48 pages • 1 hour read
Tennessee WilliamsThe Night of the Iguana
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1961A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act IChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act I Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of sexual misconduct and statutory rape.
The play is set in the summer of 1940 at the Costa Verde, a rustic beachside hotel in coastal Mexico. The owner, Mrs. Maxine Faulk, is in her mid-40s. She enters with her Mexican employee, Pedro, who is in his early 20s. Both are rebuttoning their clothes after a tryst. A tour bus has arrived, and Maxine happily greets its guide, Lawrence Shannon, who is a regular guest at the hotel. As he makes his way up the jungle-covered hill, Maxine sends Pedro and another worker, Pancho, to carry his bags. Shannon has a high fever and calls several times for Maxine’s husband, Fred, but Maxine casually reveals that Fred died suddenly two weeks ago from a blood infection caused by a minor cut. Seemingly unbothered by her husband’s death, Maxine comments that Fred was older and their sex life had waned. Maxine invites Shannon to relax in the hammock and drink a rum-coco, but Shannon will only accept a beer. From the base of the hill, Shannon’s touring guests, an all-women group of Baptist teachers from Texas, are furiously honking the horn. The stop at Maxine’s hotel is not on the touring company’s sanctioned itinerary, and they are demanding to leave. Although Shannon’s job is in jeopardy if yet another tour group should complain about him, Shannon has pocketed the tour van key and is effectively holding the group captive.
Hank, the bus driver, makes his way up the hill to reason with Shannon, but Shannon refuses, noting that if they tried to leave on foot, they will die in the heat. Hank points out that the group’s mutinous anger stems from the young girl who is crying non-stop in the back of the bus after Shannon had sex with her. Dismissively, Shannon tells Hank to take a sample hotel menu created by a Chinese fine-dining chef to the women and persuade them to stay. Hank obeys. A family of German tourists, the Fahrenkopfs, enters boisterously, singing a Nazi march as they head to the beach. The father listens to a radio report on the Battle of Britain. Shannon questions why Mexico is so full of Nazis these days, and Maxine replies, “Mexico’s the front door to South America—and the back door to the States” (334). Maxine tends to Shannon as he lies in the hammock, icing his fevered forehead and chuckling about his latest sexual misadventure. Shannon asserts that the encounter was consensual. The girl, Charlotte Goodall, is (almost) 17, and he claims that she pursued him by declaring her love and showing up in his hotel room one night. Charlotte is a singing prodigy and is often called on to perform for the tour group. She is also accompanied by her overbearing chaperone and voice teacher, a masculine-appearing spinster named Judith Fellowes, who is now out for Shannon’s blood.
Shannon explains that not only did Charlotte show up uninvited in his room, but “the spook” (335) showed up with her. Maxine recognizes “the spook” as Shannon’s personification of his own mental health condition, which he says has been following him ever since the tryst. Maxine notices that the tour group has grudgingly exited the bus. She and Shannon watch as Miss Fellowes slaps Hank before storming up the hill through jungle foliage. At Shannon’s pleading, Maxine agrees to defend him, but she does not understand why he can’t just limit himself to sleeping with adult women. Miss Fellowes demands the bus key so that the group can relocate to the hotel on their itinerary, and Shannon tries to convince her that this hotel is just as good. Every time Shannon attempts to touch her arm, Miss Fellowes orders him not to touch her. Curtly, she asks Maxine to take her to a phone so that she can make a collect call, and Maxine sends her off with Pancho. Shannon complains that Maxine’s shirt isn’t buttoned, undoubtedly scandalizing Miss Fellowes, whom he assumes is calling Shannon’s employer to have him fired. Maxine exits to make sure that she Miss Fellowes does not ring up an expensive phone bill without paying for it. In frustration, Shannon beats his fist against the wall with a dry sob.
