The Iceman Cometh | Study Guide

About the Title

The title, The Iceman Cometh, recalls an off-color joke and, with the archaic verb (cometh is an archaic form of the third-person, present tense of come: comes), a quotation from the gospel of Matthew. In both cases, according to Eugene O'Neill's longtime friend, the American screenwriter and director Dudley Nichols (1865–1960), O'Neill's stated intention was to link the profane and the sacred. The play—which includes the arrival of Hickey, a false Messiah figure—parodies Matthew 25:6, which describes the Savior's arrival: "And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him."

The bawdy joke involves an iceman who delivers ice to a housebound wife. Her frequently absent husband, a traveling salesman, returns home and shouts upstairs to his wife, "Has the iceman come yet?"—to which she answers, "No, but he's breathing hard." In the play, Hickey arrives at his favorite saloon; he is sober and determined to save his drunken friends as he has been saved. Hickey represents the whole cast of the joke; he is a salesman, an iceman, a drunk, and an adulterer. His story ends with his arrest. He has iced (gangster slang for "murdered") his wife and is expected to be burned (gangster slang for "electrocuted").