A Chronotopic Reading of Eugene O Neill s The Iceman Cometh

Although many of Bakhtin’s key theoretical terms have been applied to the novel, many of them are also applicable to the genre of drama. Among these terms “chronotope” is one such instance. As Bakhtin asserts, chronotope is the gate at which the knots of the plot are tied and untied, and the protagonist of a literary work can be defined by as well as reside in a particular chronotopic space. To illustrate the Bakhtinian concept of chronotope in practice, the present paper aims to demonstrate how the interrelatedness of space and time leads to the realistic destruction of characters in The Iceman Cometh.