Berrahal Fatiha

Laboratoire des Sciences du Langage Research Series
2010-2011
Ethnic Characters Onstage:
Eugene ONeills Rhetoric of

Ethnicity in The Iceman Cometh
Dr. Fatiha KAD BERRAHAL
1re EDITION
2010
IMPRIMERIE BENSALEM - LAGHOUAT
Tl./Fax: 029.90.36.13
E-mail: Gourin83@yahoo.fr
1re EDITION
2010
DL: 2010 - 4362

ISBN: 978-9947-957-25-7
CONTENTS
Chapter One
The White Self and its non-white
Other..................................................................13
Chapter Two
E. ONeills Rhetorical Challenge ..19
Chapter Three
From Traditional Dramatic Black
Portraiture to E. ONeills ...................33
Chapter Four
Joe Mott Transcending the Skin
Colour to the Everyman ......................47
Chapter Five
The Us-Them dichotomy: The
process of the Other in The
Iceman Cometh ........................................69
Eugene ONeills Rhetoric of Ethnicity in The Iceman Cometh
INTRODUCTION
Modern American drama has witnessed the emergence

of significant dramatic works interrogating the common
human experience within the limits of cultural memory, skin
colour, and geographical specificities even. However, few
scholars have used the issue of race and ethnicity as a device
to study mens ultimate shared doom attributing the merits
to the study of the issue per se. as one reads through the
following research about Eugene ONeills inclusion of a
series of black characters in his plays, one should necessarily
keep foremost in mind the idea of the device.
Eugene ONeills body of work displays an obvious
progression in its sympathetic depiction of humanity, from
the playwrights tentative early one-act plays through his
more developed expressionistic period and finally his
primarily realistic full-length dramas, with each stage of
development delineating the struggle of both bourgeois and
working classes, illusionists and realists, men and women to
escape from their too human primal urges and their
weaknesses for booze, affection, and recognition. ONeills
character development keeps pace with the increasingly rich
structural and thematic achievements of his plays, with the
early works inhabited by characters that are sometimes more
5
caricature than character -Captain Keeney, Nat Bartlett,

Mammy Saunders- and his late plays peopled by more
complex, emotionally and psychologically articulated men
and women, such as LaviniaMannon, Con Melody, and any
of the tortured Tyrones. Along the way ONeills efforts to
simultaneously develop character and dramatic method, own
him great applause from most prominent modern American
theatre critics.
One challenge, as I have discovered in writing about
Eugene ONeill, is that through staging the aimless and
meaningless existence of the black minority in America, he
joins the postmodern issue dealing with mans identity
malaise of Western culture. Furthermore, his strong contest
to the techniques of performance has effectively contributed
to the black actors inclusion in the cast despite the assault on
his career and private life even.
Despite critical controversy concerning his methods and

results, the same process of development evidences itself with
particular notice among several of ONeills plays wherein
black characters bear significant dramatic weight. From his
early, eerily silent mulatto sailor in Thirst and the
fatalistically superstitious protagonist of The Dreamy Kid,
through the grand and extravagant Brutus Jones and the
pathetic and defeated Jim Harris in All Gods Chillun
GotWings, and finally with the hopeless Joe Mott in The
6
Iceman Cometh; which is the case study of the closing

chapter of the present work; ONeills most significant black
characters seem to serve a similar, if not the same, purpose
as their white counterparts: to portray honestly the human
condition as seen through the dark, naturalistic gaze of the
playwright. Critics continue to debate whether these
portraits rely for their effect too much on stereotype,
whether they are harmfully and knowingly racist, or whether
they are simply misunderstood.
E. ONeills idiosyncratic typology of the black

characters demonstrates his attempt to dismiss any
stereotypical view about them since they are (in the plays) as
intelligent and tragic as the white characters portraits tend
to show. However, other critics do not submit to the same
point of view claiming that even a well-intentioned writer like
ONeill apparently could not be able to escape the traditional
stream in portraying black people as primitives. Moreover,
the critics themselves seem to be trapped in the complexity of
interpretation of E. ONeills very intentions.
In such a plethora of critical debates, one would also
think about the conflict of the self in terms of the inner
dividedness, between the private and the public, which a
black soul confronts every day. By analogy, the shattered
selves are not proper subjects to black men, and what may be
hypothesized at this level is ONeills attempt to transform
7
the image of Negro from a mere entertainer and submissive

slave to a tragic modern man contributing to the worlds
ailment through his difference.
So where does that leave ONeill, undoubtedly one of the

most significant of American dramatists, in the matter of
how well he has understood, constructed and incorporated
ethnicity, particularly the ethnicity of his black characters,
into his tragic vision of life? Is he to be castigated for
propagating even an unconsciously ethno-centrist aesthetic
agenda or applauded for bringing sympathetic and
significant black characters to the forefront of American
drama? In actuality he created sixteen black characters in a
total of six plays between 1913 and 1939. From 1919 onward,
he demanded consistently, beginning with The Dreamy Kid
(and counter to common practice of the time), that his plays
be cast with black actors rather than white actors in
blackface. With such an awareness of ONeills attempt to
close the ethnic divide, at least within the world of American
drama, a closer exploration of the issues involved seems
necessary, an exploration that does not limit itself to an
interrogation of how sensitive or insensitive O'Neill was
regarding ethnicity per sein his plays, but one that addresses
his portrayal of black characters and whether or not it is
consistent with that of his white characters. After all, we may
assume that on a sliding scale of inter-ethnic relations, even
ONeill was a man of his time and that a subconscious
8
manifestation of societal ethnocentrism seems not only likely

but also unavoidable.
While critics continue to debate the ultimate success or
failure of ONeills politics, his canon seems to indicate that
despite the overwhelming social forces and demeaning
stereotyping of the period, ONeill made a consistent and
progressively successful effort to include black characters as
part of the illusory American pipe dream. The focus of this
study, then, is to move the discourse beyond one of labelling
into an understanding of the sources of the labels and
accusations and to discover the extent to which ONeills
black characters either further or obscure the playwrights
greater vision: his tragic vision of life as depicted in his plays.
How successful ONeill was in portraying the humanity of his
black characters is as important as the degree to which he
was able (or unable) to transcend the pervasive racism of the
time. It is important to keep in mind that O'Neill was
operating within a white society in which the black man was
popularly perceived of as primitive, even atavistic, with such
beliefs reinforced by the scientific community and often
supported by the black community as well.
The present research paper is made up of five chapters.
The purpose of the first chapter is to provide the cultural
context of modern American drama based on the connections
between black and white. Therefore, the part entitled The
9
white self and its non-white other would help us for a later
understanding of ONeills deep and consistent involvement
with his racial other, who surfaces in play after play.
Most germane to our study are ONeills rhetorical

challenge and his contribution to the modern American
drama showing, first, the links with tradition, then,
disconnection for the sake of innovation.Then, to further
depict ONeills analysis of the humanity common doom the
research process tends to draw some results from the way
words are dealt with , especially through the paradoxical
semantics of illusion and reality to translate the human
tragedy occurring at the failure of the communicative act
without any particular attention to the characters ethnic
belonging.
The fourth chapter provides a discussion of Joe Mott in
The Iceman Comethin terms of the way he represents the
culmination of ONeills development of black characters in
the sense that the playwright finally created a fully realized
and valid existence for his black characters that parallels
that of his white characters, an existence free of the negative
portrayals that may have informed and detracted from his
earlier plays. In The Iceman Comethas in his other late plays,
ONeill returned to the study of the individuals struggle
against fate and death, and the search for the true self behind
self-constructed masks.
10
As a watershed character for ONeill and one that can be

understood to epitomize ONeills rhetoric of ethnicity, Joe
Mott is given a voice inside that multi-ethnic group of
derelicts to carry and further the theme of racial relations in
America.Yet, even though he shares in the main theme of the
play; the necessity of illusion to survive, the Post-Colonial
discourse seems to undermine any conclusion about equality
between the bar frequenters. In this sense, the last chapter
seeks to answer the questioning about the Racial Other as
well as the ethnic groups sense of not belonging.
11
Chapter One
The White Self and its non-
white Other
In Black Skin, White Masks,Fanon elucidates how the

colonizers invent a non- or sub-human identity for the
natives in order to demarcate themselves from the
subservient group with the ultimate goal of establishing their
superiority and justifying their rule. In return, the
colonized respond to this process of inferiorization first by
identifying themselves with their colonizers, but later, when
they find out assimilation is not to be, they seek validation by
insisting on the value of their native culture. Fanon based his
hypotheses on the theories of the Self and the Other,
according to which the Self (the white colonizer) constitutes
everything outside of it, -alien to it as the Other. Thus, the
Other (the colonized black) emerges in opposition to the Self,
symbolizing what the Self is not or does not have. Such
opposition is, by definition, a Manichean one: one is what the
other is not. This dualistic positioning, nonetheless, ensures
that both groups are also locked into a symbiotic
relationship; without one, there cant be the other. Yet in
Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon did not merely put to use
the psychological implications of these terms but redefined
them to stress their political significance in the colonial
context.
Likewise, in Orientalism, Edward Said argues for the

necessity for polarized images of the Oriental and of the
European in order for imperialism to survive and
thrive:The Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen),
15
childlike, different; thus, the European is rational, virtuous,

mature, normal(40). The comparison holds true in other
colonial/racial contexts, more specifically, in the American
one, as it will be demonstrated later in this study. Thus,
Othering as exercised by those in power, associates the Self
with positive, superior attributes and the Other with
negative, inferior ones to rationalize their subordination.
Despite their ideological differences, HomiBhabha,

another principal scholar of postcolonialism, agrees with
Said on this point and maintains that the
Objective of colonial discourse is to construe the

colonial discourse as a population of degenerate types on
the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to
establish systems of administration and instruction (23).
Likewise, in The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon

explains how Othering promotes colonialism:
Native society is not simply described as a society

lacking in values. It is not enough for the colonist to affirm
that those values have disappeared from, or still better
never existed in, the colonial world. The native is declared
insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of
values, but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare to
admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the
absolute evil. He is the corrosive element, destroying all
16
that comes near him; he is the deforming element

disfiguring all that has to do with beauty or morality; he is
the depository of maleficient powers, the unconscious and
irretrievable instrument of blind forces. (41)
Colonialism mentally subjugates the natives by thus

associating them with barbarism, degradation, and
bestiality(Fanon, The Wretched: 211). These representations
imprison the colonized in a less-than-human state and, thus,
justify their subjugation by their superiors; hence, the end
of colonial discourse.
Another strategy the colonizer employs to dehumanize
their subjects is to represent them in the plural so as to deny
their individuality and, consequently, their humanity. Albert
Memmi remarks that statements like They are this. They
are all the same, constrain the colonized to an anonymous
collectivity (85), which in return both establish and uphold
stereotyping. HomiBhabha exposes the inherent contradiction
in this strategy when he says:
[The] colonial discourse produces the colonized as a

fixed reality which is at once an other and yet entirely
knowable and visible (23)
Yet it is neither easy nor credible to generalize thus

about the psychological and political mechanism of Othering.
As Mary Louise Pratt observes, the marginalized Other
17
fulfills diverse needs of the central Self, and depending on the

variable goals of the colonizer, stereotypes of the co1onized
may reveal inherent contradictions. Thus, Pratt emphasizes
the multiplicity of ways of codifying the Other, the

variety of (seemingly) fixed positions and the variety of
(seemingly) given sets of differences that they posit.
European penetration and appropriation is semanticised in
numerous ways that can be quite distinct, even mutually
contradictory (141).
One of the underlying reasons for the paradoxical nature

of Othering is that, as Catherine Hall points out, the
projection of the other is also always about repressed aspects
of the self. Relations between colonizer and colonized are
characterized by a deep ambivalence, the other is both an
object of desire and derision, of envy and contempt... (70).
18
Chapter Two
E. ONeills Rhetorical
Challenge
One way to address ONeills contributions to both

