The New Deal Cometh: Examining The Iceman Cometh and Hughie in Relation to the Rhetoric of the Roosevelt Administration John Curry Eugene O'Neill Review, Volume 33, Number 1, 2012, pp. 91-109 (Article) Published by Penn State University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/468307 [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] THe NeW DeAL CoMetH: EXAMINING THE ICEMAN COMEtH AND HUGHiE IN ReLATION TO THe RHeTOrIC OF THe ROOSeVeLT ADMINISTrATION John Curry Wall Street got drunk. It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments? —President George W. Bush, July 18, 2008 We can’t afford to let the same phony arguments and bad habits of Washington kill financial reform and leave American consumers and our economy vulnerable to another meltdown. —President Barack Obama, December 12, 2009 In 1939 Eugene O’Neill completed The Iceman Cometh, his powerful drama about the failed lives and sustaining pipe dreams of the unemployed alcohol- ics who inhabit a run-down tavern in New York. That same year saw a critical EUGeNe O’NeILL ReVIeW, VoL. 33, No. 1, 2012 COPYRIGHT © 2012 THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY PARK, PA EOR 33.1_07_Curry.indd 91 16/02/12 10:48 PM change in American economics as the second-term government of Franklin Roosevelt struggled to reverse massive unemployment and faltering public confidence in the regulatory policies of the New Deal. One year later, as the New Dealers began to shift their economic strategies toward defense prepa- ration, O’Neill began writing Hughie, a one-act play in which two characters conspire to avoid societal isolation. Because of the significance of unemploy- ment and societal deterioration in the years surrounding the writing of The Iceman Cometh and Hughie, the generally reticent attitude toward work and progress expressed by the main characters in these plays deserves careful consideration. Yet, the numerous references to work and unemployment in these two plays have received little critical attention, particularly in the wide range of critical interpretations of The Iceman Cometh.1 Reading O’Neill’s two later Depression–era plays in the light of the New Deal as a promotion of behavioral reform, and with the hindsight of the author’s stated critiques of the Roosevelt administration, reveals a complex commentary on the often evangelical nature of economic discourse in American society. O’Neill’s allusions to historically specific occupations and economic situations in The Iceman Cometh are undeniable. Nearly all the characters are initially listed in reference to their occupations, and they define their existence in terms of the work they either do or used to do. The dream of returning to work is the foundation around which the characters build their self-­sustaining community illusion. While most scholars have attributed the delusion found in the characters’ pronouncements to O’Neill’s view of human nature, the communal pipe dream of returning to long-lost occupations also reflects the cultural influence of economics during the Depression years. In 1937, despite earlier New Deal policies designed to stimulate the economy and increase jobs, the number of unemployed workers in the United States reached a height nearly equal to that of the earliest years of the Depression.2 As economic historian Alan Brinkley has shown, the ­unemployment of 1937 was the result of “an economic crash more rapid and EVIEW R in some ways more severe than the crash of 1929.” In theory, the “second Depression” of 1937 was primarily a result of the same economic confusion ILL Ne that had caused the stock market crash of 1929. The self-regulating or “free” O’ economy of the 1920s, which created the conditions for the Great Depression, e N proved difficult to reform using the policies of the first New Deal. In explain- e ing the Roosevelt administration’s response to this crisis, Brinkley states, EUG HE The events of 1937 and 1938 had proved, they believed, that the cor- T porate world, when left to its own devices, naturally frustrated the 92 spontaneous workings of the market; that business leaders often conspired with one another to impose high “administered prices” EOR 33.1_07_Curry.indd 92 16/02/12 10:48 PM on their customers; that the result was an artificial ­constriction of purchasing power and hence an unnecessarily low level of production.3 In order to lower the unemployment figures and get the economy ­moving ­forward, the second-term Roosevelt administration decided to impose harsher economic controls and regulations, despite the opposition of big business. Because of the stature that the business sector had constructed around the notion of a “free economy,” the advocates of the Second New Deal had to sell the public on the necessity of a controlled economy.4 