 16)

Larry is consciously pessimistic and has lost all zest in life. But his comrades who have not grasped the sorriness of the human condition make fun of him and call him “do old foolosopher.” Larry’s despair plus Hickey’s solution of it make up the thought of this play.

Harry Hope, the owner of the bar, is a good, old, silly soul. He is slightly deaf and short of sight. He is always kind and serves wine to the inmates on credit which he often loses. He is a widower for the last twenty years, and has never set foot out of his house since the death of his wife. He loves the memory of his wife and manages to live: “Poor old Bessie!….A  sweeter woman never drew breath.” (Ibid. P. 49) So exclaims Megloin, one of the roomers, pamperingly to his fond affection to keep him pleased. He livesthus in the “pipe-dream” of yesterday escapes the dreary present. He is lovable and loved by everyone.

Then there is Theodore Hickman, or Hickey as known among the company. With his characteristic “kidding”, good humour and jokes he brings life to the roomers at Hope’s. He is a salesman, and therefore remains out of town most of the days. But when he comes home, he invariably visits Hope’s and entertains his friends who are all more or less unhappy recluse in this bar. He dominates the company when he is present, and is remembered with admiration tinged with affection when he is absent. He is sincere, witty and “master of all ceremony.” As a salesman he is a complete success. Still he is not happy. But he finds out a way out of his sorrow, and thinks that he has a message to deliver to his friends to make them happy. His views added to Larry’s despair constitute the thought of this play, ambiguious though it is. We will consider it later on.

Then there are Hugo Kalmar, “one-time editor of anarchist periodicals”, declaiming when less drunk, “Capitalist swine! Bourgeois steel pigeons!” before any speech; Don Parrit, the son of a woman anarchist who was Larry’s companion in his old anarchist days; Jimmy Tomorrow, Rocky Pioggi, Joe Mott, the street walker whores Pearl, Margie, Cora and others.

There is no action in the play in any traditional sense except what little is revealed in the desultory dialogues. The roomers have gathered together to celebrate Harry Hope’s birthday. All except Hickey have come, and Hickey is expected to arrive soon. The characters in a drowsy and drunken state talk deliriously and talk more to themselves than to one another. They abuse, quarrel, swallow, drink and swoon. Their condition to the objective onlooker is wretched, but they do not feel like that. “Don’t waste your pity”, said Larry to Parrit who felt their life must be very tough and miserable. They shouldn’t thank you for it. They manage to get drunk, by hook or crook, and keep their pipe-dreams, and that’s all they ask of life. I have never known more contented men. It isn’t often that men attain the true goal of their heart’s desire.” (Ibid. P. 37) They have no regular economic occupations and no established and stable family life. “Once in a while”, continues Larry, “one of them makes a successful touch somewhere, and some of them get a few dollars a month from connections at home, who pay it on condition they never come . For the rest, they live on free lunch and their old friend, Harry Hope, who doesn’t give a damn what anyone does or doesn’t do, as long as he likes you.” (Ibid. Pp. 36-37)

So all these inmates await Hickey. Hope eagerly awaits him, for it was his birthday, and all celebration would be spiritless without Hickey’s presence. “I’d like a good laugh with old Hickey….He’d make a cat laugh! (Ibid. P. 59) says Hope. At last Hickey arrives, but he arrives a changed man. He has given up drinking, has found deep within himself a kind of peace. Not only this; he wishes to distribute what he has discovered–peace to all his comrades. This time he comes not to drink and joke and pass time, but to deliver the inmates from the need of all this. He comes as a kind of salvationist, a deliverer. But he retains still his good jolly temper and cheers up the party. In the beginning nobody takes him seriously. They think, it all must be a part of some new joke. But later they realize that he was really serious about it. He says that man is miserable because instead of facing the existence as it is, he tries to escape from it in “pipe-dreams” or drown it in drink. “Pipe-dreams” never give peace. They only enhance the pain of the present. But if one has courage to face the existence–the present existence–it loses all its horror or tedium, and one is at peace with oneself and with life. Our attempts to evade or escape grief only entrap us to it and tie us more tightly to it. He explains the reason of his giving up the drink:

“The only reason I’ve quit is–Well, I finally had the guts to face myself and throw overboard the damned lying pipe-dream that’d been making me miserable, and do what I had to do for the happiness of all concerned–and then all at once I found I was at peace with myself and I didn’t need boose any more.” (Ibid. Pp. 74-75)

He says further in a saviour’s tone of voice:

“I meant save you from pipe-dreams. I know now, from my experience, they’re the things that really poison and ruin a guy’s life and keep him from finding any peace. If you know how free and contented I feel now. I’m like a new man. And the cure of them is so damned simple, once you have the nerve. Just the old dope of honesty is the best policy–honesty with yourself, I mean. Just stop lying about yourself and kidding yourself about tomorrows.” (Ibid. P. 76)