American and world theatre is to examine the characters
that populate his complex and vast universe, to investigate
the languages that create the intricate psychologies that
define them. Indeed, it is the language of the characters and
of ONeill himself that may indicate how successful the
playwright was at creating a consistent universe in which all
characters exist as cogs in the uncaring, mechanical vastness
in which they all must eventually perish. In their efforts to
somehow overcome the power of their respective life-lies, the
characters rely heavily on a rhetoric that defines them as
much as it conveys plot information to theaudience. How we
poor monkeys hide from ourselves behind the sounds called
words,declares Nina Leeds in Strange Interlude, aware of
her own downfall developing behindthose very sounds.
ONeill never showed any complacency with already
established theories, and his reluctance had even extended to
trust words to convey his ideas. During his experimental
period, his difficulty with language had often been expressed
as an act of exile and alienation. In fact, that act of exile was
at once an act of criticism and that of quest also. In the
pursuit of whether the most sordid, and to a certain extent,
blind alleys of life could be illuminated, a concern with
language, semantics and articulation found a fertile ground
in ONeills drama. However, the unceasing experiments
with the word, that he often found too protean to present
21
completely his meaning, transcended the limits of the text

seeking the actual process of presentation through the
physical theatre. Throughout his canon, ONeill critiques
language itself, even as he relies on it to develop a sense of the
difference between the intrinsic self and its expression
(Bigsby, 1992: 19). He indicates his own awareness of the
ultimate inadequacy of language and its subsequent
subversion of an objective truth.
Such a distrust of language can be seen throughout his
body of work, populated as it is by preponderance of
schemers, liars, dreamers, hucksters and actors, men and
women who use language not to define reality but in an
attempt to simultaneously conceal and transcend it. They are
indeed a theatrical lot. However, as his body of work
indicates, ONeill feels a sense of camaraderie with people in
all walks and stations of life, for if there is a certainty
unmasked behind the facade of language in ONeills work, it
is that we are all doomed.
ONeill, the practical artist, devoted much time and

delved into various provinces of thought to, first,
understanding then, adjusting his selected medium. His
implied ideas of communication reveal his deepest semantic
awareness that no writer of American drama was more
conscious of. ONeills own recognition of his own
deficiencies delineates one of the serious aspects of modern
22
mans tragedy as he struggles to escape the grief of non-

communication. In a way to express an important truth for
himself, and certainly by way of consoling himself also,
ONeill declared that he did not think that great language is
possible for anyone living in the discordant, broken, faithless
rhythm of our time (Qtd by he, in his proper era terminology,
might call the lower classes may illustrate how he found the
experience of those on the lower rungs particularly suited to
his attack on the certainty of language. After all, it is these
bottom-dwellers, the hopeless visitors to Harry Hopes
saloon, the misbegotten refuse of modernity, who most
obviously fail to make their way successfully into a society
that esteems facility with language. Perhaps his fondness for
this downtrodden group and their inability to use language to
make their way fully into society may result from the
rhetorical bravura of his father, James, whose reliance on the
grandiloquent and patently false melodrama of The Count of
Monte Cristodoomed a once-promising career. Thus, the
trappings of theatre served to illuminate even as they masked
the sincerity of life (Roberts, 1987: 44).
The return of ONeill to the essentially realistic form,

perhaps, accounts for his hope to find a medium of
communication that would bridge the gap between his ideas
as a dramatist and as a man. Looking through all of ONeills
drama, we can relate his search for language to his creation
of the tragic character whose retreat from articulateness to
23
silence is generally evident in the characters escapes from

reality, whether through insanity or drink or drugs being
simply the overt symptoms of what the dramatist called the
Sickness of today. What further seems consistent in
ONeills plays is the playwrights awareness of the false
rhetoric, of his characters expounding in a theatricalized
language because, in one sense, they are all self-conscious and
vulnerable, and they seek safety in role-playing that blunts
the impact of their real dilemmas; that is, they use artificial
language to create an artificial refuge. As exemplified by the
hopeful yet hopeless inhabitants of Harry Hopes bar,
ONeills characters consistently deny their rhetoric in their
very actions, pointing up the innate falsity of their language.
His sense of the contradictions inherent in language derives
from his dark, modernist worldview that a coherent language
was no longer possible in the discordant, broken, faithless
rhythm of our time (Chothia, 1979: 106). Language in itself
becomes a life-lie, often hiding behind a figurative or even
literalmask. Critic Richard Moorton examines ONeills
achievement:
In an age when postmodern criticisms audacious

reductionof literature to nonsignifying texts with no relation
to reality is coming into question, the incessantly
autobiographicalONeill reminds us that there is indeed an
outside of the textand that in his case the impact of that
outside on the text ispervasive and profound.
24
The very development in ONeills writing is another

complex aspect of his drama where the attempts to create a
new language for the theatre or a new language for
ONeill had theatrically shaped the changing ways he
approached the basic questions of life. (Qtd by Robert F.
Whitman in John Gassner, ONeill, 1964, p.143). Human
tragedy, that could be described as through the unabridged
gap between modern mens fondest hopes and the frustrating
reality seems to be the central element in ONeills search for
language. Almost of his heroes, from the early plays, the
Yank of Bound East for Cardiff through the other Yank,
in The Hairy Ape, to all of the characters who make the
Long Days Journey into Night, the failure of
communication is respectively represented by images like the
blank impalpable wall which boggled and hurt the former or
the terrifying fog of anonymity, to the images of drug
addiction and insanity of Mary Tyrone and the
disillusionment of Edmund.
The problem of communication translating the

characters conflict between their wishes and their retreat
from articulacy turns to be ONeills comment on mans use
of language. To describe the quest one would better follow
the implicit reasoning of ONeill himself. The beginning is the
awareness of mans innate desire and need for
communicative touch with the world. Yank in The Hairy
Ape expressed in a subtle way mans natural need to
25
articulate say Lemme talk! Say, listen to me wait a

moment. I gotter talk, seeand communication in this example
stands for an element to maintain the psychological health of
the speaker. Indeed, the desire for therapeutic
communication is one reason among ONeills characters and
to heighten the need to talk and to be talked to as well, the
dancers cry, in ONeills early play, Thirst is
representative: My God! My God! this silence is driving me
mad, why do you not speak to me?The impulse towards faith,
in the example above, shows both the speech limitations
inherent in some parts of existence and the frustration
leading to scepticism. ONeills impression of greatness is so
much produced by the absolute demands he made upon
language to express a fusion of life into art. Unfortunately,
his attempts to create words that simultaneously express the
beauty and sadness and power of life were rather sent to
desolation.
Yet, ONeills determination is no longer a secret so that
his characters transcended the verbal communications to
more expressive, and sometimes creative, forms of
communication in their quest to flee the human silence and
loneliness.Aside from language, ONeill forced every part of
the theatre to make the audience accede to his aesthetic
transformation of life vividly and meaningfully. Then, in
exploring the human soul representation through a dramatic
medium, ONeill did not withdraw in front of such devices as
26
the mask, creative lighting, interior monologue, and

patterned sounds. To enlarge the effectiveness of his stage
compositions, ONeill cited the actor as the most important
theatrical element for the actual presentation of his drama.
The actor is no more the end in himself, but rather a vehicle
and a bearer of language, characterization, action and theme.
Masked characters in The Great God Brown and Days
without End used to raise the spectator to a different means
of communication other than words. The main idea of such a
device is that wearing themasks represents misunderstanding
and their removal signifies the penetration to a deeper level
of reality.
In the urgency to remedy for the limited function of

words the intuitive or psychic communication had,
successfully, helped ONeill to achieve effectiveness on stage.
Articulation is realized through physical acts or signs. In this
sense, a special attention is given to the language of the eye,
of the mind and of sex. Simon, in Desire under the Elms,
says: Whatve ye got held again us, Eben? Year after year its
skulked in Yer eye something, in The Iceman Cometh,
Hickey says: Shed kiss me and look in my eyes, and shed
know Id see in her eyes how she was trying not to know, and
the language of the eyes is most vivid in Mourning Becomes
Electra when Ezra Mannon says: your eyes were always so,
so full of silence! That is, since weve been married, not before,
27
when I was courting you they use to speak then, they made me
talk because they answered.
In spite, however, of the range of a communicative
means that ONeill supplied his characters with, they most of
the time failed to express themselves fully. The characters
failure at communicating represents everymans failure to
reach out beyond himself; the fact in itself is regarded by the
dramatist modern mans greatest tragedy. The effects of that
limited communications seem to have impelled ONeill to try
to identify these obstacles among which he thought the
individual incapacity to articulate to be the primary barrier.
Edmund in Long Days Journey into Night puts the
situation succinctly: I couldnt touch what I tried to tell you
just now, I just stammered. Thats the best Ill ever do well, it
will be faithful realismstammering is the native eloquence of
us fog people. and so a wide range of fog people in various
place stammer.
Another obstacle, which ONeills characters couldnt
remedy for, lies in the failure of the language medium. Even
when some characters are good communicators, without any
sign of inhibition or restraint, they fail at the exercise due to
their awareness of the failure of word symbols.Language, in
this case, is often cursed in terms of empty words. The
semantic problem, that ONeill tends to identify and to
describe as well in his characters mouths, reveals the great
28
discrepancy between symbol and meaning. All the misuse of

language in his place leads ultimately to a lie in fact, and in
this lie we recognise the use of masks and interior
monologues.
The semantic quest had really become a serious problem
as either the readers of the plays or the audience, (viewers),
accepted easily the failing communications of the characters.
Henceforth, the final tragedy for man is the world of non-
communication in which one would choose to enclose himself
/ herself. The flee from communication is for some of
ONeills characters an escape from reality for which they
thought themselves not equipped to face. The failure of
words, and therefore of communication, plays an important
role in ONeills tragic vision of life. One would admit the
idea in the Mannons talk, Ezra says: wed better light the
light and talk awhile! but Christine answers, I dont want to
talk! I prefer the dark. The polarity of talk and light, non-
communication and dark is not a matter of incapacity or
language failure but rather a problem of will. Then, in the
last plays such as The Iceman Cometh and Long Days
Journey into Night, the futility of communication and even
its uselessness is most frequently expressed by characters, we
hear Edmund in Long Days Journey into Night cry,
Mama! For Gods sake, stop talking stop talking, Mama a
similar cry is Marys words rejecting communication: Now,
now, dont talkand even after ever achieving it, the
29
hopelessness and the deception that inadequate use of words

can be seems to be the statement of many of ONeills
characters.
Implicit motif that might be drawn from these

characters going on to a complete renunciation of
communication is not fear or a problem of will or incapacity;
it is they find it ultimately false, in the way ONeill calls the
Pipe dream.The demarcation of communication and
silence non-communication- constitutes the main struggle
in which man is the central element. The failure of man to
win over the non-communication forces means that he is
forcefully doomed to the tragedy of silence.
It is not always true to limit ONeills tragic vision of life

to the tragedy of communication, but the most important
component. ONeills journey through words and symbols
revealed in all his plays, sets up the idea that all men are
born with the innate desire to talk, then to communicate. But
the strife starts when language as a medium is inadequate to
yield the intended message. In addition the receptors
failures to understand would inhibit perfect communication
to happen, and the worst that can happen to man is that he
may escape misunderstanding by rejecting communication
altogether.
Fittingly or ironically, some critics explain the
inarticulate nature of ONeills plays as matter of his own
30
communication tragedy. Being the son of the actor James