Hannah Jelkes enters. She is an “ethereal, almost ghostly” (338) woman in her 30s or 40s. She pauses at having caught Shannon in a vulnerable moment, and when he notices her, he is immediately calmed by her beauty. Hannah is looking for two rooms for herself and her elderly grandfather. Shannon assures her that the hotel has space, so Hannah heads down the hill to fetch her grandfather in his wheelchair. Maxine returns and informs Shannon that Miss Fellowes did not call the tour company; she called a judge in Texas to inquire about statutory rape laws. Maxine notices the poor state of Shannon’s shoes and socks and observes that he is wearing his cross again, which means that he is revisiting his faith. Shannon agrees that he has already written a letter to his former Bishop to confess his sins and to try to return to his role as a minister. He produces the letter, which Maxine points out is illegible and soaked in sweat. She exits. Hank returns and tries unsuccessfully to force Shannon out of the hammock. Maxine reenters with shaving implements and sets about shaving Shannon’s face.
Maxine talks about Fred, who found his patience with her to be perplexing. He wasn’t even bothered when she hired a group of young Mexican men and started spending time with them. All he did was fish, but he always threw back his catches. She suggests that Shannon take Fred’s room, which Shannon resists, recognizing that she seems to be trying to push him into replacing Fred. All he wants is to relax in the hammock until he has recovered enough to return to his vocation as a minister. Maxine quips about Shannon’s irrational choice to preach an atheistic sermon, which Shannon hotly denies. Miss Fellowes returns, and Shannon admits to her that he is reaching the end of his sanity. He hopes for sympathy and appalled at her cold response: “How does that compensate me?” (343). She asserts that the women on the tour had been saving for a year to afford this trip, and they deserve the agreed-upon itinerary. Charlotte enters, and Miss Fellowes orders her back to the bus before she can complete a sentence. Charlotte relents and exits. Shannon insists that he knows Mexico well, and his intimate local knowledge is more valuable than the tour group’s schedule.
Once again rebuffing Shannon’s attempts to touch her arm, Miss Fellowes complains about the poor quality of the food and accommodations so far. Shannon pleads for understanding. Meanwhile, the Mexican workers have begun to haul the women’s luggage up the hill. Maxine urges Shannon to give them the key so they can leave and tells him to recuperate in Fred’s old room. Again, he refuses. Hannah returns, pushing her grandfather, whom she calls Nonno, in a wheelchair. His vision and hearing are declining, and Hannah must shout to be heard. Maxine greets her coolly, noting that Hannah has cut her face and should apply iodine. Hannah is a painter and is pleased with the view. Maxine tries to turn them away, but Hannah and Shannon both plead with her to reconsider. Hannah claims that Nonno may be 97, but he is spry and only needs a wheelchair for a temporary injury. Nonno, whose name is Jonathan Coffin, is a poet, and he offers to gift Maxine with a signed copy of his first book. Unimpressed, Maxine exits to answer the office phone. Hannah laments that she is about to evict them, but Shannon promises to intercede.
Shannon questions whether they’re poor, and Hannah admits that they’re broke. Returning, Maxine tells Hannah that they will need to pay six dollars up front for meals. Hannah promises to sell some paintings while Nonno collects tips from reciting poems; she swears to have money by tomorrow and reveals that Nonno is working on his first new poem in two decades. Maxine relents and allows them to stay until tomorrow. To Shannon, Hannah confides that Nonno may have suffered a small stroke, which she asserts is common in elderly people and often unnoticed. Like Shannon, Hannah is a frequent traveler. Shannon recognizes that Maxine has assigned Hannah to the room that leaks when it rains. He tries to convince Hannah to take his room instead, but she declines and exits. Maxine returns and mocks Hannah. Shannon decides to go for a swim in the ocean. Maxine tries to accompany him, but he ignores her instead of waiting, which makes her angry. From his room, Nonno recites part of his poem.
