Suggestions

Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.
  • Shakespeare dark gray
    • No Fear Shakespeare Translations
    • Shakespeare Study Guides
    • Shakespeare Life & Times
    • Glossary of Shakespeare Terms
  • Literature dark gray
    • No Fear Literature Translations
    • Literature Study Guides
    • Glossary of Literary Terms
    • How to Write Literary Analysis
  • Other Subjects dark gray
    • Biography
    • Biology
    • Chemistry
    • Computer Science
    • Drama
    • Economics
    • Film
    • Health
    • History
    • Math
    • Philosophy
    • Physics
    • Poetry
    • Psychology
    • Short Stories
    • Sociology
    • US Government and Politics
  • Test Prep PLUS dark gray
    • Test Prep Lessons
    • AP® English Literature
    • AP® English Language
  • Teacher dark gray
    • SparkTeach
    • Teacher's Handbook
  • Blog
My PLUS Dashboard
  • My PLUS Activity dark gray
    • Notes
    • Bookmarks
    • Test Prep PLUS
    • No Fear Translations & Audio
    • Mastery Quizzes
    • Flashcards
    • Infographics
    • No Fear Graphic Novels
  • Account Details
  • Subscription & Billing

Please wait while we process your payment

Reset Password

  • Please wait while we process your payment

    Log in Sign up

    Sparknotes

  • By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.

    Don’t have an account? Subscribe now

    Create Your Account

    Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial

    • Ad-free experience
    • Study notes
    • Flashcards
      & Quizzes
    • AP® English Test Prep
    • Plus much more

  • Already have an account? Log in

    Your Email

    Choose Your Plan

    BEST VALUE

    Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!

    Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?

    Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!

  • Price

    $24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax

    Subtotal $37.48 + tax

    Save 25% on 2-49 accounts

    Save 30% on 50-99 accounts

    Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.

    Your Plan

    Payment Details

  • We're sorry, SparkNotes Plus isn't available in your country.

  • Payment Details

    Payment Summary

    SparkNotes Plus

    You'll be billed after your free trial ends.

    7-Day Free Trial

    Not Applicable

    Renews March 27, 2023 March 20, 2023

    Discounts (applied to next billing)

    DUE NOW

    US $0.00

    SNPLUSROCKS20  |  20% Discount

    This is not a valid promo code.

    Discount Code (one code per order)

    SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.

    Choose Your Plan

    Payment Details

    Payment Summary

    Suggestions

    Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.
    • My Account Icon My Account white
      • My PLUS Activity
        • Notes
        • Bookmarks
        • Test Prep PLUS
        • No Fear Translations
        • Mastery Quizzes
        • Flashcards
        • Infographics
        • No Fear Graphic Novels
      • Account Details
      • Subscription & Billing
      My PLUS Dashboard
    • Shakespeare white
      • No Fear Shakespeare Translations
      • Shakespeare Study Guides
      • Shakespeare Life & Times
      • Glossary of Shakespeare Terms
    • Literature white
      • No Fear Literature Translations
      • Literature Study Guides
      • Glossary of Literary Terms
      • How to Write Literary Analysis
    • Other Subjects white
      • Biography
      • Biology
      • Chemistry
      • Computer Science
      • Drama
      • Economics
      • Film
      • Health
      • History
      • Math
      • Philosophy
      • Physics
      • Poetry
      • Psychology
      • Short Stories
      • Sociology
      • US Government and Politics
    • Test Prep PLUS white
      • Test Prep Lessons
      • AP® English Literature
      • AP® English Language
    • Teacher white
      • SparkTeach
      • Teacher's Handbook
    • Blog
    • Help

    Please wait while we process your payment

    expired-logo

    Your PLUS subscription has expired

    • We’d love to have you back! Renew your subscription to regain access to all of our exclusive, ad-free study tools.
    Renew your subscription

    Please wait while we process your payment

    expired-logo

    snpromo-logo
    • Looking for exclusive, AD-FREE study tools? Look no further!

