Reading Order
The Iceman Cometh Reading Order
The Iceman Cometh (1939, premiered 1946) by Eugene O'Neill is his most ambitious play in terms of sheer theatrical scope — the regulars at Harry Hope's bar in 1912, each sustained by a 'pipe dream' (Hickey's word) about what they will do 'tomorrow,' and the arrival of the travelling salesman Theodore Hickey, who believes he can free them from their illusions. The play runs over four hours, has eighteen speaking characters, and is organized around the paradox that Hickey articulates: that the pipe dreams are killing them, but that when he takes the pipe dreams away, what he leaves behind is not peace but annihilation. O'Neill wrote the play in 1939, at the lowest point of his life (his marriage collapsing, his son Shane's drug addiction, the onset of the tremor that would eventually prevent him from writing), and the play's sense of men stranded in a bar at the end of the world, maintaining their illusions because the illusions are all they have, comes directly from O'Neill's own experience of what happens when you take everything away.
Where to start
The Iceman Cometh (1939, premiered 1946) — the complete play; the standard text is in the Library of America O'Neill volume. Best O'Neill reading order: Desire Under the Elms (1924) → Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) → The Iceman Cometh (1946) → Long Day's Journey into Night (1956) → A Moon for the Misbegotten (1947/1957)
Complete The Iceman Cometh Book List
- 1Buy
The Iceman Cometh
Eugene O'Neill·1946·The most ambitious O'Neill play — the regulars at Harry Hope's bar, Hickey's arrival, the pipe dreams and their dissolution. O'Neill's deepest investigation of illusion, hope, and what happens when they are taken away; written at the lowest point of his life and premiered ten years after it was written - 2Buy
Long Day's Journey into Night
Eugene O'Neill·1956·The companion and the most autobiographical O'Neill play — the Tyrones' terrible day of accusation and recognition. The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night are O'Neill's two masterworks: The Iceman Cometh is the more expansive, more socially ambitious, and more formally demanding play; Long Day's Journey into Night is the more intimate, more autobiographical, and more emotionally devastating - 3Buy
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett·1953·Beckett's 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 Iceman Cometh and Waiting for Godot are companion plays about the necessity of illusion: the regulars at Harry Hope's bar are the philosophical predecessors of Vladimir and Estragon, and both plays investigate whether it is possible to live without the belief that tomorrow will be different - 4Buy
Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller·1949·The companion in the American theatrical tradition of the play about illusion and its costs — Willy Loman's self-deception and its consequences. The Iceman Cometh and Death of a Salesman are companion investigations of the same question: what do illusions (pipe dreams; Willy's belief he is well-liked) do to the people who maintain them? And what happens when the illusions are taken away? But where Miller's Willy is destroyed by external revelation, O'Neill's Harry Hope and the regulars are destroyed by internal disillusionment - 5Buy
Gorky: The Lower Depths
Maxim Gorky·1902·Gorky's 1902 companion in the tradition of the play about a group of outcasts in a confined space, their illusions, and the arrival of a figure who challenges those illusions — the inhabitants of a shelter in a Russian city. The Lower Depths is the most direct theatrical precursor to The Iceman Cometh: O'Neill knew Gorky's play well, and the structural situation (the outcasts, the confined space, the figure who arrives to challenge their illusions) is essentially the same - 6Buy
A Moon for the Misbegotten
Eugene O'Neill·1957·O'Neill's 1947 companion and the last play he completed before the tremor ended his writing career — Josie Hogan's long night with Jamie Tyrone (the elder son from Long Day's Journey into Night). A Moon for the Misbegotten is a direct epilogue to Long Day's Journey into Night and 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 - 7Buy
Three Sisters
Anton Chekhov·1901·Chekhov's companion in the theatrical tradition of the play about people sustained by a dream they cannot fulfill — the Prozorov sisters waiting for Moscow. The Iceman Cometh and Three Sisters are companion investigations of the same philosophical problem: can people live without the belief that tomorrow will be different? Chekhov answers yes, with a kind of elegiac acceptance; O'Neill answers that the attempt to live without illusion is more destructive than the illusion itself - 8Buy
Darkness at Noon
Arthur Koestler·1940·Koestler's 1940 companion in the tradition of the work about what happens when the illusions that sustain a person's life are taken away — Rubashov's interrogation and gradual capitulation during the Stalinist show trials. Darkness at Noon and The Iceman Cometh are companion investigations of what idealists do when the ideology that gave their lives meaning reveals itself as false: Rubashov's pipe dream is the Communist Revolution; the Iceman Cometh's regulars' pipe dreams are their individual stories of what they will do tomorrow
The Iceman Cometh — Frequently Asked Questions
What does the "iceman" represent in The Iceman Cometh?
The 'iceman' is one of the play's two key symbolic references. The most explicit: in the play's back story, Hickey (the salesman) used to tell the regulars a joke — that he had left his wife 'in the hay with the iceman' (an iceman who delivers blocks of ice was a traditional figure for the cuckolded husband's supposed substitute). The punchline of the joke is never given explicitly, but 'the iceman' becomes associated with death: the iceman who actually came was Death, who took Hickey's wife. The second reference: the word 'cometh' echoes the biblical 'the Lord cometh' and the phrase 'to him that hath, more shall be given; but from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away' (Mark 4:25) — so the iceman who cometh is also the death that cometh for everyone, and the pipe dreams are everyone's way of not facing that cometh. Hickey's project (to free the regulars from their illusions) is ultimately a death mission: he is trying to bring them the peace that comes from accepting the nothing that is really there, and what he discovers is that the peace he achieved (by killing his wife 'for her sake') is simply murder.
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