Larry, at once agrees with Hickey, but agrees only in as much as the latter spoke of the pipe-dreams. “Be God, you’ve hit the nail on the head, Hickey! This dump is the Palace of Pipe-dreams,” (Ibid. P. 77) he says. But he does not agree with Hickey’s constructive peace-plan. Hickey says good-homouredl:

“Well, well! The Old Grandstand Foolosopher speaks! You think you’re the big exception, eh?……You’ll be grateful to me when all at once you find you’re able to admit, without feeling ashamed, that all the grandstand foolosopher bunk and the waiting for the Big Sleep stuff is a pipe-dream ... Hell, if you really wanted to die, you’d just take a hop off your fire escape, wouldn’t you? And if you really were in the grandstand, you wouldn’t be pitying everyone.” (Ibid. Pp. 78-103)

Even this desire for death is a pipe-dream, a wish for an imaginary escape from the concrete facts of life. Pitying others only means that their life is not in keeping with certain idealistic norms. Discontent with what is, and wishing for what is not only generates inner tension, alienates human spirit in this world and creates the absurd confrontation between mind that seeks to realize its chosen dreams, and the universe which denies these dreams any materialization. All pipe-dreams, therefore, are equally undesirable and responsible for human misery. They should all be abandoned, and reality should be faced with full with force, without trying to alter it, without trying to make it accord with certain ideal. Hickey has achieved the extinction of all the pipe-dreams, and therefore he has achieved peace.

But, then, what was Hickey’s pat pipe-dream? What was it that had troubled him so much before he abandoned it? It was a desire to be virtuous and faithful in love to his wife. He loved Evelyn more than anything else. But he was a salesman, and he had a weakness for woman. When he was out on travelling from time to time as a salesman, he had to stay at hotels. But he could not stay alone without a woman. Therefore, he would have some wench or the other to sleep with. But he would repent this when he would come home and see his wife. He would confess everything and make a promise of never repeating the folly. But he would again fall, again confess, repent and ask for his wife’s forgiveness. Each time his wife would readily forgive and sympathise. She had only love to offer, no fault to find with her husband. She was constant and steadfast, and hundred thousand follies on her husband’s part would not make her revolt or entertain the idea of paying him in the same coin taking in deed, or even thought, to another man. She always believed that her husband would improve. He always sincerely wished to improve but never could improve. This was his great pipe-dream–to be loyal as much as he was loving to his wife, to make her happy. But this was impossible. All pipe-dreams are impossible. The clash between the ideal and the actual of his life continued to burn his spirit from within. He could not be happy unless he abandoned the desire for improvement and put an end to the conflict. He decided to do so without making his wife in the least unhappy. He would willingly kill himself. But that would make her miserable. So the only alternative left to him was to kill her when she was in sound sleep. This he did, made her short sleep–a permanent sleep, and made her happy to this extent. Now no improvement in him was necessary, no attempting the impossible. He committed murder no doubt, but committed it with good intention, and he was ready to take upon himself all the consequences it entailed. The consequences can well be foreseen–in all probability death-sentence or at least life-term of imprisonment. Still he was quiet, happy and his usual hilarious self. His pipe-dreams were dead, and he was at peace.

At the end of the play we see that he is arrested and taken to the police custody. His comrades do not take his message seriously. No sooner was he out of the bar, than they all forgot his existence. Only Larry is an exception. But even he fails to understand the positive salvationist aspect of Hickey’s philosophy. Hickey had only convinced him that his desire for death was nothing more than a pipe-dream, and that it had not the ing of active, resolute will. Therefore, he should either commit suicide and make it a reality or he should abandon the idea of death as it good long sleep. He says:

“Be God, I’m the only real convert to death Hickey made here. From the bottom of my coward’s heart I mean it now!” (Ibid, P. 222)

He is seen, when the curtain falls, sitting in the chair and looking blankly in front of him oblivious of all the noise and commotion of the bar.

Allardyce Nicell observes in his World Drama:

“........The Iceman Cometh (1946) is a vastly disappointing play. The characters talk too much; we become wearied with the constant repetition of the phrase “pipe-dreams”; the philosophy of the scenes is confused.....It appears that Hickey, realizing that he has given pain and sorrow to his wife, has murdered her in order to put her out of her misery, although at the close of the play we discover that the murder has been committed because, in reality, he hated her. What this farrago of despairing scenes implies no one can tell: O’Neill’s latest play is perhaps his poorest.” (Word Drama George G. Harpar & Co. Ltd. Pp. 892-893)

