The Iceman Cometh Read Free

and right, Hickey passes into phantasmagoria, and in that compulsive condition he makes the ghastly confession that he murdered his unhappy, dreadfully saintly wife. His motive, he asserts perversely, was love, but here too he is caught between antitheses, and we are not able to interpret with certainty whether he was more moved by love or hatred:
    HICKEY
    Simply .
    So I killed her.
    There is a moment of dead silence. Even the detectives are caught in it and stand motionless .
    PARRITT
    Suddenly gives up and relaxes limply in his chair — in a low voice in which there is a strange exhausted relief .
    I may as well confess, Larry. There’s no use lying any more. You know, anyway. I didn’t give a damn about the money. It was because I hated her.
    HICKEY
    Obliviously .
    And then I saw I’d always known that was the only possible way to give her peace and free her from the misery of loving me. I saw it meant peace for me, too, knowing she was at peace. I felt as though a ton of guilt was lifted off my mind. I remember I stood by the bed and suddenly I had to laugh. I couldn’t help it, and I knew Evelyn would forgive me. I remember I heard myself speaking to her, as if it was something I’d always wanted to say: “Well, you know what you can do with your pipe dream now, you damned bitch!” He stops with a horrified start, as if shocked out of a nightmare, as if he couldn’t believe he heard what he had just said. He stammers . No! I never—!
    PARRITT
    To LARRY — sneeringly .
    Yes, that’s it! Her and the damned old Movement pipe dream! Eh, Larry?
    HICKEY
    Bursts into frantic denial .
    No! That’s a lie! I never said—! Good God, I couldn’t have said that!
    If I did, I’d gone insane! Why, I loved Evelyn better than anything in life!
    He appeals brokenly to the crowd .
    Boys, you’re all my old pals! You’ve known old Hickey for years! You know I’d never—
    His eyes fix on HOPE .
    You’ve known me longer than anyone, Harry. You know I must have been insane, don’t you, Governor?
    Rather than a demystifier, whether of self or others, Hickey is revealed as a tragic enigma, who cannot sell himself a coherent account of the horror he has accomplished. Did he slay Evelyn because of a hope—hers or his—or because of a mutual despair? He does not know, nor does O’Neill, nor do we. Nor does anyone know why Parritt betrayed his mother, the anarchist activist, and her comrades and his. Slade condemns Parritt to a suicide’s death, but without persuading us that he has uncovered the motive for so hideous a betrayal. Caught in a moral dialectic of guilt and suffering, Parritt appears to be entirely a figure of pathos, without the weird idealism that makes Hickey an interesting instance of High Romantic tragedy.
    Parritt at least provokes analysis; the drama’s failure is Larry Slade, much against O’Neill’s palpable intentions, which were to move his surrogate from contemplation to action. Slade ought to end poised on the threshold of a religious meditation on the vanity of life in a world from which God is absent. But his final speech, expressing a reaction to Parritt’s suicide, is the weakest in the play:
    LARRY
    In a whisper of horrified pity .
    Poor devil!
    A long-forgotten faith returns to him for a moment and he mumbles .
    God rest his soul in peace.
He opens his eyes — with a bitter self-derision .
    Ah, the damned pity—the wrong kind, as Hickey said! Be God, there’s no hope! I’ll never be a success in the grandstand—or anywhere else! Life is too much for me! I’ll be a weak fool looking with pity at the two sides of everything till the day I die! With an intense bitter sincerity .
May that day come soon!
    He pauses startledly, surprised at himself—then with a sardonic grin . Be God, I’m the only real convert to death Hickey made here. From the bottom of my coward’s heart I mean that now!
    The momentary return of Catholicism is at variance with the despair of the death-drive here,