Recommendations
Books Like The Iceman Cometh
Best books to read after The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill
Readers who love The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill are drawn to its combination of philosophical depth, compassion for the dispossessed, and the central paradox that illusions both kill people and are the only thing keeping them alive — they want plays and novels that deal with hope, illusion, and the question of whether it is possible to live without the belief that tomorrow will be different.
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Long Day's Journey into Night
by Eugene O'Neill
The companion O'Neill masterwork — the Tyrones' terrible day of accusation and recognition. The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night are O'Neill's two great plays: The Iceman Cometh is the more expansive and socially ambitious; Long Day's Journey is the more intimate and autobiographical. Both are organized around the progressive revelation of the secrets that have kept a confined group of people together
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Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
The companion in the tradition of the play organized around waiting and the gap between hope and its fulfillment — Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot. The regulars at Harry Hope's bar are the philosophical predecessors of Vladimir and Estragon; both plays investigate whether it is possible to live without the belief that tomorrow will be different
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Death of a Salesman
by Arthur Miller
The companion in the American theatrical tradition of the play about illusion and its costs — Willy Loman's self-deception. Both are companion investigations of what illusions (pipe dreams; Willy's belief he is well-liked) do to the people who maintain them, and what happens when they are taken away
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The Lower Depths
by Maxim Gorky
The most direct theatrical precursor — the inhabitants of a Russian shelter, their illusions, and the arrival of a figure who challenges them. O'Neill knew Gorky's play well; the structural situation (the outcasts, the confined space, the figure who arrives to challenge their illusions) is essentially the same in both plays
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Three Sisters
by Anton Chekhov
The companion in the tradition of the play about people sustained by a dream they cannot fulfill — the Prozorov sisters waiting for Moscow. Both The Iceman Cometh and Three Sisters investigate whether people can live without the belief that tomorrow will be different: Chekhov answers yes, with elegiac acceptance; O'Neill answers that the attempt to live without illusion is more destructive than the illusion
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A Moon for the Misbegotten
by Eugene O'Neill
O'Neill's last completed play and the direct companion — Josie Hogan's long night with Jamie Tyrone. A Moon for the Misbegotten is the complement to The Iceman Cometh: where The Iceman Cometh investigates the illusions of the dispossessed, A Moon for the Misbegotten investigates the possibility of forgiveness for the most damaged
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Darkness at Noon
by Arthur Koestler
Koestler's companion investigation of what happens when the illusions that sustain a person's life are taken away — Rubashov's interrogation during the Stalinist show trials. Rubashov's pipe dream is the Communist Revolution; the connection to The Iceman Cometh is that both investigate what idealists do when the ideology that gave their lives meaning reveals itself as false
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Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky's companion in the literary tradition of the man who sees through all the consoling illusions and discovers that clear-sightedness is its own hell — the Underground Man's bitter reflections. The Iceman Cometh and Notes from Underground are companion investigations of what happens to people who have seen through the illusions and must decide how to live with that knowledge
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