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The Night of the Iguana

2004; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 114; Issue: Supplement Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/01.prs.0000033028.65592.4b

1529-4242

Robert M. Goldwyn,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

When Tennessee Williams wrote his play, The Night of the Iguana, in 1961, I am sure he could not have predicted what happened on December 1, 2001, at The Anchor pub on the Isle of Wight. Susan Wallace, 47, was angry and drunk, sufficiently to throw her pet iguana, a 3-foot male, twice at the doorman and later at the arresting officers (she missed). The magistrates convicted the Lizard Lady, as she is known, of inflicting unnecessary suffering on the pet but permitted her to keep it.1 I realize, of course, that the world has witnessed more momentous events and more important judicial decisions. Yet, to my little mind, what is noteworthy about this episode is its uniqueness, flamboyance, and perverse humor. Imagine Officer David Harry’s (the target of Ms. Wallace’s anger) response to his wife’s query, “How did it go at work tonight, dear?” The world of medicine and life around us constitute, among other things, a theater of the absurd, far exceeding in reality examples given us by dramatists. Although most of us do not have a pet iguana, and if we did, we probably would not fling it at somebody, we do have strong, negative emotions that can precipitate reckless behavior, sometimes self-destructive. Emotional imbalance may lead to suicide or professional burnout, which is more common than acknowledged. We know colleagues whose zest and productivity have ebbed and whose ending, in the words of T. S. Eliot, is “not with a bang but a whimper.” What has this to do with the story of the Lizard Lady and her hurled iguana? The connection is a personal belief that if one can stand back from the hurly-burly and recognize humor in the unwanted situations that embroil us, we will last longer and better. It is easier to laugh at Ms. Wallace’s night with the iguana than it is at ourselves when, for example, we are told that the patient we are awaiting in the operating room has still not made it through Admitting, or, worse, was not able to have been scheduled when we had wished. The face-lift patient dissatisfied with a good but not perfect result can do away with our world view. The unrelenting pace of our work schedule and social engagements imprisons us in an impenetrable vortex. We not only fail to see the forest but also the trees. We forget what is important. Relevant was Samuel Johnson’s comment, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” But why do we have to wait until the end to acquire a perspective that we should have had years before? Why does clarity come to the patient with cancer and not when he or she was healthy? People who are spiritual, whether religious or not, likely have made the time, not found the time, to think about their place in the universe and their actions in life to be able to weed out the trivial. The Lizard Lady lost her perspective and control. Her momentary catharsis was to fling her iguana. When we become frustrated, depressed, or angry, we would do well to remember her and keep our iguana in check.