The Night of the Iguana

“The spook had moved in with me. In that hot room with one bed, the width of an ironing board and about as hard, the spook was up there on it, sweating, stinking, grinning up at me.”

Shannon’s “spook” is his personification of his own mental illness. He recently made the regrettable decision to have sex with an almost-17-year-old girl on his tour, with the predictable result that her chaperone and the rest of the women are furious. When the girl shows up in his room, Shannon also sees his spook, suggesting that the encounter is more an act of self-destruction than of seduction or desire.

“How long’s it take to sweat the faculty of a Baptist Female College out of a bus that’s parked in the sun when it’s a hundred degrees in the shade?”

Shannon has taken the van’s ignition key and set up camp on the veranda, vowing that he will not go anywhere for at least two days. He is effectively holding the women in his tour group hostage, because the heat is such that they would die of heatstroke if they try to walk to town or stay in the van. Shannon’s need for a safe space to experience his latest mental health crisis pressing, and the women from the Baptist Female College are unwillingly along for the ride.

“People need human contact, Maxine honey.”

Shannon is often mean and condescending to Maxine, although she takes it in stride, and in this passage, he is implying that Maxine does not understand basic humanity. Moreover, Shannon is minimizing his destructive urges to have sex with very young women by claiming that he simply needed affection. In reality, if he needed human contact, he would have sought it with someone of an appropriate age who would not threaten the last vestiges of his career.

“Hank, hysteria is a natural phenomenon, the common denominator of the female nature. It’s the big female weapon, and the test of a man in his ability to cope with it, and I can’t believe you can’t.”

Shannon is attempting to minimize the mess he has made by sleeping with Charlotte, and he likewise passes the responsibility and cleanup on to Hank, the bus driver who is attempting to convince Shannon to face the consequences of his actions. Hank, however, doesn’t fall for Shannon’s ruse, although Shannon is keeping him hostage as much as the ladies on the tour, since none of them can leave without the bus key.

“I’ve just confessed to you that I’m at the end of my rope, and you say, ‘How does that compensate us?’ Please, Miss Fellowes. Don’t make me feel that any adult human being puts personal compensation before the dreadful, bare fact of a man at the end of his rope who still has to try to go on, to continue, as if he’d never been better or stronger in his whole existence.”

Shannon tries to manipulate Miss Fellowes by appealing to her sense of pity, and this is clearly a lost cause because she already feels grievously wronged by Shannon’s refusal to stick to the tour itinerary and his unethical dalliance with her young charge. Predictably, Miss Fellowes is unmoved, and Shannon’s wheedling, self-pitying tone indicates his current inability to take responsibility for his own actions and mistakes.

“I can feel it and smell it. […] It’s the cradle of life. […] Life began in the sea.”

As a poet, Nonno waxes poetic about the beauty and power of the natural landscape of the hotel. Because Nonno is nearly 100 years removed from the beginning of his own life, his exclamations suggest a return to the sea and the cradle of life, foreshadowing his death at the end of the play. His dialogue implies that he has come here to die, and Maxine senses this grim reality even if Hannah chooses not to see it.

“The water’s blood temperature this time of day.”

Maxine, who prefers night swimming, tries to dissuade Shannon from going swimming in the ocean in the heat of the day, although Shannon is feverish and insists that it will feel cool to him. In the living landscape of the jungle and beach, the ocean is its lifeblood. The description also obliquely highlights the fact that Fred’s blood, which became infected from a fishing injury, was not strong enough to endure the tropical vista, whereas Shannon’s ability to survive has yet to be determined.

“We’ve been through several typhoons in the Orient. Sometimes outside disturbances like that are an almost welcome distraction from inside disturbances, aren’t they?”

Hannah responds to Maxine’s efforts to convince her that she and Nonno should find more suitable accommodations, but although Nonno is frail with age, Hannah is certainly not. Later, when Hannah tells Shannon of her own issues with mental illness, it will become apparent that she seeks to distract herself from specific inner disturbances.

“Honey girl, don’t you know that nothing worse could happen to a girl in your, your…unstable condition…than to get emotionally mixed up with a man in my unstable condition, huh? […] Two unstable conditions can set a whole world on fire, can blow it up, past repair, and that is just as true between two people as it’s true between…”

Charlotte has come to Shannon and demanded that he marry her because he had sex with her. However, Charlotte is not unstable; she is simply young and in the grip of volatile emotions. Although Shannon is correct in his assertion that marrying him would be an unfortunate choice for Charlotte, his statement about what happens when two unstable people get together foreshadows the proposal he will make to Hannah that they travel together, which Hannah will have the sense to decline.

“SHANNON. Honey, it’s almost impossible for anybody to believe they’re not loved by someone they believe they love, but, honey, I love nobody. I’m like that, it isn’t my fault. When I brought you home that night I told you goodnight in the hall, just kissed you on the cheek like the little girl that you are, but the instant I opened my door, you rushed into my room and I couldn’t get you out of it, not even when I, oh God, tried to scare you out of it by, oh God, don’t you remember?

