The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams

In humans we can find truly remarkable coping skills, but these sometimes are just not enough. Such is the case with the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, a man so disturbed and haunted by his demons that his mental breakdowns happen like clockwork, driving him always to return to the hospitality of Maxine. At her small hotel on the coast, Shannon looks forward to the one thing that can set his mind at ease: the hammock that hangs on the verandah. He is isolated by his vocation and by the religion he has difficulty standing behind and for this he has trouble maintaining his sanity. He is desperate to develop some sort of actual connection with a person other than the young women that become infatuated with him. In them, he finds no solace beyond––or even in––the bedroom. Despite being where he most enjoys relaxing and recovering, Shannon continues to spiral into the wastes of his own depression. He hopes that Miss Hannah Jelkes could be the one to finally save him, but she too is scarred by lack of human contact and cannot make him whole again. Ultimately, his time at the Costa Verde follows closely that of Hannah’s grandfather, Nonno, as he tries to hang on, but still succumbs in the end.

Death is much in the forefront of everyone’s mind at the Costa Verde Hotel. The very trees and plants echo the fears and thoughts of Shannon and Hannah. They are like flowers at the end of their life, once filled with vibrance and passion, but now fading to grey. Its petals curling, browning on the edges, the flower is only a dried shell of its former self that barely hints at the beauty that once was held on top of the stem. The day mimics this behavior, starting out brightly in the afternoon and gradually dimming to the darkness of night as Nonno finally passes leaving Hannah alone in life. It is not only that Shannon is fading from life, but rather that he is losing or has lost everything he once cared about. His innocence, too, has long been stripped of him; once a naïve minister, he sees the world as it is, even searching for the fast decay of the tropical world that he has spent so much time displaying to those who become interested. Everything about this former minister and Miss Jelkes is being corrupted as the flower dies and begins to decay, eventually losing all sign of life.

Starting in the hot afternoon of the late Mexican summer, Shannon is still fighting for his own life. The world around him is hot in the blazing moments before sunset. The sky is a clear hopeful yellow, just barely beginning to dim. The whole verandah, though surrounded on all sides by a dense rain forest, is fully illuminated, not yet shaded by the change of day and growing desperation of the people at the hotel. The sky begins to darken as the sun sets, showing its full range of color for the last time before it sleeps. It is vibrantly orange and pink, slightly hazed over hinting at the storm to follow. The storm comes with all its fury, tearing at the little hotel ripping away the remnants of color and brightness. In its wake, darkness takes over the stage, the world is transformed, leaving Hannah and Shannon as completely separate entities even as they try to connect. They are divided into pockets of their own isolation and decay, as, like the flower, the sky twists and greys. The vivid colors of day and of life have faded by now and they are left in the dim glow of the moon, surrounded by the faint purple and blue swirls of the night. Beyond the actors on stage, the hotel is barely noticeable with only a little color hinting at its former life. Deep shadows in Shannon and Hannah’s eyes show their pain and desperation as they falls prey to human fragility. As the last vestiges of life fade away and Nonno dies in his wheelchair he leaves Hannah alone with her own small, colorless halo of light that fades away as the flower wilts.