    The Iceman Cometh

    Eugene O'Neill

    Study Guide
    • Study Guide
    • Summary
      • Summary & Analysis
      • Act I: Part one
      • Act I: Part two
      • Act I: Part three
      • Act II: Part one
      • Act II: Part two
      • Act III: Part one
      • Act III: Part two
      • Act IV: Part one
      • Act IV: Part two
      • Full Book
      • Full Book Summary
      • Key Facts
    • Characters
      • Character List
      • Larry Slade
      • Theodore Hickman
      • Don Parritt
      • Harry Hope
    • Literary Devices
      • Themes
      • Symbols
    • Quotes
      • Important Quotes Explained
    • Quick Quizzes
      • Book
      • Full Book Quiz
      • Act 1: Part one
      • Act 1: Part two
      • Act 1: Part three
      • Act 2: Part one
      • Act 2: Part two
      • Act 3: Part one
      • Act 3: Part two
      • Act 4: Part one
      • Act 4: Part two
        • More
        • Plot Overview
        • Character List
        • Analysis of Major Characters
        • Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
        • Essays
          • Mini Essays
          • Suggested Essay Topics
        • Further Study
          • Suggestions for Further Reading

        Please wait while we process your payment

        snplus-logo

        Unlock your FREE SparkNotes PLUS trial!

        Unlock your FREE Trial!

        Sign up and get instant access to bookmarks.
        • Ad-Free experience
        • Easy-to-access study notes
        • Flashcards & Quizzes
        • AP® English test prep
        • Plus much more
        Already have an account? Log in
        Characters

        Character List

        Characters Character List
        • Theodore Hickman

          A salesman. Immediately likable, Hickey speaks like a salesman with an "easy flow of glib, persuasive convincingness." His shrewd eyes can take in anyone at a glance, thus his immediate intuition that he and Parritt have something in common. Hickey is the saloon's anxiously-awaited guest, his arrival promising free drinks and merriment. However, this time the group's "messiah," so to speak, comes bearing a different gospel of salvation, urging them to divest themselves of their pipe dreams and finally make peace with themselves. Hickey's murder of the tomorrow dreams will bring ruin the bar, thus Hickey is the "Iceman," or Death.

          Read an in-depth analysis of Theodore Hickman .

        • Larry Slade

          The play's "Foolosopher." Larry is a tall, raw-boned Irishman in his sixties who was once a Syndicalist-Anarchist. Having bitterly retired from the world, he presents himself as a man who has chosen to watch the carnage from the grandstand of philosophical detachment and eagerly awaits his death. O'Neill notes that Larry has a "mystic's meditative pale-blue eyes with a gleam of sharp sardonic humor in them" and his look of "tired tolerance" gives his face the quality of a weary priest.

          Read an in-depth analysis of Larry Slade .

        • Don Parritt

          A gangly, awkward eighteen-year-old who has come to Larry upon a crackdown on the Anarchist movement made possible by his treason. Larry was once his Anarchist mother's lover. Wracked by guilt over his betrayal of his mother, he will beg for Larry's judgment throughout the play and progressively come to acknowledge the hate that underpinned his treason. In this sense, he serves as Hickey's double.

          Read an in-depth analysis of Don Parritt .

        • Harry Hope

          The owner of the saloon. Harry is a "bag of bones" in his sixties with the face of an old, balky family horse. He wears spectacles so misaligned that at times one eye peers over one lens while another looks half under the other glass. Likable to all, he hides his vulnerability behind a "testy truculent manner" but fools no one. Hope has not ventured outside the bar in twenty years and his pipe dream is that he has remained inside out of respect for his dead wife Bess.

          Read an in-depth analysis of Harry Hope .

        • Rocky Pioggi

          The night bartender. Rocky is a Neopolitan-American in his late twenties, squat and muscular with a swarthy face and beady eyes. He is tough, sentimental, and good-natured. His pipe dream involves his refusal to admit to himself that he is a pimp.

        • Hugo Kalmar

          A former Anarchist editor who served ten years in prison for his activities. Hugo is a small, fastidiously clean man with an over-sized head, a "walrus mustache" and black eyes that peer from behind thick spectacles. A "foreign atmosphere" pervades him, Hugo bearing the "stamp of an alien radical, a strong resemblance to the type Anarchist as portrayed, bomb in hand, in newspaper cartoons." His pipe dream of political liberation allows him to deny his desire to rule over the masses. He is drunk for the entire play, intermittently rousing from his stupor to denounce the crowd, whine for a drink, and make odes to Babylon.

        • Ed Mosher

          A born grafter, con man, and practical joker. Mosher is a fat, bald in his late fifties with an unshaven kewpie's face. His erstwhile circus career manifests itself in his flashy worn clothes. His pipe dream consists of his return to the circus.

        • Pat McGloin

          Mosher's drinking partner. The fiftyish McGloin has the look of his former police days stamped all over him. His once brutal and greedy face has melted into a "good-humored, parasite's characterlessness." He dreams of disproving his conviction on graft charges and returning to the police force.