ONeill, a highly articulate father, and the addicted to dope,
Ella ONeill, he usually avoided communication save when he
was drunk.Throughout his life, ONeill sought a dramatic
medium to be highly eloquent. Though it was done in the
heart of dramatic articulation, ONeills contribution to the
Greek art called tragedy is in its very characteristic
nourished by that sense of paradox. Drama was to
approximate life and the dramatists own version has given
the twentieth century its most magnificent demonstration of
words failure.
In his exploration of ONeills African and Irish
Americans, Edward L. Shaughnessy asks, Did ONeill trade
in stereotypes? (ONeills African and Irish-Americans:
stereotypes of faithful realism?1998 :148). It might be
suggested that by examining the language of the plays, and
particularly the inherent and acknowledged rhetorical falsity
of the language of the characters, we can move beyond a
simple answer of yes or no, along with a misplaced emphasis
on whether ONeill must be classified as either great or a
perpetual embarrassment because of his portrayal of
ethnicity. In this sense to check whether or not ONeill set out
to marginalize or embrace his ethnic characters it is a
prerequisite to study whether or not they were granted the
same privileges, hopes and disappointments as other
characters populating his dramatic universe. Does ONeill
31
use ethnicity as a rhetorical mask, much as his characters use

language to mask their own truths? Are they linked through
ONeills language to the greater population at large, or do
ONeills ostensible word choices leave people adrift, isolated,
and unable to attain the common brotherhood ONeill seems
to use as a controlling function of thematic development in
his plays?
32
Chapter Three
From Traditional Dramatic
Black Portraiture
to E. ONeills
As T.S. Eliot argues in his influential essay, Tradition
and theIndividual Talent, all writers partake in tradition,
and ONeill is no exception. The emphasis on racial and
ethnic relations had been a very considerable theme in a
countless number of nineteenth century American plays.
Those literary traditions mainly relied on stereotypes in their
depiction of non-whites, involving also the religious
differences. The playwrights tended to examine the relevant
social arrangements potentially created by ethnic
combinations and /or ethnic coexistence. Among those
attributed to African-Americans, Sambo, Uncle Tom, Jim
Crow, and Mammy prevailed, with a few variations. Suck
stereotypes mainly served a sociopolitical objective: they
reflected and confirmed the Anglo-American image of the
Afro-American. They even contributed to the dangerous idea
of the stereotypes permeating the anti-black propaganda.
Joseph Boskin, for instance, after identifying two of these
familiar black stereotypes as Sambo and the Brute, explains
that the Brute image was born out of the Euro-American
conviction that the black man was a primitive creature given
to fits of violence and powerful sexual impulses (1970 p.166).
The emergence of Sambo, the comic Negro, could be tracedto
1781, according to Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.
Sambo was a happy-go-lucky, loyal but lazy, irresponsible,
and child-like slave. George Fredrickson interprets this
figure asa direct rationalization of slavery (1997 p.41) and
argues how Sambo was the predominant white southern
image of the securely enslaved Negro, at least in the period
from1830 to 1860 (ibid p.40).Harriet Beecher Stowes anti-

slavery novel Uncle Toms Cabin (1852) popularized the
stereotype of the docile slave, Uncle Tom, who becamefor the
Northerners testimony to the evils of slavery; whereas the
Southerners saw in him an affirmation of the exact opposite,
that slavery was agreeable to Negroes. A variation ofthe
uncle stereotype was Uncle Remus, created by Joel
Chandler Harris. Mainly a story-teller, Uncle Remus has
experienced both slavery and its aftermath as a newly-freed
slave.The Reconstruction era did not render any essential
transformations of these one-dimensiona1 representations,
and William Stanley Braithwaite records bow the fiction of
this period likewise refused to see the tragedy of the Negro
and capitalized his comedy (1968 p.31).
Black women characters did not fare any better in the

literature of the time.The African-American women were
routinely subjects to stereotypical representations as either
Mammy or Jezebel. Deborah Gray Whites findings in her
work Ar` n`t I AWoman? Female Slaves in the Plantation
South (1985)show the main characteristics of Mammys
expertise in all domestic mattersso she became `the premier
house servant` (p.47) and was `dedicated to the white family,
especially to the children of that family`(p.49). She was a
metaphor for the pious, asexual, and maternal black woman.
Jezebel, the counter image of the mid-nineteenth century ideal
of the Victorian lady,was also the antithesis of Mammy in her
36
sensuality (p.29). She was governed almost entirely by her

libido (p.29). While Mammy illustrated the indispensability
and suitability of the black woman servant in the masters
house, Jezebel rationalized his sexualtransgressions.
As the more readily accessible medium to American
(white) audiences, American theatre upheld similar
stereotypes of African-Americans. The origins of black
portraitureon the American stage date back to the minstrel
shows, which Edith Isaacs in her 1947 work The Negro in
the American Theatrecalls our first authentic American
theatre form (p.27). The southern plantations were the
earliest cradle of minstrel show and as the Northernvisitors
have been acquainted with the form, they brought it back to
the North where it was staged by white actors in blackface.
There is little doubt that it helped to create and to fix

the Negro stereotypes- passive or scheming, over-dull or
overshrewd, but always irresponsible and caricatured-
which have burdened our theatre ever since.(p.27)
In the 1830s, a new stereotype, Jim Crow, was launched

by Thomas Rice to essentially represent the minstrel show
with his funny songs and dances. The minstrel shows
remained in vogue from the 1830s to the 1880s and
capitalized on the comic representation of the Negro by also
exploiting tire black dialect. In Harlem Renaissance, Nathan
37
Huggins discusses in greater depth black representations in

these shows, which he c1aims were both comic and pathetic:
The theatrical darky was childlike; he could be duped

into the most idiotic and foolish schemes; but like a child,
too, innocence would protect him and turn the tables on
the schemers. His songs were vulgar and his stories the
most gross and broad; his jokes were often on himself, his
wife or woman. Lazy, he was slow of movement, or when
he displayed a quickness of wit it was generally in flight
from work or ghosts. Nevertheless, he was unrestrained in
enthusiasm for music -for athletic and rhythmical dance.
Likewise, he was insatiable in his bodily appetites; his
songs and tales about food would make one think him all
mouth, gullet, and stomach. . .This caricature was patently
the antithesis of the Protestant Ethic, as was the Negro
stereotype. (1971: 251)
The premise of Huggin`s argument is that the alter ego

of the whites is reflected through the blackface, and
therefore, more than aiming to denigrate blacks, these
minstrel shows were indeed striving tosatisfy aninner need of
their white audience. The American Dream that Euro-
Americans so eagerly clung to had demanded self-sacrifice
and self-restraint, but by hiding behind a black mask, whites
could become self-indulgent and irresponsible (ibid, p.253).
38
In other words, Nathan Huggins asserts that rather than

mocking black Americans, blackface minstrelsy helped to
project onto the stage a suppressed aspect of Anglo-
American identity.
Until about 1940, black authors had been confronting
serious handicaps when presenting the black experience
cogently to a selected public. Hence, the task of
creatingdeveloped and truly representative black characters
in works ofsufficient literary merit to compel an audience fell
chiefly upon white writers such as M. Twain, W. Whitman,
and many others. Early attempts in the twentieth century at
negro folk plays by white dramatists such as Paul Green,
Georgia Douglas Johnson, RidgelyTorrence, Dubose
Heywood, and Marc Connelly met with great success
(Sanders, 1988, p.20). Although, most of the plays were
melodramas, are nonetheless a landmark in American
theatre history in its exploration of race relations between
blacks and whites by broaching the subject of interracial
marriage. These dramatists interest in the African-
American however was not unanimously applauded. The
black intellectuals of the New Negro Movement, Alain Locke,
Sterling Brown, and William Stanley Braithwaite, to name
but a few, expressed their disapproval of these dramatists
and their work and called for an end to black stereotyping.
Langston Hughes, too, protested against these writers:
39
The stereotype of the Negro drama is the unhappy

endingspiritually and physically defeated, lynched, dead -
gotten rid of to the relief of the dramatist and audience, in
time for a late summer (qtd. in Sanders, 1988, p.21).
Anglo-Americans participated in this movement not only

as patrons of black authors but also as writers themselves.
Nonetheless, Richard Long indicates that most of the white
writers of this era were little acquainted with their subject
matter. The challenge was a severe one, partly because the
white writers own experience was perforce very remote
from the black experience colour being a far greater barrier
than say, sex or social class or any other ethnic group
belonging- and partly because of the impossibility to transmit
a universal theme like the Everyman through a black
character. Therefore, the image of blackness that emerged
from these writings was primitive. According to John Cooley
these primitivistic stereotypes fall into two main classes:
savages and naturals. Depending on the writers goal,
primitivism was either elevated -resulting in the image of the
natural-or denigrated- resulting in a portrayal of the savage.
Another explanation for such a portrayal that some call the
Africanization of the American Negro, was the
disillusionment of the Anglo-Americans in the aftermaths of
World War I. Disappointed in their own culture, they sought
and reportedly found an alternative in the culture of black
40
Americans, romanticized them, and forced the latter this

time into the mold of an uncivilized African.
Of all white authors, E. ONeills response to this
challenge may perhaps be the most interesting. As an Irish-
American, his concern for the black American may be
considered unusual. Yet some scholars cite his cultural
identity as a valid reason for his interest.Eugene ONeill was
familiar with the profound effects of ethnic prejudice,
evenwhen it was incorrectly perceived merely in terms of skin
colour. Constantly aware of thebigotry among the New
London Yankees toward his own family because of its
Irishancestry, ONeill understood the degradation and
prejudice often levelled againstculturally marginalized
populations. In at least one way, ONeills Irish Catholic
heritagewas one of the most significant factors in his dramatic
efforts in this and other earlyplays, since he remained haunted
by the discrimination his family had faced both inIreland and
in their adoptive New England, the geographical designation
of which shouldprobably have warned ONeills father that
the hated English had merely relocated andwould continue
to cause difficulties. Such discrimination can be seen in the
socialostracism his family faced as both Irish and show
people in conservative New London,Connecticut. This
ostracism undoubtedly contributed heavily to ONeills ability
toidentify with and faithfully recreate the outcasts he
encountered throughout his life. The frequent links between
41
his works and a number of lived experiences is very often

evoked by scholars. His friendships with black Americans was,
indeed, one of the many points, yet very essential to the
present work, that scholar lean on to study blackness in his
works.
Joe Smith, the black gambler with whom he often shared

lodgings at the Hell Hole in 1915, served as model for some of
ONeills black characters. Being very close friends in that
Irish saloon in Greenwich Village for almost twenty year,
Smith illustrates the playwrights keen awareness of the
insidious nature of bigotry and the close relationships he
established with the black community during his days in
Greenwich Village. Louis Sheaffer describes Joe Smith as a
quiet good-natured Negro gambler (1968: 424) who was also
an authority on the Negro community of Greenwich Village
(ibid: 425). ONeill believed Smiths experiences reflected
black life in America and relied on Smithsstories for his
plays and black characters. This exposure to black life made
the dramatist
particularly aware of and sympathetic to the problems

of blacks. As a result of his own experiences and those of
his friends, he became a champion of victims of
discrimination, the outcasts of society (Floyd, 1985: 521).
42
Furthermore, Joe Smith would serve as Smith,and

would serve as a partial basisfor several future ONeill
characters, including the complex and fully realized Joe Mott
in The Iceman Cometh. Almost uncannily foreshadowing
the attitudes of Hickey in thatplay, ONeill tried to afford
Smith the moral support to work his way out of his despair:
Buck up, Joe! he told Smith. Youre not going to
confess the game has licked you, are you? That isnt like you!
Get a new grip on yourself and you can knock it dead yet!
Clearly, ONeill felt a personal connection to his down-

and-outcomrade.
There is no doubt that Eugene ONeill was genuinely
concerned about the fate of the black American. While his
black representations began with minor West Indian
characters, as in Thirst(1913)and The Moon of the
Caribbees(1917), his later plays focused more directly on
African-Americans, their fates, and interactions with white
society. His last one-act with black characters, The Dreamy
Kid (1918) was indeed an all-black play bringing to life
ONeills first black American characters. A11 Gods Chillun
Got Wings (1923) was no less controversial at the time since
it brought to the spotlight an interracial couple. In his first
recorded notes for the playin 1922, ONeill reveals that the
germ originated in his own knowledge of black life: Play of
Johnny T.base play on his experience as I have seen it
43
intimately(ONeill at Work 1981: 176). As it will be

developed in the next chapter, the black protagonist is
undone by bigotry, his intelligence and self-esteem are
ravaged, and he is reduced to accepting his own
incompetence by the machinations of his white wife and by
the dominant white culture that ultimately overwhelms him.
ONeills final black character emerged in The
IcemanCometh (1939), Joe Mott, who holds an important,
albeit often ignored, place in ONeills dramatic universe.
ONeills attempts at investigating Negro life are not

limited to the plays mentioned above, which only include his
finished work. His notebooks allude to other projects which
were never fully realized. Further evidence of the
playwrights sensitivity toward and experience with
marginalized ethnic groups lies in the unproduced play,
Bantu Boy. Between 1927 and 1934, ONeill worked
sporadically on the play, in which a noble African chief is
stolen from his homeland, brought to the United States as a
slave and eventually proves the superior of his white
oppressors. To ONeill, the play would reflect black
peopleswhole experience in modern times-especially in
regard to America (A New Assessment:181). That the
chief/slave in the play proves to exceed the nobility and
humanity exhibited by his white captors is significant,
especially regarding many critics responses to The Emperor
Jonesand ONeills allegedly pejorative atavism of black
44
peoples.ONeills other plans for black plays

comprisedHonest Honey Boy (1921) and Runaway Slave
Play(1935). Influenced by Thoreaus Journal, Runaway
Slave Play was conceived in May of 1935, and it was to deal
with a slave trying to buy his freedom from his master.
Such evidence proves beyond doubt that Eugene ONeill

was drawn throughout his career to investigating the fate
and psyche of blacks. Other questions are less easy to
determine. The theme of blackness was handled by ONeill
for various ends. However, the still standing barriers of the
time made the task a burden in itself. Jordan Miller and
Winifred Frazer direct our attention to the same
complication:
As a northerner with no experience in the mixed

society of the South, ONeill had small acquaintance with
the black psyche and the deeper conflicts of racial
antagonism and southern segregation (1991:252)
According to Peter Gillett though, ONeills more urgent

impediment would be the racial myths, the set of received
truths about black people (1976: 45), his success depended
on his seeing through and surpassing these myths.
Euro-American critics have not hesitatedto extol
ONeills efforts and achievement. On the other hand,
although African-American critics, too, commend ONeill for
45
being one of the first white American playwrights to treat

black characters with seriousness and sympathy, he is
criticized by many for being unable to shun black stereotypes
in his plays. Sterling Brown may be among the very few
black critics to praise ONeill for transcending these
stereotypes and introducing a tragic Negro to Broadway
(1993: 201). More representative of current black critical
attitudes is Deborah Wood Holton who critiques the blind
spot of ONeill regarding black culture(1995: 33), and his
inadequacy at interpreting black life (38). The racial
debate surrounding ONeills canon continues today. In the
light of the stereotypical descriptions of characters one would
understand the racial encounters as well as ONeills actual
understanding and portrayal of the black experience.
46
Chapter Four
Joe Mott Transcending the
Skin Colour to the Everyman
1- Joe Mott at Stage Centre.

Joe Motts place in the play shows clearly that his
presence in the social body is as vital as any other
characters. Perhaps even as hinted at in his surname, one
that suggests mutt and its connotations of inclusiveness, he
is a conglomeration of varied characteristics existing in one
being and creating a cultural complexity that deepens the
character, despite his subjugation to his own false dreams. As
Edward Shaughnessy claims, if the playwrights black
characters (like all his others) derive support from illusions,
that dependency in no way robs them of complexity (faithful
realism, 1998: 154). Precisely because Joe Mott is allowed to
exist on such equal footing with the other sixteen losers, we
can see his equal position in the human family more clearly
than in such characters as Brutus Jones or Dreamy or Jim
Harris, all of whom are highlighted as main characters whose
equality with those around them is blown out of proportion
because of their status as protagonists.
In the majority of ONeills plays the conclusion drawn

is that only in the world of pipe dreams the fusion of two
human beings is allowed. (Dubost, 1997: 102); here, the
fusion is much greater, more universal and perhaps therefore
more significant. It is fusion of all beings, a human
community perhaps hinted at in the variation on Joes last
49
name. Such a conclusion could easily be supported by

Norman Berlins description of
ONeill as a white playwright who used black characters
to explore his own sense of alienation(1998: 85). This claim
may be most obvious in even a brief glimpse at All Gods
Chillun, where ONeill encoded his parents identities into
his central, black-whitecouple. In Iceman, everyone belongs,
and in belonging, is doomed. Brutus Jones may
representhumanity in his expressionistic existence, but
Mott is part ofhumanity, with nofavoured status.
It is important to remember that ONeills own politics
of inclusion would suggest Motts central location. When
Icemanwas scheduled for Washington, D.C.s National
Theatre (2)-a theatre that refused to seat black people-he was
quoted as being opposed to racial discrimination of any
kind, pledging to insert a non-discriminatory clause in all
future contracts (Gelbs, 1962: 886). The playwrights
concern with the minor groups in society transcended to
defending the honour of yet another of societys lower rungs:
prostitutes or tarts as they are referred to in the play.
Again, here is ONeill working across cultural lines, focusing
more on common human existence than artificial cultural
designations. According to the Gelbs, he bristled when a
friend made a casual remark about an Army experience
involving a two-bit whore (ibid:127), resenting the term
50
much as the prostitutes in Icemanembrace the term tarts

and challenge the term whores. And in a particularly vivid
account, the Gelbs recall an example of ONeills tolerance
that showed itself during rehearsals for the original
production of Iceman(3).
Regarding Mott in particular, according to Shaughnessy,

there are no minor male characters in The Iceman Cometh.
In claiming primacy for all of ONeills male characters in
the play, no matter the number of lines or amount of stage
time (which, for Mott, is relatively small), he claims Mott is
on an equal footing with the other characters (faithful
realism, 1998: 153). If he never fully belongs and if he is
taunted by the bartenders, he lashes back with equal vigour.
You white sons of bitches, he cries; Ill rip your guts out!
(Iceman: 658). While his threat may be as much a pipe dream
as his return to proprietorship of a successful gambling
house, Mott is showing how easily racial epithets are
socialized and no matter which group, minority or majority,
they are directed toward.
Joe Mott is admired by Larry Slade, the plays resident
cynic and ironist, and Slade approves of Motts comments
about the pursuit of financial happiness. In his speech about
the exploitation of anarchists and socialists, Joe seems to sum
up Slades take on existence. Describing how a Socialist feels
bound by his religion to split fifty-fifty with others less
51
fortunate, he says, So you dont shoot no Socialists while Im

around. Dat is, not if dey got anything. Of course, if deys
broke, den deys no-good bastards too. Slade responds, Be
God, Joe, youve got all the beauty of human nature and the
practical wisdom of the world in that little parable(Iceman:
575). Highlighting the universality of Motts position seems
indeed Slades speech content. Then, it is the subject that
Dubost describes as humanity confronted with the world.
Dubost claims that the dramatist cared a great deal about
the link between human individuals and the greater world,
that in Icemanin particular, the question of [peoples]
relationship to the world is one of the most important issues
(1997: 2). Dubost also suggests that what is at stake is their
sense of belonging in that world, their recognition as
individuals that make up the community, even though they
themselves are the cause of their own failures because the
process followed in their pursuit of happiness carries within it
the seeds of failure (ibid: 135) (4).
In the plays particular context, the duality of life and

death in Harry Hopes bar is another startling element
depicting Joe Mott as a symbol of a language of inclusion.
The first glimpse of Mott is in ONeills stage directions.
Markedly, the playwrights description of Mott as a Negro,
about fifty years old, brown-skinned, stocky contrasts with
ONeills more potentially pejorative descriptions of his
52
earlier black characters. His face is only mildly negroid in

type, the directions continue;
The nose is thin and his lips are not noticeably thick.
His hair is crinkly and he is beginning to get bald. A scar
from a knife slash runs from his left cheekbone to jaw. His
face would be hard and tough if it were not for its good
nature and lazy humour (Iceman: 566)
In comparison to the descriptions of other black

characters in earlier plays, these descriptive words are much
less subjective. While it may be claimed that a thin nose
and thick lips are stereotypical, Mott is treated no
differently than are other characters, whose descriptions also
rely on stereotype for easy identification and, tellingly, with
greater subjectivity. ONeill refers to Lewis as obviously
English as a Yorkshire pudding (567), leaving it to the
audience to assign characteristics at will. Hugo has a foreign
atmosphere about him (566), and Rocky the Italian
bartender has a flat, swarthy face and beady eyes (569).
Perhaps most interestingly, Hugo initially refers to Rocky as
monkey-face (570), a description for which ONeill has
been criticized in applying to black characters. Instead,
ONeills use of stereotypical features is a realists reflection
to the American melting pot.
53
The use of ethnic epithets in the play is not limited to Joe