CHARLOTTE. Yes, I remember that after making love to me, you hit me, Larry, you struck me in the face, and you twisted my arm to make me kneel on the floor and pray with you for forgiveness.”

In this exchange, Shannon places the blame for his own sexual misconduct on Charlotte for her refusal to be frightened away from him, admitting that he becomes abusive when his nerves are fully frayed. However, the scene also implies that Charlotte, given her conservative religious background, would have certain expectations as to what sex is supposed to entail. Thus, if Shannon views sleeping with Charlotte as an act of self-destruction, he is also willingly dragging the girl into destruction with him.

“I’m afraid his memory is failing. Memory failure is his greatest dread.”

Hannah “says this almost cooly, as if it didn’t matter” (367), and her demeanor suggests that Nonno’s physical decline and the greater loss of his memory have been Hannah’s reality for a long time. The scene also draws attention to the fact that memory is essentially Nonno’s sense of self. It is the only tool he has with which to compose his final poem, as he can no longer see to write or hear to allow Hannah to be his memory. But beyond his poem, Nonno’s memory is the only real record of his 97 years of life, which will be erased when he dies.

“Yeah, this angry, petulant old man. I mean he’s represented like a bad-tempered childish old, old, sick, peevish man—I mean like the sort of old man in a nursing home that’s putting together a jigsaw puzzle and can’t put it together and gets furious at it and kicks over the table. Yes, I tell you they do that, all our theologies do it—accuse God of being a cruel, senile delinquent, blaming the world and brutally punishing all he created for his own faults in construction.”

Shannon recounts the impulsive sermon that sealed his fate with the church after the scandal of his decision to have sex with a young Sunday school teacher. Twice in the play, Maxine comments on his “atheistical sermons” (342), which Shannon denies ever delivering, and he is correct that nothing he is saying is atheistic. He is not denying the existence of God. Instead, he is criticizing God for having a childish temper, an opinion that his parishioners would have condemned as being worse than atheism.

“SHANNON. What is the sex of this iguana, Maxine?

MAXINE. Hah, who cares about the sex of an iguana […] except another…iguana?”

Shannon’s question is, as Maxine notes, a strange one. But he goes on to recite a limerick that makes a crude joke about bestiality with iguanas, which suggests a possible reason for his line of inquiry. While the iguana is an important symbol throughout the play, as is highlighted by the title, it is not clear yet who or what the iguana will represent.

“How’d you learn how to light a match in the wind?”

In the brewing thunderstorm, Hannah manages to light Shannon’s cigarette despite the swirling wind. Shannon is impressed with this skill, which also serves as a metaphor for withstanding adversity, even when doing so seems impossible. Later, Hannah will reveal that she too suffers from mental illness, but she has never been in a position to let it consume her. Therefore, she has always done the impossible by keeping her wits together.

“HANNAH. Here is your God, Mr. Shannon.

SHANNON (quietly). Yes, I see him, I hear him, I know him. And if he doesn’t know that I know him, let him strike me dead with a bolt of his lightning.”

By challenging God to acknowledge that Shannon knows him, Shannon is tacitly telling God to acknowledge his accusation that God is “a petulant old man” (369) who is throwing temper tantrums. Notably, when Shannon issues this challenge, he is not asking for proof that God exists or doesn’t exist. As a former member of the clergy, Shannon believes in God. Therefore, his innate faith elevates the stakes of calling for a bolt of lightning as he stands in the rain and waits, because within his belief system, God ought to strike him down if he is as petulant as Shannon claims him to be.

“Employees. They don’t respect me enough. When you let employees get too free with you, personally, they stop respecting you, Shannon. And it’s, well, it’s…humiliating—not to be…respected.”

Although Maxine and Fred had stopped communicating long before Fred’s death, he respected her, and she didn’t doubt his respect. Now, although she can freely have sex with her young employees and share communication and discourse with Shannon, she cannot replace the feeling of respect from a settled partner. As a woman in her 40s who runs her own business, Maxine is formidable and ought to be treated as such, but in the end, she is well aware that she is a woman in a world that doesn’t respect women.

“How about Africa, Asia, Australia? The whole world, Latta, God’s world, has been the range of my travels. I haven’t stuck to the schedules of brochures and I’ve always allowed the ones that were willing to see, to see!—the underworlds of all places, and if they had hearts to be touched, feelings to feel with, I gave them a priceless change to feel and be touched. And none will ever forget it, none of them, ever, never!”