        • Willie Oban

          A man in his thirties who left Harvard Law School upon the ruin of his prominent industrialist father. Willie dreams of starting his legal career and he speaks with "mocking suavity." Dressed in paper-thin rags, he shudders continually in his drunken stupor, his eyelids fluttering "as if any light were too strong for his eyes."

        • Joe Mott

          A black man in his fifties who dreams of re-opening his colored gambling house. He wears a once-flashy suit and sports a scar across his left cheek. O'Neill notes that his "face is only mildly Negroid in type" and Joe's pipe dream involves a degree of passing as white.

        • Piet Wetjoen

          A huge Boer in his fifties whose once strapping frame has drowned in a blubbering mass of "flaccid tallow." He is Lewis's drinking partner and dreams of returning to South Africa, having left in disgrace for his cowardice during the Boer war. He is distinguished by his comic accent.

        • Cecil Lewis

          A veteran from the Boer War, Captain Lewis is as "obviously English as Yorkshire pudding." He is in his late fifties, of a lean and erect figure, and sports a war wound on his left shoulder. He dreams of returning to England, having been driven out upon losing his regiment's money in a drunken night of gambling.

        • James Cameron

          Has the face of an "old, well-bred, gentle housedog" with guileless and bloodshot eyes. He has the manners of a gentleman, mixing the qualities of a "prim, Victorian old mad" and a boy who has never grown up. He dreams of returning to his newspaper career. As his name suggests, he is the leader of the so-called "Tomorrow Movement," endlessly deferring the realization of the pipe dream to the day after.

        • Pearl and Margie

          Rocky's two "tarts" are feather-brained, sentimental, lazy, and reasonably content with life. Though they retain a degree of youthful prettiness, their trade is beginning to wear on them. Their pipe dream involves the denial of their status as whores. They relate to their pipe as two affectionate sisters might with a bullying brother.

        • Chuck Morello

          A thick-necked, barrel-chested, swarthy, and amiable Italian American who serves as the day bartender. He shares a pipe dream with his lover and whore Cora about getting married and buying a farm in Jersey.

        • Cora

          A thin, peroxide blonde a few years older than Rocky's tarts whose doll-like prettiness has begun to decline.

        • Moran and Lieb

          The two, ordinary-looking policemen who arrest Hickey. Moran is middle-aged and Lieb in his twenties.

        Next section Larry Slade
        Test your knowledge

        Take the Character List Quick Quiz

        Take a study break

        QUIZ: Is This a Taylor Swift Lyric or a Quote by Edgar Allan Poe?

        Take a study break

        The 7 Most Embarrassing Proposals in Literature

        Did you know you can highlight text to take a note? x

        Please wait while we process your payment

        snplus-logo

        Unlock your FREE SparkNotes PLUS trial!

        Unlock your FREE Trial!

        Sign up and get instant access to creating and saving your own notes as you read.
        • Ad-Free experience
        • Easy-to-access study notes
        • Flashcards & Quizzes
        • AP® English test prep
        • Plus much more
        Already have an account? Log in

        Popular pages: The Iceman Cometh

        • Larry Slade: Character Analysis CHARACTERS

        • Important Quotations Explained QUOTES

        • Themes LITERARY DEVICES

        • Review Quiz FURTHER STUDY

        Take a Study Break

        • QUIZ: Is This a Taylor Swift Lyric or a Quote by Edgar Allan Poe?

        • The 7 Most Embarrassing Proposals in Literature

        • The 6 Best and Worst TV Show Adaptations of Books

        • QUIZ: Which Greek God Are You?

        Sign up for our latest news and updates!
        By entering your email address you agree to receive emails from SparkNotes and verify that you are over the age of 13. You can view our Privacy Policy here. Unsubscribe from our emails at any time.

        SparkNotes—the stress-free way to a better GPA

        • Quick Links
        • No Fear Shakespeare
        • Literature Guides
        • Other Subjects
        • Blog
        • Teacher’s Handbook
        • Premium Study Tools
        • SparkNotes PLUS
        • Sign Up
        • Log In
        • PLUS Help
        • More
        • Help
        • How to Cite SparkNotes
        • How to Write Literary Analysis
        • About
        • Contact Us
        • Advertise

        Copyright © SparkNotes LLC

        • Terms of Use
        • |
        • Privacy
        • |
        • Cookie Policy
        • |
        • Do Not Sell My Personal Information