informed of Hickey's new attitude. He seems to have everyone's best interests in mind. He is presented as the hero of the story who will "make everything better." Then, the reader comes to the realization that Hickey does not truly have everyone's best intentions in mind. "Beneath Hickey's evangelism is a hidden dimension which makes it apparent that the crusade is part of a strategy, at best a ruse to help reveal to the inmates a more fundamental aspect of their existence. For Hickey expects each of them in turn to fail to come to terms with the outside world, and to return one by one to the Lessard 5backroom bar, dejected and defeated. It then becomes clear that Hickey is not the reformed salesman of the American Dream but something more sinister. The prophet of the ideology of individual self-help and success emerges as the very opposite, a harbinger of destruction who by his action unmasks the very ideology to which he appears to bear allegiance" (89).Hickey wants to crush their pipe dreams of a better tomorrow because he himself has already been forced to do so. Hickey wants the roomers to make an effort to get over their pipe dreams only to allow them to see how difficult it really is. Hickey says to the roomers, "'I know you'll become such a coward you'll grab at any excuse to get out of killing your pipe dreams. And yet, as I've told you over and over, it's exactly those same damned tomorrow dreams which keep you from making peace with yourself. So you've got to kill them like I did mine'" (O'Neill 635). Hickey wants to rip off their masks and free them of the torture of hope (Bogard 57).At the climax of the play, the reader is startled to find that Hickey's new attitude has been brought about because of a death. Hickey killed his wife, Evelyn. He reveals the story of their marriage. Evelyn always forgave Hickey in spite of his frequent moral lapses. She deluded herself into thinking that every lapse was the last ...