Shannon demonstrates throughout the play that he has delusions of grandeur, as when he challenges God to take notice and interprets the lack of divine punishment as proof that his views are correct. Because he is well-traveled, he has a colonizer’s confidence that he has mastery of the culture and local secrets across all continents. Moreover, he believes that his version of each tour is the only worthwhile one. In his mind, the tourists—who paid for one thing and are upset to receive something else entirely—are simply wrong. But it’s significant that the touring companies continue to use their itinerary rather than Shannon’s, which is contrary to Shannon’s assertion of his immense value to Blake Tours.

“MAXINE. Why do you always come here to crack up, Shannon?

SHANNON. It’s the hammock, Maxine, the hammock by the rain forest.”

Shannon lives his life as a nomad, traveling and meeting a fresh group with each tour he gives. He has no home or safe haven, having even alienated himself from his own church. Shannon is therefore surprised and moved to learn that Hannah cares what happens to him and wants to help, since he rarely experiences that kind of interest in his well-being. But aside from the hotel’s hammock and relaxing atmosphere, it is clear that Shannon drags himself to Costa Verde whenever his inner world begins to collapse because he knows that Maxine may be the only person in the world who has demonstrated an investment in Shannon’s health and safety.

“SHANNON. A man can die of panic.

HANNAH. Not if he enjoys it as much as you, Mr. Shannon.”

Shannon is miffed by Hannah’s observation, denying hotly that he enjoys the experience of his internal collapse. Hannah insists that it was merely an observation, not a judgment or insult, but her words strike a nerve for Shannon. Her comment implies that his exceedingly dramatic trajectory has shown that he does indeed enjoy falling to pieces. He doesn’t simply come to the hotel to rest and recuperate when his mental health is suffering, which would have been a reasonable choice. Instead, he drags a bus full of angry women along, including the underage girl that he just used and rejected. He puts on a spectacular show of suffering that betrays his martyr complex, and he allows Maxine care for him, watching her vie with Hannah for his attentions.

“Who wouldn’t like to suffer and atone for the sins of himself and the world if it could be done in a hammock with ropes instead of nails, on a hill that’s so much lovelier than Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, Mr. Shannon? There’s something almost voluptuous in the way that you twist and groan in that hammock—no nails, no blood, no death. Isn’t that a comparatively comfortable, almost voluptuous kind of crucifixion to suffer for the guilt of the world, Mr. Shannon?”

Hannah recognizes that Shannon has framed his situation as a Christlike martyrdom, in which the hill rising from the jungle symbolizes Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified. However, she points out that Shannon is hardly enduring persecution or sacrificial suffering. Aside from the ropes, which are only present to keep him from harming himself, Shannon’s tribulations are barely distinguishable from the trappings of a regular vacation. Shannon accuses Hannah of turning against him, but she assures him that she is simply seeing his situation for what it is.

“I thought you were sexless but you’ve suddenly turned into a woman. Know how I know that? Because you, not me—not me—are taking pleasure in my tied-up condition. All women, whether they face it or not, want to see a man in a tied-up situation. They work at it all their lives, to get a man in a tied-up situation. Their lives are fulfilled, they’re satisfied at last, when they get a man, or as many men as they can, in the tied-up situation.”

When Shannon feels judged by Hannah’s observations, he becomes defensive, resorting to misogyny as he lashes out childishly. Ironically he is now acting rather similarly to his earlier formulation of God: as a cantankerous and petulant old man. Shannon accuses Hannah of enacting a pernicious feminine fantasy on him, but in reality, the rope is a metaphor for Shannon’s own fantasy, in which he is impermanently incapacitated and must have his every want and need provided by the surrounding women, who will set him free as soon as they have nursed him back to health.

“I can help you because I’ve been through what you are going through now. I had something like your spook—I just had a different name for him. I called him the blue devil, and…oh…we had quite a battle, quite a contest between us.”

Hannah, like Shannon, has personified her mental illness as a separate, anthropomorphized monster that can be conveniently defeated and banished by sheer force of will. This formulation ignores the fact that mental illness is not a failure of willpower or an indulgence to be forgone when one needs one’s wits about them. It also cannot be separated from the person’s mind and self, and despite Hannah’s description of battling her demon and winning, what she describes are coping mechanisms for ongoing symptoms that are visible throughout the play. She has had no grand crisis, but she has learned to manage her mental illness as much as possible, and the play does not confirm whether Shannon will learn from her and relinquish his fondness for drama.

“Accept whatever situation you cannot improve.”

Hannah gives this adage to Shannon as the moral of her story about her second sexual encounter, in which she gave a man a piece of her clothing and turned away so that he could masturbate. She felt obligated to fulfill what she saw as a harmless desire because the man was so generous in paying full price for a painting. Rather than viewing the experience as a violation, Hannah saw it as a best-case scenario. The man had asked her out on a date, which implies that she must negotiate his expectations of physical affection, with which she has no experience. But instead, the man satisfied himself and didn’t touch her. By extension, the scene implies that if Shannon could learn to mitigate his own expectations instead of insisting on always getting what he wants, he could cope better with the world and would experience fewer crises.