But Nicoll’s criticism is not just. The play is in a way a precursor of the absurd theatre and it is expressionist in thought and technique. It is poetry come to stage, poetry expressed through the medium of dramatic action. The “wretched saloon where the flotsam and jetsam of society gather” which is the setting of the entire action, itself is a fit symbol, an external equivalent of an inner feeling that the state of man in a nihilist world is wretched and pitiable. Here are not a few characters; they are whole mankind. The symbolism is clear enough to the sensible spectators. It fitly expresses the turmoil and volubility and meaninglessness of the modern humanity. Still, if there is a certain degree of inclarity or ambiguity, it is because the modern literature, the writers often make it clear, has not intellectually to mean, but emotionally to be. Thought is derivative from it, and never of principal importance. There may be clear and coherent system in philosophy, but never in life. Literature has to represent life, its anguish, its inclarity, its fumblings for light. So it is in The Iceman Cometh, Willis Wager, an American critic, writes about O’Neill’s plays in his book American Literature A World View;

“The means by which the action is presented is what is sometimes referred to as “expressionism”–according to which events are acted out on the stage as they are conceived of within the somewhat disordered mental world of one of the characters. As a result, expressionistic stage settings and action tend to be mechanical, automatic, stylized; and at its best, values are stressed that are more visionary and poetical than utilitarian and prosaic.” (American Literature A World View, A. H. Wheeler & Co. (P) Ltd., Allahabad. P. 214)

An expressionist play is by its very nature vague, but not therefore bad. If intellectual clarity and meaningfulness is our standard to judge the works of literature, most of the modern works will fail to pass the test. What clarity! For example, do we find in et’s Waiting for Godot or Ionesco’s The Chairs? They are absolutely symbolical and vague and may yield more than one definite meaning.

Besides, the philosophy of The Iceman Cometh is not quite so confused. Here we have considerably sound philosophy of life. Since metaphysical inquiry has ended in absolute scepticism in these days even in the field of philosophy proper, philosophy of life alone is the kind which may be fruitfully pursued. And the two important questions about it are (1) why to live? and (2) how to live? Albert Camus asks the first question in his The Myth of Sisyphus, and comes to the conclusion that man has no reason to live, human life has no ulterior motives, and therefore we must make the gratification of passions the aim of life and live in the world like Don Juan, stoical and yet pleasure-seeking and revoltive in character.

Larry’s view of life in The Iceman Cometh is partially similar to that of Camus’, since Larry also has discovered no reasons to live, no goals worthy of pursuit, and so he is waiting for the final Long Sleep. Hickey, the central character of this play, shows greater maturity than either Camus or Larry. He does not ask the futile question, why to live or whether to live. He has taken metaphysical and ethical nihilism for granted. Hence, more important question for him is, how to live? We have seen that he asks his comrades to face life boldly and forget all pipe-dreams. One has to face oneself, one’s existence with courage and, to employ existential term, “lucidity.” It is the fear of existence and futile attempts to escape it that causes disturbance and despair in man. Once this fear is got rid of, once the extinction of all the pipe-dreams is achieved, once the positive and health attitude of accepting without complaint all that life brings cultivated, serene peace reigns in the soul. This is what Hickey has decided to do, and to a large extent done. After this even his long-fed vices automatically, effortlessly drop dead-booze drops, and even his insatiable lust for woman drops, for we discover no desire in his behaviour at the bar amid such whores as Pearl, Margie and Cora. There is only unruffied peace in his mind and genuine feeling of freedom from all that strained his soul and held it in tension. This is what he has come to teach his brethren at the bar of Harry, and to deliver them all from sorrow and despair. Is not all this quite similar to Krishnamurti’s message to cultivate “choiceless awareness” of existence in the rough and tumble of life itself? Obviously Nicoll is wrong in maintaining that the philosophy of this play is confused. O’Neill was deeply influenced by the Indian and Chinese thought. Willis Wager rightly remarks:

“His whole life-work, intended for ‘theatre of tomorrow’, was devoted to an end which might well be characterised as the dispelling of the illusions of Maya and the achieving of Nirvana…..Many of the traditional aims of poetry are realized through his dramas, and the prevailing tone has often been characterized as one of mysticism.” (Ibid. pp. 215, 217). This is what we discover in The Iceman Cometh also.

The Iceman Cometh is written in colloquial American. Through the vulgar tongue and desultory dialogues of a few bums O’Neill has presented here the spectacle of human lifein general. There is perfect unity of timeand place in the play. From start to finish it covers a period of less than twenty-four hours. The place of action is Harry’s saloon all throughout. There is unity of action also, but there is hardly any action in the traditional sense of the word, for the play does not unfold any close-knit story. In modern drama the substance is often some startling idea, some new vision of life, not simple plot and events. We have already examined the substance and thought of The Iceman Cometh. WillisWager considers it as one of the “plays much more spare inaction, ground and characters, closer to O’Neill’s personal experience, and written with the superlative mastery one sometimes finds in the very late work of many great artists.” (Ibid. P. 216)