Internal Struggles In The Night Of The Iguana

Ali Munzipapa
701514757
Prompt A- Perceptions
Internal Struggles Lead to Realistic Breakthroughs
As the unsettling story begins to unfold, everyone in The Night of the Iguana deals with great loss and questions of eternity. The genre and style of the play help to set the overall tone and better understand the difficult story line. The Night of the Iguana is indubitably a drama shown through central characters internal struggles and also depicts the style of realism. Drama unfolds throughout the play through individual’s internal wars that are ultimately manifested externally as wars between people, and realism shows through the extremely detailed set and structure of the play. The first central character, Reverend Shannon, screams the
He then became a tour guide to where he also had sexual relations with the youngest girl on the bus. As he arrived at The Costa Verde Hotel Reverend Shannon’s contribution to the play’s dramatic genre became very apparent. He constantly gets into verbal fights with either Maxine or Mrs. Fellowes about the young girl who he slept with. He even had an interaction with the young girl, Charlotte, who had fallen for him after he slept with her, screaming over and over again she, “has to leave”. The most dramatic part of Reverend Shannon’s struggle was when he was tied up on the hammock, giving him time to think about what he has done and grieve. This was, by far, the saddest part of the play, which I felt best depicted a drama. Then when Shannon made the decision to set the Iguana free that Pancho tied up to eat; he was ready to be free of his own internal struggle. Reverend Shannon stated he set it free, “so that one of God's creatures could be free from panic, and scamper home safe and free”. Reverend Shannon was no longer tied up in the hammock, just like the iguana, and it became time for Shannon to repent his sins. This made me ultimately decide the play was a drama because Reverend Shannon is not emotionally still in the same place as when the play started, which meant the play did not exemplify a tragicomedy. However, Reverend Shannon was not the only character in the play
Maxine’s husband had just passed away and she tries very hard to keep The Costa Verde afloat on her own. Hannah struggles because as a starving artist, who cannot sell many of her paintings, she tries to care for her grandfather, Nono, the best she can. Nono lives in the past from when he used to be a poet and Hannah and Reverend Shannon, together, try to get him back into the present. These struggles, although much smaller than Reverend Shannon’s, all contribute to the genre of drama for The Night of the Iguana. All of the characters have an internal struggle they express externally between each other. This made the play, at times, very sad and really caused the audience to feel poorly for the struggling characters. None of the characters ended up exactly where they started, they all learned a lesson, and I feel as though the play is a very obvious drama. Additionally, I feel the play depicts a style of