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.
Symbols & Motifs
Rum-Cocos
A rum-coco is a tropical drink that is made by slicing off the top of a coconut shell and mixing rum, lemon juice, sugar, and cracked ice with the natural juice of the coconut. The resulting cocktail is a cartoonishly stereotypical image of a vacation beverage, one that is often sipped while lying on the beach or in a hammock. In his essay about his summer in Mexico, Tennessee Williams fondly remembers reclining in a hammock beside his newfound friend and drinking rum-cocos while they both indulged in endless conversations. In the play, the tree that supplies the coconuts for these signature cocktails leans right over the veranda, and in the first few moments of Act I, Pedro climbs up the tree to harvest the fruits. Maxine provides a free rum-coco to her guests, frequently pushing them as a solution for fraught situations. For instance, she offers one to Hank, the bus driver, who has come up the hill to confront Shannon and claim the bus key in order to end the sweaty standoff that Shannon incited. Throughout the play, Maxine tries repeatedly to persuade Shannon to drink one in an effort to soothe his nerves and head off his inevitable mental health crisis.
However, Hank and Shannon both refuse the cocktail, opting instead for cold beers. Shannon tells Maxine that if he starts to drink rum-cocos, he won’t be able to stop. Unlike beer or any other alcoholic drink, rum-cocos are connected directly to the land. Drinking one is like drinking a piece of Mexico, and more specifically, a piece of Costa Verde. The rum-coco symbolizes relaxation and vacation, and neither Shannon nor Hank is ready to surrender their sense of urgency. Maxine frequently sips one, tantalizing those around her to give in. In Act III, when Jake Latta arrives to take the tour group, before his patronizing tone toward Shannon gives way to anger, he also suggests that Shannon give in and indulge so that he can relax. Because the drink is soporific and addictive, Shannon’s abstention is a mark of his earnest belief in his own righteousness, even though his stubborn fight to keep his tour and his job is futile, as demonstrated when Latta takes the key and the bus by force. Shannon is determined to play the martyr and suffer, sanctifying himself through metaphorical self-flagellation. At the end of the play, when Shannon decides to accept Maxine’s offer and stay, he finally accepts a rum-coco, and the narrative implies that he is embracing a new path without indulging in his own torment.
The Spook
Shannon first mentions his “spook” early in Act I as he describes to Maxine how he ended up having sex with a teenaged girl and landing himself—supposedly blamelessly—into his current predicament. Maxine is familiar with the term and what it means for Shannon’s mental state and imminent neediness. The spook is the name that Shannon gives to his mental illness whenever it manifests in his life, and the name is implied to have originated with Fred, who would listen to Shannon’s problems and then reply, “Well, Shannon, you’re spooked” (389). According to Shannon, the spook showed up this time when Charlotte appeared in his room, “sweating, stinking, grinning up at [him]” (335). Now that the spook is with him, it follows him around, and Shannon believes that he has no way to escape its influence except to keep climbing to the top a manic frenzy, breaking down, and hitting the bottom so that he can start climbing back up without the spook. Maxine, who has no lasting way to help him, gets ready to play her usual caretaker role, even if she has to pay money that she cannot afford to check him into a mental hospital. Maxine means well and offers the only assistance she knows, but it is clear that tying Shannon to the hammock and sending for a doctor to give him an injection are not solutions but temporary restraints to prevent self-harm. The spook never goes away for long, and Shannon never learns how to live with him.
Hannah, however, understands Shannon’s spook, because she has one too. She calls it her “blue devil,” although unlike Shannon, Hannah has never been able to have a full-blown mental health crisis and focus entirely on herself. Because Williams is known for including autobiographical elements in his plays, it can be inferred that the exchange of help and comfort between Shannon and Hannah are a way of rewriting his own sister’s history and struggle with mental health conditions. The character of Shannon is loosely based on Williams and the time he once spent in Mexico at a similar hotel. For this reason, The Night of the Iguana is often cited at his most prominently autobiographical play. Williams also struggled with mental illness throughout his life, but Rose’s mental condition unraveled mysteriously until she was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young adult. Their mother, who is represented by Maxine, made the decision to try to treat her illness by subjecting her to a frontal lobotomy, a new procedure at the time that destroyed the sister he knew. For the rest of his life, Williams carried the guilt of failing to prevent Rose’s lobotomy, and her constant presence in his thoughts is reflected in the various ways in which she appears in his plays. With Hannah and Shannon, Williams creates an imaginary interaction between himself and Rose, in which they care for and help each other through their mental health challenges and emerge with better ways to cope. But like Williams and Rose, at the end of the night, Shannon cannot touch Hannah or keep her there, and it is as if she evaporates from his life.
The Iguana
The titular iguana is a central symbol in the play, appearing onstage in Act II, when the Mexican workers capture and tether it. As the play unfolds, it remains captive under the veranda, and in Spanish, Pancho and Pedro exclaim happily about how excited they are to eat it. Maxine and Shannon join their enthusiasm, excitedly anticipating their feast. Iguanas have been a long-standing part of the cuisine in many Central and South American countries and are often called “pollo de los árboles” or “chicken of the trees” because the meat is similar to the white meat of chicken. However, eating iguana meat is far less common in the United States, which is where the play premiered and found its primary audience. This creates a division in the play between the characters who are either native to Mexico or have assimilated into the culture with an effort to participate with authenticity, and those who are merely tourists. The Germans enter after hearing the commotion surrounding the iguana, and their horror and disgust at the idea of eating a lizard provides the baseline for the mindset of thoughtless tourists, especially as they continue to stare at the cultural spectacle. Given the Nazis’ penchant for invading countries and crushing both the people and their culture, the family’s heavy-handed judgement provides an example of how not to approach different cultural practices.
The tethered iguana also symbolizes the frustrated desperation of being trapped, and the characters become complicit in its captivity as it fights, fully terrified, to escape. Its plight also underscores the fact that each of the three main characters is held captive in one way or another. Maxine is trapped in her hotel alone, with no real companionship, while Hannah is trapped by the necessity of watching her grandfather die and constricted by her own mental illness, which she must constantly work to escape. Finally, Shannon is trapped within a self-destructive cycle that always concludes with a dramatic collapse of his mental health. As the events of the play leave him crudely trapped by ropes and the threat of a stint in a mental hospital, his plight mirrors that of the iguana. Although the capture of the iguana is not the main event of the play, it is a significant metaphor, particularly for Shannon as the play’s protagonist. Before his conversation with Hannah in Act III, Shannon views his night with Charlotte, the subsequent anger of the Baptist women, and his mental collapse as a trial or persecution. He likewise sees the ensuing pain of treatment and possible confinement as a crucifixion, with the expectation that he will rise again only to collapse once more on another day. When Hannah learns that the iguana will be tortured and confined before it is killed, she urges Shannon to recognize himself in the sacrificial lizard. He sets the iguana free, exercising his newfound agency, and he simultaneously frees himself from becoming the iguana in a metaphorical sense.
Related Titles
By Tennessee Williams