Mott in particular. The rushing slurs are more an equalizing
device than stigmatizing elements. Inclusion, therefore, is
well commented upon by Rocky as he says, Dis dump is like
de morgue wid all dese bums passed out (572). Death is the
greatest equalizer in front of which differences vanish.
Interestingly, the denial-ridden Slade makes a claim early in
the play that increasingly calls its own veracity into question
as the researchers awareness of the dramatic conflict
unfolds:
As history proves, to be a worldly success at

anything, especially revolution, you have to wear blinders
like a horse and see only straight in front of you. You have
to see, too, that this is all black, and that is all white (580-
81).
Ironically, he will be converted to Hickeys sense of

death precisely through his acceptance of the fact that
nothing can be divided so easily, an idea that there is an
intrinsic connection among people that prevents the success
he dreams of. He denies his real reasons for leaving the
anarchist movement in favour of an easy and deceitful
explanation that he uses to distract Parritt from learning his
true motives, just as Hickey tries to make his own world
sensible by providing a concrete validation for his actions.
He, too, realizes the inefficacy of the lie, despite its
54
attractiveness. Indeed, those lies are central to humanitys

existence, according to both Hickey and ONeill.
For Joe Mott, the lie of ethnic slurs is made evident when
Lewis refers to him as kaffir. Joe, unfamiliar with the
term, asks what it means. Wetjoen replies, Kaffir, dots a
nigger, JoeDots de joke on him, Joe. He dont know you
(588). In effect, Wetjoen is claiming that Joe is not a
nigger, that skin colour is an ineffective determinant in the
language of signification, ONeills rhetoric of ethnicity. Joe
then acknowledges the comment: But I dont stand for
nigger from nobody. Never did. Inde old days, people calls me
nigger wakes up in de hospital (589). ONeill is showing his
own awareness of black peoples sentiments, as well as Joes
awareness of what it means to be black in the United States.
Later in Act One, he tells Wetjoen, Ill treat you white.
If youre broke, Ill stake you to buck any game you chooses. If
you wins, dats velvet for you. If you loses, it dont count. Cant
treat you no whiter than that (594-95). In Act Three, Motts
intentions become even more apparent. Maybe I throw a
twenty-dollar bill on the bar and say, Drink it up, and
listen when dey all pat me on de back and say, Joe, you sure is
white. But Ill say, No, Im black and my dough is black
mans dough, and yous proud to drink wid me or you dont get
no drink! Or maybe I just says, You can all go to hell. Idont
lower myself drinkin wid no white trash! (660)
55
Unlike Jim Harris, he is able to survive without the

white mans approval. Unlike Brutus Jones, he does not have
to secure his success at the hands of his own people. Unlike
Dreamy, he is not afraid of the white threat. Rather, he is, at
least in his pipe dream, ready to take on all comers,
regardless of skin colour, culture or class. The playwrights
achievement of the black character here is startlingly
admirable. Listen to me, you white boys! he says
aggressively in Act Two. Dont you get it in your head Is
pretendin to be what I aint, or dat I aint proud to be what I
is, get me? Or you and mesgoin to have trouble (625).
Though he shortly will apologize for his aggressive threats,
his subsequent repetition of them suggests that they are not
merely evanescent, unlike the permeable borders of ethnicity
and culture that both separate and unite Joe and his fellow
bottom-dwellers.
In fact, Joe even recognizes exactly how untenable those

borders are in his boasting of how he will treat his
customers right. As his statements indicate, when he was
flush, he was treated white. Here and throughout the
play, white is the symbol of both financial success and
achievement of the materialistic American dream. Anyone
can be white; he seems to argue, money functions as a bleach
to show how one has succeeded. In this idea, Mott reflects the
beliefs of Brutus Jones, who used the capitalist strategies he
learned from white men during his days as Pullman porter to
56
create his own empire. If Wetjoen denies that Mott is a

nigger, his grounds for doing so are that Joe is just like the
rest of the residents of Harry Hopes, who still believe
themselves successful through the haze of their pipe dreams.
Perhaps the paradigm can be most clearly observed in
ONeills description ofHugo Kalmar, the anti-capitalist,
anti-bourgeois, failed anarchist revolutionary who continues
to believe in the overthrow of the capitalist movement. Even
down and out,everything about him was fastidiously clean.
Even his flowing Windsor tie is neatly tied (Iceman: 566). On
the other hand, Slade, who has given up on anarchy as a
means to empower the powerless, has the appearance of
having never been washed (566). ONeills sympathies are
further evident in his portrayal of Rocky, who represents
perhaps the only successful inhabitant of the bar, even in
limited degree. He not only works for Harry Hope (and is
clearly in charge of his supposed boss), but also serves as
pimp for Margie and Pearl. What if I do take deir dough?
he asks. Deydonytrow it away (571). As Kalmar might
charge, the businessman is growing rich at the expense of his
workers. When Rocky talks about Willie Obans fathers
success, Slade says, Its a great game, the pursuit of
happiness(572), clearly referring to the capitalist, or at least
materialist, vision of success. Of course, Slade is more
broadly cynical. He has given up even on pipe dreams before
the play begins, so his targets are greater than the parochial
57
individual targets of the pipe-dreamers. I know theyre

damned fools, most of them, as stupidly greedy for power as the
worst capitalist they attack, he says, referring to Parritts
compatriots in the Movement (ibid: 579). It should be no
surprise, then, when Parritt claims his betrayal for his
mother was just for the money (ibid: 654). As he was early
in his career, ONeill remains wary of the materialism that
led to his own fathers artistic and psychological ruin, his
mothers failed treatment at the hands of a quack doctor,
and even the system that contributed to the validation of
slavery and its lingering effects.
2- Backward Side Decorum: Victim and Victor

Beyond the black characters pipedream of being
involved in the world as their white counterparts do- Joe, like
Brutus Jones, Dreamy, or Jim Harris, is as much a victim of
the culture that he hopes to buy into. In fact, actor James
Earl Jones, who has played both Brutus Jones and Hickey
(and whose father once played Joe Mott), suggests ONeills
dilemma:
If ONeill set out to write a straight play about a

deposed dictator from Caribbean island, like Haiti, it might
never have been produced.So he gave you something
with a whole lot of fun and a great documentaryon
American capitalist sentiment.But Brutus Jones was the
58
ultimate capitalist, the ultimate exploiter. And thats not

black, thats American (Shaffer, 2000: 83-84).
The striking difference, therefore, is that Joe in The

Iceman Cometh is not seen as thevictim of American
capitalist culture that created the conditions of his
subordination. Rather, he is only oneof the victims, part of
the universal brotherhood of death, which remains the great
equalizer. As Michele Mendelssohn states,
ONeill eschews a facile opposition between white and

black and suggests that the boundaries between both are
not distinct but painfully permeable (1999: 27)
During rehearsals of the original Theatre Guild

production of Icemanin 1946, ONeill implicitly linked pipe
dreams to what Joel Pfister labels the concept of ideology
(1995: 102), or the American Pipe Dream: This American
Dream stuff gives me a painIf it exists, as we tell the whole
world, why dont we make it work in one small hamlet of the
United States?(Estrin, 1990: 222)
In Iceman, the same sentiment may be found in Willie

Obans Act Three comments on his fathers disgrace.
According to Kurt Eisen, Oban is implying that the
revolution that made American possible also was a pipe
dream, one that led not to genuine happiness or spiritual
fulfilment, but to the avarice that, as our observation of Slade
59
has indicated, is integral to human nature (175). The

conventional apprehension of that American dream and its
coincident moral position is challenged, just as Hickeys wife,
with her insistence on a pipe dream of any such conventional
morality, is murdered at Hickey's hands. Rather, Hickey
seems to call for a new morality, a progressive culture that
would take into account its members who have been
historically suppressed. Perhaps, not so ironically, Hickeys
comments reverberate with ONeills philosophy of common
human experience.
And of course, the metaphor of the pipe dream is central
to the common plight of the characters in The Iceman
Cometh. A story continues to be told about the play, one that
emphasizes ONeills use of repetition to enforce the central
ideas of his play. Lawrence Langner of the Theatre Guild
pointed out to ONeill himself that the phrase pipe dreams
is repeated eighteen times throughout the play. ONeill, not
to be outdone, responded, saying that he meant it to be
repeated eighteen times (Langner, 1951: 405).
And while most of the daily newspaper critics generally
applauded the Guild production of the play, there was also
some grumbling about its worthiness, particularly in what
they felt was excessive length and needless repetition. But if
the repetition of a particular image or phrase creates a
pattern and therefore emphasizes the ideas to be conveyed, it
60
can also be seen as an inherent strength of the play, rather

than a weakness. According to Zander Brietzke, ONeills
plays can be seen as musical compositions in which developing
themes recur and transmute over time (2001: 19), requiring
the length that the playwright gives them for all the notes to
be played and all the repetitions to be performed so that an
audience cannot miss his meaning, despite the variations on
the themes that might be generated. And if Brietzke is
correct in his observations that critics cite ONeills failure to
create poetry that resonates on first hearing, then perhaps
such repetition is the key to perceiving the meaning that
might otherwise go unnoticed.
3- Verbal and Moral Disintegration for All.

The frequently expressed assumption about The Iceman
Cometh is about the need people have for illusion to survive
the bedrock reality. Yet, further to the thematic texture of
the play, ONeills scholars strike the fact about the
dramatists strife with words to express the paradoxically
semantic aspects of blessing and curse. In his letter to Arthur
Hobson Quinn, Eugene ONeill sums up his hard exercise
with words:
Where I feel myself most neglected is just where I set

most store by myself as a bit of a poet, who has labored
with the spoken word to evolve rhythms of beauty where
beauty apparently isnt (Artifice and Art, 2005: 1)
61
Then, it becomes clear that ONeills absent satisfaction

of words loaded meanings is a demonstration manifest not
only in the depiction of a linguistically thwarted world, but
also in an enactment of communication deterioration , and
even failure in a play such as The Iceman, where the multi-
racial grouping constitutes the most essential part of the
setting.
In this sense, could the claim that words in the play

under study are functionally contradictory, be true?
First of all, the spirit of paradox rises from the

characters shift from illusion to reality using words first to
impose the constructs of mans mind upon reality, thus
ordering it and purifying it, then, they are used to provoke
mans consciousness, awareness, of a world outside of the
mind, described as incoherent or has no intelligibility.The
dramatic effects of The Iceman Cometh derives basically
from firstly, ONeills success in differentiating all seventeen
characters who people Hopes bar primarily by both drawing
on a wide range of dialects and idiolects, and juxtaposing
standard English with low-colloquial without any specific
treatment of the subject in itself. Secondly, from varying and
interacting ideas through the characters speeches while the
flowing action of the play does not break at all. As they all
fail to realize their pipedreams, such characters tend to
reflect ONeills view of a man whose awareness is a curse
62
indeed for which he is forced to be verbal as a way of coping

with experience. A study of The Iceman as a parable about
man as a word- maker is a scrutiny at the potential for
human description in words, here, words give the speaker
two distinct options: whether he may employ them to devise
illusions which are debilitating, or he may use them as a
means of creating and sustaining fictions which will allow
him a marginally humane identity.
In the present plays strong situations are created; an
image of a group of men without personal ties, sometimes,
Drifting aimlessly through the hard labour of their lives

at the mercy of their desires and rages, finding what bonds
they can in the rough camaraderie of others who share
their lot. (Chothia,1979: 66).
And in so tragic reality words seem to be those

characters essential means by which a shabby illusory world
is self-created to hide in, thus distanciating themselves from
unbearable realities. In this sense of reflection, one would
view the verbal entity as the elaborate masks, the dramatist
used in earlier plays. For example, Rocky rebels at being the
dirty little Ginny pimp(102) as Pearl reveals him to be
known as a shrewd businessman. The measure, therefore,
is that violence becomes the only consequence when their
verbally constructed illusions are thus threatened. Similarly
63
the verbal reality translated by the word whores as women

are called in the play, provokes their violence which
disappears when they are called the tarts. Joe is extremely
sensitive to the word nigger (168), even though his role in
the bar seems to be this. When Rocky calls him a doity
nigger (168) Joe threatens him with a bread knife. All of his
comfortable illusions about himself are built up and
protected by words, convincing himself that Is a gambling
man (170), be can swagger out of the bar for a brief while.
Then, violence and disorder are the common pattern for all
characters in Hopes bar without a hint to their ethnic
identity. Whether he is Rocky, or Pearl, or Joe or the tarts
even, words, first, put a comfortable veneer over their
shocking realities which soon dissolved as other words
precipitate actions which are essentially destructive.
Language also enables Harry to build and control an
expanded illusory world. He has convinced himself that the
tarts are good Kids (62) and that his bar isnt a
cathouse(70). Furthermore, his wifes identity the
Goddamned Bitch (132) she probably was also reshaped
through words until she has become poor old Bessie (50).
He is similarly able to explain his fear of the street and the
outside worlds by arranging the verbal fiction that he was
almost ran over by an automobile when he attempted cross
the road.
64
In this frame Hickey also rejects reality and makes

appeal to words creating a world of illusion. First introduced
to Harry Hopes clientele as a fiction maker which is
identified in the dramatis personae as a Teller of tales, he
has two ways of denying the brutal realities around him:
drinking and fabulating. And because the other characters
love him for his million funny stories (161) , he controls
everyone in the play. He is so skillful with the rhetoric of a
salesmanship that assures his bar mates that they can
dispense with their pipedreams and follow the course of
action he has carefully devised for them. Even Larry Slade,
whose treatment is more extensive than the others, is
controlled for the most part of the verbal fiction Hickey very
gradually reveals. Yet, when Slade properly names him the
Iceman of death (182) , Hickey neutralized Slade opposition
to him by revealing the story of his wifes murder, then,
Slade becomes Hickeys partisan under his control. Finally,
Hickey loses control of his fictions when he intuitively labels
his wife a damned bitch (241).
Words do no more sustain his illusion as he used to do
through the stories he told, and turns to his reality: a self-
tormented mad-man. Besides, the idiosyncratic speech
Hopes bar roomers have, they also have speech in common ,
this is a noticeable fact for words they use for alcohol and the
epithets used in addressing one another. Harry is the old
foolospher, the old wise guy, and Hickey christens him
65
old cemetery, to designate whiskey they say the booze or