Act I Analysis
In the first act, the three main characters are introduced, and their unique predicaments soon intertwine as they navigate their individual watershed moments and enormous life transitions. The Interplay of Loneliness and Desire makes an early appearance, as Maxine has recently lost her husband and is anxiously seeking companionship that transcends her brief flings with young employees. By contrast, Hannah’s troubles reflect the theme of Life and Death in the Jungle, for her financial troubles create an immediate urgency that distracts her from the larger transition ahead when her grandfather will inevitably die and leave her alone in the world. Finally, Shannon has appeared at the hotel with his poor life choices and incipient mental health crisis in full view; having made the poor decision to sleep with an underage girl in his tour group, he is on the verge of losing his job, and his dubious claim that he is planning to return to the church smacks of Delusions of Religious Martyrdom. Thus, each of the three main characters is alone in different ways, and each must cope with the necessity of asking for help from one another.
The hotel is situated on a hill and acts as a small oasis surrounded by the dangerous jungle and the nearby ocean. The theme of Life and Death in the Jungle is immediately apparent, as Maxine describes her husband’s abrupt demise due to blood poisoning from a minor fishing injury. Far from appearing grief-stricken, she brushes off Fred’s death as if it were inevitable, citing his advanced age and diabetes and the remoteness of the hotel. In a sharp contrast to the ignominiously deceased Fred, Maxine and Shannon see themselves as tried-and-true survivors who have made themselves at home in the violent natural landscape; their shared attitude implies that that they do not have the kind of weakness that would allow the jungle to kill them. This sense of exceptionalism explains Maxine’s determination to relocate Hannah and Nonno. In her eyes, Nonno’s frailty and advanced age makes him unsuited to endure the terrain. However, Maxine’s real reason for wanting the pair gone, as demonstrated in the play’s subtext, is that Hannah’s beauty makes her a rival for Shannon’s affections. Maxine’s plans for Shannon are quickly revealed when she unsubtly tries to convince him to wear her dead husband’s shoes and move into his room.
In these opening scenes, the characters fail to connect to one another because they act in desperation out of The Interplay of Loneliness and Sexual Desire that has resulted from their solitary lives. For example, Maxine has casual sex with the young Mexican men she employs, a practice that she began before her husband died because the couple’s sex life died long before Fred did. Now, Maxine is alone, surrounded by her pick of young lovers and a range of hotel guests, but she lacks the real companionship of an equal partner. Significantly, Hannah exudes a different brand of loneliness, for admitting that she is lonely would be tantamount to admitting that she has begun to lose her grandfather and will soon lose him completely. Like Maxine, Hannah sees something special in Shannon, although she doesn’t express any sexual interest in him or anyone else. Finally, Shannon himself demonstrates an almost desperate loneliness, which he expresses through sexual desires that—as his interaction with Charlotte demonstrates—are sometimes inappropriate. Like Maxine, he is alone in a sea of new faces, never connecting to the people around him. Shannon also feels Fred’s loss, as Shannon has often found friendly companionship with Fred—a connection that held no ulterior motives, as Maxine’s friendship does. For Shannon, sexual desire becomes a self-destructive urge as he aims his lust toward inappropriate and even illegal partners.
When Shannon arrives at the hotel, Maxine notices that he is wearing his cross and comments with disdain that he only wears it when he is thinking about returning to the church. She is correct in her assumption, but this detail also implies that Shannon harbors Delusions of Religious Martyrdom, and this dynamic becomes clear as he blames his latest self-inflicted predicament on the women on his tour and the young girl with whom he had sex with, behaving as if he is being persecuted rather than holding himself accountable for his actions. Notably, the women are from a Baptist Christian college, which suggests that they are actively religious—unlike Shannon, who was kicked out of his own church. Despite the clear evidence of his hypocrisy, Shannon maintains a misguided belief in his own piety, reframing Charlotte as a temptress and blaming his bad behavior on what he calls “the spook,” a manifestation of his mental illness. When the spook appears, Shannon sees it as a form of demonic possession; this perception allows him to avoid accountability for his actions, and he flees to Costa Verde with the expectation that Maxine will help him to exorcize the spook, as she has done several times before.
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