In The Folklore of American Capitalism, published in 1937, Thurman Arnold, Roosevelt’s head of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department and one of the most outspoken advocates of the New Deal, argued that the concepts of rugged individualism and a free economy were outdated myths. Unlike the antimonopoly trustbusters of the past, Arnold believed that big business was an important element in the American economy, but he also advocated a wide range of federal and state regulations controlling the econ- omy.5 Using spiritual and psychological terms, Arnold stated that such regu- lation would establish “a religion of government which permits us to face frankly the psychological factors inherent in the development of organiza- tions with public responsibility.”6 Following Arnold’s suggestion, from 1938 through to 1941 much of the New Deal rhetoric was directed toward demythicizing the business commu- nity’s negative portrayal of a state-controlled economy. Analogies linking the “free economy” to a myth or illusion were soon appearing in sources other than government literature. For example, in a 1939 issue of the New Republic, editor George Soule withheld complete agreement with the New Deal poli- cies, but he conceded, “we do know that the theory of ‘free economy’ is so C u far removed from the actual behavior of our world that it might as well be a RRY 7 metaphysical discussion of the flight of angels.” T In the midst of this debate over the myths and realities of the economy, HE O’Neill completed his large play centered on the illusions of a dozen New N Yorkers who have reached the depths of alcoholism and financial despair. EW DEAL COMETH Throughout the first act of Iceman the unemployed characters reminisce about their lives, primarily their occupations, and describe their confidence in a rosy future. Each man believes his former job is still available and that he will be rehired when the time is right—in some vague “tomorrow.” Each man in the tavern recognizes that each of the others’ dreams of tomorrow is impossible, yet all the characters realize that these pipe dreams help them 93 fend off their sordid reality. In keeping with the New Dealers’ view of big business, the regulars at Harry Hope’s tavern, when left to their own devices EOR 33.1_07_Curry.indd 93 16/02/12 10:48 PM (the primary device being alcohol), conspire with one another to support a life of nostalgia and self-deception about their future. As John Henry Raleigh’s historical analysis has shown, Iceman is a nos- talgia play on at least two levels.8 The play is set in 1912, which is within the years O’Neill spent in the seedy bars of Manhattan. Various biographies and historical studies have identified character sources for Iceman as derived from O’Neill’s own drinking buddies during his days at taverns in New York such as Jimmy the Priest’s or the Hell Hole.9 Moreover, this information demonstrates that the playwright had first-hand experience of a period in American history that the character Larry Slade calls “the flush times of graft when everything went.”10 Thus, the play is nostalgia for the writer, going back more than twenty years in his personal history. But the play also relies on the nostalgia of the characters—mostly memories of an era that Raleigh situates from the late nineteenth century up to 1912. According to Raleigh much of this nostalgia refers to corrupt public policy, specifically the flourishing of Tammany Hall in New York City. This era of graft ended approximately in the year the play is set, primarily as a result of Tammany’s transition from illegal vice to more respectable types of fraud.11 In Eugene O’Neill’s America: Desire Under Democracy, the late John Patrick Diggins examines Iceman, and most of O’Neill’s canon, in terms of a political philosophy that juxtaposes self-realization and individual desire against the “dominant culture of possessive acquisitiveness” that arises from democracy. Diggins argues that the founders established a form of govern- ment that would “keep factions in check” so that “desire would be controlled either through institutional arrangements or through responsible leadership in the office of the presidency.” In his analysis of Iceman, Diggins focuses on the postwar production of the play and the philosophical aspects of the char- acters’ desire for sustaining illusions in the face of the harsh truths of a politi- cally destructive world. He only occasionally touches on the basic nature of most of the characters’ desires in relation to the years prior to and during the EVIEW 12 R writing of the play. Like many citizens in pre-Depression America, the regulars at Harry ILL Ne Hope’s saloon desire easy money for little work, while at the same time O’ defending their self-reliance and work ethic.