Rot-gut; they are the burns, the gang. Language of
deception is also a common rhetoric, All smoke the same
hop , all have pipedreams, and although not slang , the
word tomorrow has special significance amongst the
roomers (J.Chothia, 1979: 127).
Henceforth, out of those characters interactions exposed
earlier, is there a common pattern for the way language is
used? It seems quite evident that language fails each of the
other characters in precisely the same way. The verbal
shelter that first translates the characters comfort collapses
through the ending revealing chaos and death. Hugos earlier
statement, I love only the proletariat (169), is inverted by
his later babbling which reduces all men to swine. In his
moment of rage and frustration, Harry blurts out that he
hated Bessie and all she stood for, Parrit, who is afraid to
drink because he suspects that alcohol will loosen his tongue
and reveal him as the betrayer of his mother, fully confesses
as he is intoxicated by Hickeys story.
At the plays end, a scene of incoherent noise
demonstrates the ultimate and complete dissolution of the
characters rational control of language. The weird cacophony
(259) of people simultaneously singing a bewildering
assortment of cheap popular songs is suggestive of the garble
sounds delineating the chaos. Therefore, in ONeills world
66
confronting ones hopes to reality makes words easily

disintegrate and become part of the core of murmurs
Beckett talks about at the end of The Unnameable.
Yet, whatfact beyond words disintegration? Silence is

another facet of that verbal chaos. Larry Slades inability to
create a meaningful alternative to his refusal of singing at the
end draws to a so much pathetic silence.
Most critics have interpreted such an association of

silence and verbal disorder as ONeills totally hopelessly
final vision. Such a claim is voiced by Doris Falk:
In the last plays ONeill walked in the valley not of

death alone but of nothingness in which all values are
illusions and all meaning fades before the terror of
ambiguity. (1958: 201)
That claim of ONeills hopeless vision has also been

extended to art failure even to provide ONeill with any
positive meanings, in this stance Tom Driver (8) says:
With ONeill not even art is a protection against the

darkness of night into which we journey. As matter of fact,
art, as he suggested in A Touch of the Poet, is likely to be
but another illusion, (1985: 15).
Drawing from Drivers view, one may conclude that

such a complete breakdown of words in a serious weakness in
67
ONeill himself. Is it not search for a true language

expressing all modern mens disintegration? Drivers claim
roses its validity when the language of the text is further
analysed with the stage language. The failure of words to
secure full communicative patterns pushed ONeill to
develop the verbal and intuitive communication, wherein
some particular act or sign serves as articulation. The
language of the eye, of the mind, and of sex is given
particular attention, Hickey says, shed kiss me and look in
my eyes, and shed know. Id see in her eyes how she was
trying not to know. furthermore, after their assaults on the
meaningless labels they used to identify one another, the
Hope bars Denizens succeeded to overcome their difference
and sought to fulfil their communicative desire. However,
frustration does occur when the communication receptor,
fails to grasp the message leading to the absence of
articulation. Larry on occasion disqualifies himself as a
receptor with such statements as No one takes him seriously.
Thats his epitaph, and Id never let myself believe a world
you told me. Larrys words seem to unveil the deliberate
refusal as one cause for receptor failure. Indeed, Larry is
shutting out any possibility of receiving a communication
simply by setting up a wall of judgement in advance.
68
Chapter Five
The Us-Them dichotomy:
The process of the Other in
The Iceman Cometh
1. From Passing to the Failing Reality.
The opening stage directions highlight Joes mixed racial
background. He is brown-skinned His face is only mildly
negroid in type. The nose is thin and his lips are not noticeably
thick(The Iceman: 5). Without directly saying so, ONeill
implies that Joe can pass, and pass he does , at least
initially. In the first part of Act I, Joes blackness is
completely ignored, and his uniformity with the white
majority is emphasized. Joe is an alcoholic and a lost soul like
the rest:
Man, when I dont want a drink, you call de morgue,

tell dem come take Joes body away, cause hes sure enuf
dead. Gimme de bottle quick, Rocky, before he changes his
mind! (The Iceman: 22-23)
John Lovell rightly observes that Joes addiction to

social depression, sleep, drink, shiftlessness is not a sign of his
race; it is his union card in a general societyMott belongs
(1948:48). Further corroborating his membership in this
group is Joes echo of the common sentiment regarding
Hickeys expected arrival. I was dreamin Hickey comme in
de door, crakin one of dem drummers jokes, wavinga big
bankroll and we was all goinbe drunk for two weeks. Wake up
and no luck (The Iceman: 18). Because Joe behaves and
thinks like the rest, we are temporarily led to believe he is
integrated and accepted, that he is one of them.
Halfway through Act I, this utopian picture of black-

white relations in America is destabilized as Joes racial
identity begins to matter for the very first time. Captain
Lewiss exclamation to himself, Good God! Have I been
drinking at the same table with a bloody Kaffir? takes us by
surprise (ibid: 42). Wetjoen explains to Joe that a Kaffir is
a nigger, upon which remark JOE stiffens and eyes
narrow(ibid: 42). With Wetjoens interference, hes no
damned Kaffir! Hes white, Joe is!, Lewis apologizes to Joe,
explaining Eyesight a trifle blurry, Im afraid and calls him
the whitest coloured man I ever knew (ibid: 43). Lewiss
remark is especially interesting because it reveals how Joe
Mott passes both literally and figuratively: he looks and
acts white.
Joe, in his easy going manner, accepts the apology but

draws his boundaries: I dont stand for nigger from
nobody. Never did. I de old days, people calls me nigger
wakes up in de hospital (ibid: 43). Nonetheless, the racial slur
must have hit an inner core in Joe because while the others
engage in a different conversation, he has been brooding
and interrupts the others to assert his whiteness:
Yes, such, white folks always said I was white. In de

days when I was flush, Joe Mott de only colored man dey
allows in de white gamblin houses. Youre all right, joke,
72
youre white, dey says. Wouldnt let me play craps,

dough.Dey know I coild make dem dice behave. (ibid: 45)
Although Joe insists eight times in the text that he is

white, most critics overlook his illusion of passing. Ruby
Cohn, for instance, wonders whether Mott means color or
character by whiteness (1971: 48). The answer to that
question is simple: Mott refers to the whiteness of his
character. Even when he insists on his whiteness, Joe
knows that he is not really white: All six of us colored boys,
we was tough and I was de toughest (The Iceman: 43).
The American Heritage Dictionary defines blacks as

dirty, evil, wicked, gloomy, marked by anger and sullenness,
calamitous, deserving censure or dishonor and white as
fair, decent, pure. By asserting his whiteness, Joe Mott is
indeed claiming these qualities associated with whiteness and
dissociating himself from all the negative connotations of his
blackness. Frantz Fanon discusses these racial connotations
and what they imply psychologically for a colonized black:
In the collective unconscious, black ugliness, sin,

darkness, immorality. In other words, he is Negro who is
immoral. If I order my life like that of a moral man, I simply
am not a Negro.(Black Skin, 1967:192)
What we see at work here is Joes assimilation, or to

borrow Fanons term for it, his alienation. His blind hope
73
for self-esteem leads Joe (like Jim Harris and Brutus Jones)
to identify himself with his social superior. The goal of the
colonized persons behavior is the Other, according to
Fanon, for Other alone can give him worth (ibid: 154). If
Joe were to accept his blackness, then he would also have to
come to terms with these less-than-desirable traits his race
attributes to him.
Joes pipe dream is, in a way, multi-faceted and more

complex than those of the others because it has as much to do
with opening a new gambling house as it has with his
adoption of whiteness:
Ill make my stake and get my gamblin house open

beforeyou boys leave. You got to come to de openin. Ill
treat white. If youre broke, Ill stake you to buck any game
you chooses. If you wins, dats velvet for you. If you loses,
it dont count. Cant treat you no whiter dandat, can I? (The
Iceman: 53-54).
Even though Timothy Wiles claims that Joe Mott

emerges as one of the most complexly-portrayed black men on
the white stage before the Civil Rights era, his next
postulation that Joewants full equality with the white world
without sacrifice of his black identity cannot be farther from
the truth (1979: 185). Joe desires to hold onto his illusion that
74
he is white, and when he is reminded that indeed he is not,

he reacts vehemently.
Motts insistence on his whiteness, is not only a self-
validating defense mechanism but also his only way to make
it in the white world. For instance, when in the past he
applied for approval to run a black gambling house, Joe has
to prove his whiteness, and this proof comes from Harry
Hope who writes to the Big Chief, attesting to Joes
character:
He (the Chief) jumps up, lookin as big as two freight

trains, and he pounds his fist like a ham on de desk, and he
shouts, You black son of a bitch, Harry says youre white
and you better be white or deres a little iron room up de
river waitin for you ! Den he sits down and says quiet
again, All right. You can open. Git de hell outa here!So I
opens, and he finds out Ise white, sure nuff, cause I run
wide open for years and my sugar on de dot, and de cops
and I is friends. (The Iceman: 46).
Timothy Wiles contends that ONeill stresses Joes

ability to function in the white world without Tomming, but
also without calling attention to his race (1979: 185). But
Joes adoption of a white mask negates this argument; Joe
cannot function in the white world without Tomming, and
75
all his futile attempts at assimilation constantly call attention

to his race.
Virginia Floyds assertion that Hopes saloon symbolizes
the American melting pot where all men are equal (New
Assessment, 1985: 521), has met with acceptance from other
critics, too, for instance, by John Lovell: Joe Mott is given
equality of struggle, aspiration, and failure, according to his
constitutional rights [A] Negro has aspired and died on
terms of equality (1948: 48). Nonetheless, it is ONeill who
treats Joe thus, not Rocky or Chuck. Another striking
criticism is Michael Manheims interpretation of the
character when he alleges that Motts past as an
independent entrepreneur suggests a self-secure
independence of the restrictions placed upon blacks in the early
twentieth century by the white establishment (1984: 149).
Manheim sees in Mott the black protagonist, the defender of
the honor of this down-trodden people (ibid: 149). On the
contrary, neither Joe Mott nor any other African-American
has enjoyed independence, especially in the early twentieth
century. Joe can achieve as much success as he is allowed by
the white establishment that Manheim himself refers to, and
his partial success comes at a cost to his identity and self-
respect. Such readings can serve at best as optimistic
interpretations of The Iceman Cometh.
76
2. The Futility of Flight: the Us-Them dichotomy.

