The Night of The Iguana - Plot

Plot

In 1940s Mexico, an ex-minister, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, has been locked out of his church after characterizing the Occidental image of God as a "senile delinquent", during one of his sermons. Shannon is not de-frocked, but institutionalized for a "nervous breakdown". Some time after his release, Rev. Shannon obtains employment as a tour guide for a second-rate travel agency. Shortly before the opening of the play, Shannon is accused of having committed statutory rape of a sixteen-year old girl, named Charlotte Goodall, who is accompanying his current group of tourists.

As the curtain rises, Shannon is arriving with a group of women at a cheap hotel on the coast of Mexico that had been managed by his friends Fred and Maxine Faulk. The former has recently died, and Maxine Faulk has assumed sole responsibility for managing the establishment.

Struggling emotionally, Shannon tries to manage his tour party, who have turned against him for entering into sexual relations with the minor, and Maxine, who is interested in him for purely carnal reasons. Adding to this chaotic scenario, a spinster Hannah Jelkes appears with her moribund grandfather, Nonno, who, despite his failing, is composing his last poem. Jelkes, who scrapes by as traveling painter and sketch artist, is soon at Maxine's mercy. Shannon, who wields considerable influence over Maxine, offers Hannah Jelkes shelter for the night. The play's main axis is the development of the deeply human bond between Hannah Jelkes and Lawrence Shannon.

Like the iguana, captured and tied to a pole by the Mexicans in the play, Hannah and they have come to the end of their rope. This metaphor is intensified when Shannon tears at his golden cross on his neck, lacerating himself, as if to free himself from its constraints.

Minor characters in the play include: a) a group of German tourists whose Nazi marching songs paradoxically lighten the heavier themes of the play, but suggest the horrors of World War II, b) the Mexican "boys" Maxine employs to help run the hotel who ignore her laconic commands, and c) Judith Fellowes, the "butch" vocal teacher charged with Charlotte's care during the trip. Fellowes is one of William's few overtly lesbian characters.