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The Iceman Cometh (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

With The Iceman Cometh, O’Neill discarded the literary sources and devices with which he had been experimenting for so long, as if they were pipe dreams of his own that protected him from the pain of reality, to concentrate upon realistic material and characters whom he had known firsthand. He set the action of the play in 1912, probably the most important year of his life, when he returned from South America, penniless and despondent, and landed at Jimmy-the-Priest's in New York.

In the play, Jimmy-the-Priest's becomes Harry Hope's saloon, where whiskey costs five...

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