The Story Archive

The Night of the Iguana

Tennessee Williams · 1961 CE · Play · Modern / American · Contemporary

A locked-out Episcopal minister, now driving a bus tour of Baptist schoolteachers, pulls up at a rundown hotel above a Mexican beach at the end of his rope and his credit. The widowed proprietor wants him, a spinster travelling with her ninety-seven-year-old grandfather wants only a room on trust, and a captured iguana is roped under the verandah to be fattened. Drawn from a short story of the same name that Williams wrote after a summer in Acapulco.

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Attributes

Genre
TragicomedyPsychological
Theme
Faith & DoubtIsolation & AlienationSuffering & EnduranceRedemptionFreedom vs Fate
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
WandererCaregiverAnti-Hero
Plot structure
Single DayDialogueOpen Ending
Symbol / motif
The BeastThe StormThe Sea
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
LyricalRealistElegiac
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues