Introduction
The play Iceman Cometh depicts events and social life American underground at the beginning of the 20th century. In this play, O’Neill creates vivid and bright images of characters and their life paths. O’Neill uses the method of dramatization to depict between sexes as might be expected, between two opposites. The one theme deals with marriage or love as a continuous felicity; the other theme portrays betrayal and dishonor (Dugan 43). Thesis The play is based on the opposition between two genders, make and female, which helps the author to create unique identities and unveil the problem of human elations and communication.
Main body
From the very beginning, O’Neill depicts prostitutes deviate into two types, or rather, the philosopher- prostitute, a romantic meeting, and a fairly realistic representation of twentieth-century, the streetwalkers who values money and wealth. The difference can be seen at its most clear between the young ladies of the evening (Dugan 43). As against the philosophical prostitute, the author sees the ladies as “street walkers” and by themselves as “tarts,” not “prostitutes.” these women come not out of romantic imagination but off the streets of New York (Hinden 65). The gender relations are evident through the characters of Pearl and Margie described as dollar streetwalkers: each of these girls has freshness but each is familiar with hard and worn words of the trade. These girls are portrayed as over-romantic, ridiculous, giggly, indolent, good natured, and happy (Dugan 43). O’Neill depicts that one of the many sins these women committed is to have built up the image of prostitutes as romantic and sensational, instead of showing these women as they really are, unfortunate and diseased” In the late scenes generally the image of the prostitute tends to be, like all the other images, a literal transcription of reality, untinged by the smallest amount of invention, meeting, or idealism (Hinden 65). Instead of fairly grammatical, philosophic thought on the meaning of life, Margie and Pearl are given to more earthy distinctions and descriptions:
MARGIE Anyway, we wouldn’t keep no pimp, like we was reg’lar old whores. We ain’t dat bad.
PEARL No. We’re tarts, but dat’s all.
Through the images of prostitutes and their relations with men, the author describes two polar attitudes often merge in the same play, poor under class and upper class of clients.
in the book, a special attention is paid to the men attitude toward these women. The uniqueness is that their perception and attitudes vary by about the same ratio that the prostitutes themselves do. Margie has possession of life’s meanings, and thus all males seek her out, not only for sexual relations but for the sense of stillness that she gives them (Dugan 43). Only in the presence of prostitutes, men can take off their masks and be themselves. Margie and Pearl are the thing of a good-natured and compassionately contempt and are never taken seriously. In this sexual scene the male characters are regularly crude, and between them and the prostitutes there is a kind of freemasonry (Hinden 65). Readers assume, from quite open hints in other parts of the play, that other men are members of the same society (Hinden 65).
O’Neill describes that more clever and multifaceted men the prostitute means two complementary but complementary images: first, coarse and thus enjoyable conversation; and, second, guilt-ridden sexual contact. It is in the late scenes especially with Hickey, that this inconsistency receives its fullest and darkest representation (Dugan 43). Hickey has come out of puritanical societies, He is depicted as 19th century fundamentalist. In his society, there is a clear distinction between “nice” girls, to whom certain words are not said, and “bad” women, with whom anything go wrong. In his monologue in Act IV Hickey describes this part of the attraction. In his puritanical family there had been one “hooker shop” and, as a young man, he liked to sit around in the parlor and joke with the girls (Dugan 43). His friends liked him because he could “kid ’em along and make ’em laugh.” Evelyn, his future wife, cannot understand this way of thought and communication; therefore even before their marriage Hickey lives in and balances between two incompatible world.
They all said I was a no-good tramp. I didn’t give a damn what they said. I hated everybody in the place. That is, except Evelyn. I loved Evelyn. Even as a kid. And Evelyn loved me. (He pauses. No one moves or gives any sign except by the dread in their eyes that they have heard him) (O’Neill).
The author depicts hat personal characterization of Hickey is more a supremely self-conscious reporter on an outlook that the author impulsively and intuitively shared.
the description of relations and attitudes between men and women allow readers to understand the class relations and social degradation (Dugan 43). O’Neill tends to believe the least in the authority of environment and to believe the most, approximately mystically and surely atavistically, in the force of inheritance, conceived of both as a social inheritance and as an personal specific inheritance (Hinden 65). So tough are family ties in the works of both men that play a powerful role in the lives of their friends (Hinden 65).
On some situations what appears to be process and transformations in characters mean the men and women are turning into their past. their world is full of such problems as alcoholism and diseases. The hold of the poor upon the wealthy in O’Neill’s play need hardly be explained as it is one of his central themes–and the same kinds of changes that the male characters experience frequently in O’Neill’s plays. “Before looking at O’Neill’s use of radicalism as a model for failure in the sense that capitalism could not be used as a model or background for Hickey’s failure as a husband and ultimately as a human being” (Dugan 43). In fact, it could be argued that this is exactly the sad destiny of the man: most of the male characters are turning into their families. Only poor released one from the inherited tyranny (Dugan 43).
What men seemed to feel is that the American type, middle class, business-oriented, individualism. in the play, the author tries to create a kind of universal noise, as they do in the scraps of popular songs that are sung at the end of the play (Dugan 43). Nothing is too large a subject for the stage; nothing less than to propose the repeated discord and agreement of mankind itself in all its cultural issues.
All of the characters are poor except Hickey and Harry Hope, but none are in the traditional deserving category; none are in Marx’s proletariat–productive laborers–with the exception of the bartenders, whose exploitative role as pimps compromises that status. Yet undeserving as they are, they fall into two distinct subdivisions which are quite clearly delineated” (Dugan 43).
Male characters represent a particular social class or profession and therefore largely defined by that social class or profession, did not really interest prostitutes (Dugan 43). What O’Neill’s is seeking, and does not find, is some kind of connection between men and women, a situation at home in the universe, of “belonging” in some way. The author’s own method of putting this worry is to say that as a dramatist he is not so much interested in relations between man and man, the social change, as in those between man and the society (Hinden 65).
Conclusion
In sum, the play is based on the theme of human relations and gender relations in particular. The author portrays a flood of sexual desire and romantic relations experienced by women. These emotions run throughout the play, and are, like power in history, the strength that makes the world go round; obsession spin the plot. The narration of the male and the female relations, how they came together, how they support one another is told again and again, from conflicting points of view, now and then that of the female characters; sometimes that of the man characters. The gender relations are supported by vivid images of underworld and life paths of the main characters. Lastly man or woman is alone, glazing into a mirror, wondering what he or she is. Further, both men and women characters are habituated to their semi-blind situation and would be not only angry of but antagonistic toward the opposite sex who would force them out of the dark.
Works Cited
Dugan, L. O’Neill and the Wobblies: The IWW as a Model for Failure in the Iceman Cometh. Comparative Drama, 2002 (1), 43.
Hinden, M. O’Neill and Jamie: A Survivor’s Tale. Comparative Drama 2001 (35), 65.
O’Neill, E. The Iceman Cometh. Random House, 1946.