Upon his arrival, Hickey offers Joe as well as the other
barflies a chance at epiphany by compelling them to confront
their pipe dreams. The Joe of Act 2 is markedly different
from the Joe of Act 1. There is a noticeable change in him.
He walks a tough, truculent swagger and his good-natured face
is set in sullen suspicion (The play: 108). He becomes more
race-conscious, pointing to his white racial difference from
the others. Act 2 marks Joes attempt to relinquish his white
mask, to come to terms with his black identity, and to win the
others recognition and approval for it. Having determined
that whites are not his friend but his foes, he deserts the
white camp. When Rocky inquires why Joe is so enraged at
Hickey, Joe responds,
Sure, you think hes all right. Hes a white man, aint
he? (his tone becomes aggressive ) Listen to me, you white
boys! Dont you get it in your heads Is pretendin to be
what I aint, or dat I aint proud to be what I is, get me? Or
you and mesgoin to have trouble (The play: 109).
By thus declaring his blackness, Joe provokes the

white mens anger, and Chuck responds by Ill moider de
nigger! (ibid: 109). He has willingly Othered himself for
the first time from the white crowd and walks as far away
from them on stage as he can, thereby metaphorically
77
pointing to segregation. Joe, who has so far sought to carve

out a space for himself among the dominant group, is finally
compelled (presumably by Hickey) to come to terms with his
true racial and social identity. All along, the us-them
dichotomy has been securely in place, even when Mott
refused to acknowledge it. One demonstration of his
difference is that unlike the white bums, Joe is not entitled to
free drinks but has to earn them with his labour, as seen in
Act 3, when he sawdusts the floors and prepares sandwiches.
Both Fanon and Memmi remind us that the assimilation

of the colonized is beyond question. Although the oppressed
may deny and distance themselves from their cultural/racial
heritage, the racism they suffer from never lessens.
Nonetheless, the major impossibility is not negating

ones existance, for he (the colonized) soon discovers that,
even if he agrees to everything, he would not be saved
since he is rejected by the colonizer who ridicules his
fruitless attempts at assimilation (Memmi, 1965: 124).
Assimilation is a dead-end street because if the

colonized natives are to become like the civilized whites,
then they cannot be held under yoke. When the oppressed
inevitably find out to their dismay that they cannot lay
claim to their humanity, and thus, equality, the only
alternative left for them is to reject their colonizer and to
78
rediscover the native Self and culture which has been

devalued. It is to such a state of revolution that Hickey, the
false Savior, drives Mott.
Joes alienation becomes much more acute as he

gradually realizes that assimilation is thwarted by the white
inhabitants of Harry Hopes bar. At the beginning of Act 3,
His manner is sullen, his face set in gloom. He ignores
everyone (The play:156). When he tries to prevent a fight
between Chuck and Rocky, Chuck calls him a black
bastard, and Rocky refers to him as yuhdoity nigger!
(ibid:168). The stage directions emphasize their hostility
towards Joe: Rocky, Like Chuck turns on Joe, as if their own
quarrel was forgotten and they became natural allies against
an alien (ibid: 168). Joe responds similarly to the
bartenders: (snarling with rage, springs from behind the
lunch Counter with the bread knife in his hand) You white
sons of bitches! Ill rip your guts out! (ibid: 168). Joe thus
assents to his role as the unwelcome black Other but is
willing to fight for his sense of self-respect.
79
3- From Desired Association to Voluntary Dissociation.

Triggered by his alienation, Joe is the first bar regular to
take some action and to leave the establishment at Hickeys
promptings: I aintcomin back. Isgoin to my own folks
where I belong. I dont stay where Is not wanted. Is sick and
tired of messin round wid white men (The Iceman: 17o). He
defiantly smashes his glass right before he leaves. (with a
sneering dignity) Is onysavin you de trouble, white Boy
(Rocky). Now you dont have to break it, soons my backs
turned, sos no white man kick about drinkin from de same
glass (ibid: 170). Joes parting words present a new Joe
unwilling to be subordinate to the social force that has
imprisoned him. Once he accomplishes his pipedream
(opening up his old gambling house for blacks), if he comes
back to Harry Hopes and anyone says,
Joe, you sure is white, Joe says he will respond, No,

Im black and my dough is black mans dough is black
mans dough, and yous proud to drink wid me or you dont
get no drink! Or maybe I just says, you can all go to hell. I
dont lower myself drinkin wid no white trash! (ibid: 170).
With these words, Joe Mott walks out on the crowd he

has now identified as his racial Other to attain the dream to
which he has been aspiring all along.
80
However, Joe is soon to return, as are the others. Unable

to realize his pipe dream, he has to face the fact that, as
Rocky says, he wasnt a gamblin man or a tough guy no
more; he was yellow (the play: 216). In order to finance his
pipedream, Joe briefly entertains the possibility of holding
up a white person but discovers he is incapable of carrying
out his plan. Even in his disappointment, Joe maintains his
haughty tone a bit longer: Scuse me, white Boys. Scuse for
livin. I dont want to be where Is not wanted (ibid: 217). He
sits next to Captain Lewis after asking indirectly for his
permission to do so in a servilely apologetic tone (ibid: 217).
Hickeys arrest by the police allows everyone, including
Joe, to resume their pipedreams. Joes last line in the play is
uttered (with drunken self-assurance): No, such, I wasnt
fool enough to git in no crap game. Not while Hickeys around.
Crazy people put a jinx on you (215).
Yet, the critical view of Edward P. Shaughnessy seems to

be the most plausible in Joes situation. While admitting that
the black characters of ONeill are much more complex in his
longer plays than in this one-acts, he directs our attention to
the fact that ONeill, even as late as 1939, did not completely
abandon his black stereotypes:
Joe Mott is clearly identified as a human being who

shares the same type of pipe dream that keeps all of
these men alive. ONeill undeniably reveals his conception
81
that the Black man is deeply and intricately entwined in

the human community as a wholeHere, even as ONeill
distinctly places a Black character within the human
framework, he still clings to racist preconceptions. Though
none of the characters are saints Joe Mott is a gambler
whose idea of working his way out of the Dead End Caf
is to get a gun and mug someone, and who at one point is
short-tempered enough to attack Rocky with a bread knife;
ONeill, even though his sympathies are clear, seems
unable to overcome his perception of the Black as a
gambling, short-tempered knife-wielder, the stereotypical
of the twenties and earlier. (Negro Portraiture, 1984:90)
The Iceman Cometh is also laden with other racial

stereotypes, some of them contradicting and canceling each
other out. For example, the initial stage directions refer to
Joes good nature and lazy humor (The play: 5). In other
words, like most other black characters Euro-American
writers have created, Joe is lazy, comic, and not to be
feared: a benign darky. But upon embracing his blackness,
Joe becomes more belligerent, and thus, an alarming figure
for the whites, for instance, when he attacks Chuck and
Rocky.
Another common stereotype ONeill promotes in his
representations of blackness is that of the superstitious black
man. At one point in the play ONeill describes Joe as
82
brooding superstitiously and associating Hickey with bad

luck: Is an ole gambling man and I knows bad luck when I
feels it! But its white mans bad luck. He cant jinx me! (169-
70). Yet, another stereotype Eugene ONeill utilizes in The
Icemen Cometh is the musical talent of blacks. During the
preparations for Harrys birthday party, while Cora
practices The Sunshine of Paradise Alley, she asks for
Joes help. He hums and sings and, by doing so,forgets his
sullenness and becomes his old self again (The play: 120).
83
CONCLUSION
As ONeill progresses from the minor successes of Thirst

to the major achievements of The Iceman Cometh, he seems
to develop a greater understanding of humanity in all its
shades, eliminating reliance on widely perceived ethnic myths
and developing his idea of universal brotherhood in a
universe governed by psychological fate. As the objective of
the present work has been to show how ONeills ethnic
portrayals validate his idea of a common humanity, the study
of characterization displays his various techniques to subject
his black characters to the same forces, both internal and
external, as he does his white characters, and as a result, they
are equally as likely to share similar fates. As with all other
significant characters in his plays, the progressive complexity
of characterization indicates the playwrights developing skill
at investing them with increasing depth. The black men are
portrayed as psychologically real, like white men in every
way except in the colour of their skin. In fact, ONeills
greater skill in portraying complex psychology as he moved
through the 1920s contributed to the creation of his black
characters as being destroyed by the very psychological
depth that defines them as real and equal to their white
brothers, rather than as stereotypes. That ONeill used the
85
same strategies for future white, tragically fated characters

such as Con Melody, Mary Tyrone, and LaviniaMannon
serves to further support his use of ethnicity as indicator of
the common bond of ultimate doom within the ultimately
hopeless universe. No one gets special treatment, and no one
is free from fear or death, the great equalizers in the
playwrights universe. Indeed, ONeill was engaged in a
quest to verify the existence of an eternal principle in human
existence, a principle I hope to show that is not only eternal
but also universal throughout ONeills body of work.
There are at least two forms of discourse pervading
ONeills black plays. One is the discourse of the critical
tradition that was and remains dominant in the corpus of
criticism on American literature. Another is the varied
discourse of the black characters as seen through the white
lens of ONeills worldview: their dialects, their aspirations
to success in a predominantly white world, their attempts to
bridge cultural gaps. However, neither of these rhetorical
traditions should be essentialised as a totalistic entity that
emphasizes the immutability of its respective category.
Analyses of the so called negro- plays have illuminated the
relative positions of the characters in terms of both
discourses. It may be just such a varied and shifting nature of
discourse that lends further credence to a fuller
understanding of ONeills supposedly theatrical
ambivalence. Such a Modernist ambivalence -fragmentation,
86
destabilized meaning, despair, bleakness- can be perceived in

the outcomes of each of the plays. None of the plays seem to
be able to extract themselves from the binary opposition
between the attractive but dangerous white world and the
equally mysterious and dangerous black one. It seems that
the major black characters face alienation in whichever
world they choose, whichever discourse they attempt to
embody or mask.
Critics continue to disagree as to the level of
achievement in ONeills portrayal of alienation. Some find
parallels between the authors characterization of African
and Irish Americans. It is quite clear that the potential for
universality in ONeills ethnic portrayals has pushed ONeill
so far as to intentionally incur doubts about his sympathies in
his creation of the memorable Brutus Jones and Jim Harris.
Then, Shaughnessys phrase faithful realism comes as a
conclusion about ONeills artistic practice. Clinging to the
common psychological and spiritual underpinnings of
significant characters of all ethnicities the question of racism
may ultimately be placed within the context of ONeills
struggles with determinism and freedom. In this sense, any
hypothesis concerning ONeills position against racism was
possibly rooted in his awareness that African and Irish
Americans both fell victim to similar stereotypes, is refuted
in this study. While ONeill is keenly aware of the isolated
effects of such deterministic forces as ethnic intolerance,
87
economics, and religion, his characters -black or white- are

perhaps more notably victims of a larger fatalistic force.
Such a force might be more easily understood as a
combination of individual forces that affect all people.
ONeills plays with central characters that are black
therefore focus less on the characters ethnicity per se than
on the more pressing challenge of what it means to be part of
the human race.
The Iceman Cometh is a play about a group of
spiritually bankrupt drunken derelicts shaken when a
former friend return to the flap house cleaned up and advises
them to give up their pipedreams. In the context of ethnic
characterization, the black portraiture reaches its ultimate
point as Joe Mott, ONeills last African-American character,
contributes significantly to our understanding of the
playwrights evolving black characters by offering more
insights into the concept of
Passing , the play carries and furthers the themes
ONeill had given voice in his earlier black plays. Like his
antecedents Brutus Jones and Jim Harris, Joe Mott, a
seemingly minor character in The Iceman Cometh, adopts a
mask for survival and success in a predominantly white
world.
The polar reading of Joe Mott, in the light of the
playwrights rhetoric of inclusion, on the one hand, and in
88
the scope of post-colonial discourse on the other, have

