The Night of the Iguana

“No, no. I want a cold beer. If I start drinking rum-cocos now I won’t stop drinking rum-cocos.”

Throughout the play, Maxine tries to persuade Shannon to drink a rum-coco, and Shannon consistently resists this temptation. Later, in a moment of panic and despair, Shannon nearly gives in and makes one for himself, but he throws it away before he drinks it. He avoids the drink as if he has an alcohol addiction, but in his case, he is not avoiding the slippery slope into addiction; instead, he fears the prospect of letting go of control and relaxing into a vacation mentality. It is also implied that when Shannon does let go, he will experience a collapse in his mental health, and he is not quite ready to face this prospect.

“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.