enabled us discover the various layers upon which this play is
conceived. ONeills rhetoric of ethnicity is voiced in the
cacophony, the repetitions, the stories and the common
systematic recounting of experience. Yet, aiming at inclusion
rather than marginalization it isbest articulated by the fact
that ethnic epithets are flung about withabandon. Anyone at
any time is subject to the same verbal treatment. For
instance Joes menacing words to his conglomerates show
how easily racial labels can be used as a double edged
swords, they are equally deceptive no matter which group,
minority or majority, they are directed toward. Slurs such as
wop, ginny, nigger, and Liney are hurled about even
as they function rhetorically as an equalizing device, the play
in its very theme is not a study of ethnicity or nationality, and
so the application of such slurs to any particular group is
mediated by their frequent use. The aural tapestry of the
multicultural population of the bar stands out less as
evidence of ONeills alleged racism than his inclusiveness;
everyone in such a melting pot has his own manner of
speech.
The Iceman Cometh is rather a study of the destructive
power of a dream in its commonality feature. Each character
reveals the conscious and unconscious motivations behind his
respective down-fall.However, the play does not necessarily
reflect a strict determinism, though perhaps it is dramatizing
89
a greater sense of an impending existentialism, since each is

responsible for his own achievement and failure, what the
playwright shows in the play is how humanity may learn
about its tragic heritage and hopeless condition, but also how
that awareness will not prevent eventual down. Indeed, the
multicultural grouping of the characters tends to validate
some critics view that ONeills development as an observer
and reporter of the human condition can be seen in the way
he shows the group surviving this most intimate of intrusions
by one of their own (Hickey), leaving them laughing and
singing while they ignore the tragedy that continues to loom.
Yet, the play in the light of postcolonial discourse
analysis strikes the main antagonistic connotations of
White and Black. While the former is equivalent to
financial success, and, to achievement of the materialistic
American dream, the latter in this white- dominated world
equals failure, non-identity, non-existence, and, therefore,
Joe Mott strives to disconnect himself from such conditions
at best.
Hopes bar does not differ much from the outside world
in its preconceptions about and treatment of the racial Other.
If the only equality Joe Mott might attain in this
microcosm of American society is through a rejection of the
self and adoption of values alien to him, there really is no
equality, no matter how much one would like to believe in it.
90
Joe Mott, the only black character of The Iceman Cometh,

has been, for the most part, ignored by ONeill scholars as a
minor character in this slowly unfolding human drama.
Nonetheless, he embodies ONeills statement on the
possibility of integration in the United States by revealing at
what cost it can be achieved, if at all. Black-white integration
should be predicated on reciprocal acceptance of cultural
differences.
However, the play demonstrates during its initial colour-
blind stage that integration of the (white) Self and the (black)
Other is often realized only when the subordinate Other
acquiesces to its required sameness with the Self. Joe Mott
illuminates the usual psychological process of colonization.
As the colonized, Joe first denigrates his blackness in hopes
to become like his Racial Other. Upon discovering the
impossibility of assimilation, he rejects the dehumanizing
Other and reappraises his self, only to affirm its desirability.
It would have been nave, though pleasant, to think ONeill
would have believed in such overnight decolonization. Joe
Mott will most likely reclaim by the end of the play his white
mask in his hopeless hope to belong. The Iceman Cometh
ends, therefore, with the indication that, as in any other
ONeill tragedy, the human spirit will fall short of achieving
the greatness it yearns for.
91
With this deeper commonality emphasized, ONeill was

able to afford his ethnic characters greater equality, at least
in their doomed existences. In providing this equality, ONeill
simultaneously enhanced the image and deepened the
complexity of all marginalized people in the face of their
inevitable naturalistic despair.
92
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Reference Works.
Ashcroft, Bill. Post-Colonial Transformation. New York:
Routledge, 2001.
Bigsby, C.W.E., A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-
Century American Drama. Vol. 1, 1900-1940.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982.
Bradshaw, David.A Concise Companion to Modernism.
Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
Manheim, Michael. The Cambridge Companion to
Eugene ONeill. London: C.U.P, 1998.
Smith, Madeleine C., and Eaton, Richard, eds. Eugene
ONeill: An Annotated International Bibliography, 1973
Through 1999.McFarland, 2001.
II. General Bibliography.

Bhabha, Homi K., The Other Question- Stereotype and
Colonial Discourse, in Screen 24, (Nov.-Dec.1983): 18-36.
Bogard, Travis. Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene
ONeill. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
93
Brainthwaite, William Stanley. The Negro in American

Literature. The Negro: An Interpretation. Ed. New York:
Arno, 1968. 29-44.
Brietzke, Zander. The Aesthetics of Failure: Dynamic
Structure in the Plays of Eugene ONeill. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2001.
Chothia, John. Forging a Language: A Study of the Plays
of Eugene ONeill.New York: CUP, 1979.
Clark, Barrett H., Eugene ONeill: The Man and His
Plays. New York: Robert M. McBride, 1929.
Cooley, John. In Pursuit of the Primitive: Black Portraits
by Eugene ONeill and OtherVillage Bohemians. The
Harlem Renaissance Re-examined. Ed. Victor A. Kramer.
New York: AMS P, 1987.
Driver, Tom.F. On the Late plays of Eugene
ONeill, Tulane Drama Review, III , N2
(Dec, 1958).
Falk, Doris V., Eugene ONeill and the Tragic Tension: An
Interpretive Study of the Plays.New Brunswick, N.J.:
Rutgers University Press, 1958.
-----. Ed., Eugene ONeill at Work: Newly Released Ideas
for Plays. New York: Ungar, 1981.
94
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin/White Masks. Trans. Charles

Lam Markmann. Intro. HomiBhabha. London: Pluto,
1986.
Floyd, Virginia. Ed., The Plays of Eugene ONeill: A New
Assessment. New York: TheUngar Publishing Company,
1985.
Frederickson, George. White Images of Black Slaves (Is
What We See on Others Sometimes A Reflection of What
We Find in Ourselves?). Ed. Richard Delgado And John
Stefancic. Critical White Studies: Looking Behind
theMirror. Philadelphia: temple UP, 1997. 38-45.
Gelb, Arthur and Barbara. ONeill. New York: Harper,
1962.
Gillett, Peter J., ONeill and Racial Myths. Eugene
ONeill: A Collection of Criticism. Ed. Ernest G. Griffin.
New York: McGraw, 1976. 45-58.
Keating, Ann Louise. Interrogating Whiteness, (De)
Constructing Race. College English57.8 (Dec.1995): 901-
18.
Kennedy, Randall. Nigger: The Strange Career of a
Troublesome Word. New York:Pantheon, 2002.
Long, Richard. The Outer Reaches: The White Writer
and Blacks in the Twenties.Studies in the Literary
Imagination 7.2 (1974): 65-71.
95
Lovell, John, Jr. Eugene ONeills Darker Brother. In

Theatre Arts 32 (Feb. 1948): 45-48.
Lott, Tommy L. The Invention of Race: Black Culture and
the Politics of Representation. Malden, MA: Blackwell,
1999.
Manheim, Michael. Vital Contradictions: Characterization
in the Plays of Ibsen, Strindberg,
Chekhov and ONeill. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2002.
Memmi, Albert.The Colonizer and the Colonized. New
York: Orion, 1965.
Pfister, Joel. Staging Depth: Eugene ONeill and the
Politics of Psychological Discourse.Chapel Hill: U of North
Carolina P, 1995.
Russell, Kathy, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall. The Color
Complex: The Politics Of Skin Color Among African
Americans. New York: Anchor, 1993.
Scupin, Raymond. Ethnicity. Race and Ethnicity: An
Anthropological Focus on the Unites States and the
World.Ed.RaymondScupin. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 2003. 67-89.
Shaughnessy, Edward L., Eugene ONeill: The
Development of the Negro Portraiture. In MELUS, vol.
11.3 (Fall 1984): 87-91.
96
-----------Down the Nights and Down the Days: Eugene

ONeills Catholic Sensibility.Notre Dame: U of Notre
Dame P, 1996.
-----------. ONeills African and Irish-Americans:
stereotypes of faithful realism? The Cambridge
Companion to Eugene ONeill. Ed. Michael Manheim.
CUP, 1998. 148-63.
Smith, Tom W. Changing Racial Labels: From
Colored to Negro to Black to African American.
The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol.56, No.4. Winter,1992,
496-514.
White, Deborah Gray. Arnt I A Woman?: Female Slaves
in the Plantation South. New York: W.W. Norton, 1985.
97

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Laboratoire des Sciences du Langage Research Series

Ethnic Characters Onstage:

Eugene ONeills Rhetoric of

Dr. Fatiha KAD BERRAHAL

DL: 2010 - 4362

Modern American drama has witnessed the emergence

caricature than character -Captain Keeney, Nat Bartlett,

Despite critical controversy concerning his methods and

Iceman Cometh; which is the case study of the closing

E. ONeills idiosyncratic typology of the black

the image of Negro from a mere entertainer and submissive

So where does that leave ONeill, undoubtedly one of the

manifestation of societal ethnocentrism seems not only likely

Most germane to our study are ONeills rhetorical

As a watershed character for ONeill and one that can be

In Black Skin, White Masks,Fanon elucidates how the

Likewise, in Orientalism, Edward Said argues for the

childlike, different; thus, the European is rational, virtuous,

Despite their ideological differences, HomiBhabha,

Objective of colonial discourse is to construe the

Likewise, in The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon

Native society is not simply described as a society

that comes near him; he is the deforming element

Colonialism mentally subjugates the natives by thus

[The] colonial discourse produces the colonized as a

Yet it is neither easy nor credible to generalize thus

fulfills diverse needs of the central Self, and depending on the

the multiplicity of ways of codifying the Other, the

One of the underlying reasons for the paradoxical nature

One way to address ONeills contributions to both

completely his meaning, transcended the limits of the text

ONeill, the practical artist, devoted much time and

mans tragedy as he struggles to escape the grief of non-

The return of ONeill to the essentially realistic form,

silence is generally evident in the characters escapes from

In an age when postmodern criticisms audacious

The very development in ONeills writing is another

The problem of communication translating the

articulate say Lemme talk! Say, listen to me wait a

the mask, creative lighting, interior monologue, and

In the urgency to remedy for the limited function of

discrepancy between symbol and meaning. All the misuse of

hopelessness and the deception that inadequate use of words

Implicit motif that might be drawn from these

It is not always true to limit ONeills tragic vision of life

communication tragedy. Being the son of the actor James

use ethnicity as a rhetorical mask, much as his characters use

from1830 to 1860 (ibid p.40).Harriet Beecher Stowes anti-

Black women characters did not fare any better in the

sensuality (p.29). She was governed almost entirely by her

There is little doubt that it helped to create and to fix

In the 1830s, a new stereotype, Jim Crow, was launched

Huggins discusses in greater depth black representations in

The theatrical darky was childlike; he could be duped

The premise of Huggin`s argument is that the alter ego

In other words, Nathan Huggins asserts that rather than

The stereotype of the Negro drama is the unhappy

Anglo-Americans participated in this movement not only

Americans, romanticized them, and forced the latter this

his works and a number of lived experiences is very often

Joe Smith, the black gambler with whom he often shared

particularly aware of and sympathetic to the problems

Furthermore, Joe Smith would serve as Smith,and

Clearly, ONeill felt a personal connection to his down-