Within Tennessee Williams' 1955 play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and his 1959 play Sweet Bird of Youth, characters that are heavy abusers of narcotics and/or alcohol imbibe as a means of escaping internal anguish. In both Brick and Alexandra Del Lago there lies a deep-seeded feeling that neither will articulate. Each fears that such self-knowledge could be detrimental to their lifestyles, and to how others perceive them. To distract themselves from this fear, these characters prefer intoxication to introspection. Williams' 1961 play the Night ofthe Iguana on the other hand presents a protagonist who, like Brick and Del Lago, is self-loathing; but unlike them, he uses alcohol as a means to re-engage, rather than disengage, with reality.
Reverend Lawrence Shannon is prone to emotional breakdowns, which is a result of (or perhaps the root of) his shameful past behavior concerning atheistic sermons and sexual escapades with minors; and until the play's end, Shannon acts as if avoiding alcohol will prevent him from cracking up. He says to Maxine, after she offers him a drink in Act 1: "No, no. I want some cold water. If I start drinking rum-cocos now I won't stop drinking rum-cocos." While serving the schoolteachers from the Blowing Rock Baptist Female College, Shannon avoids Brick-like disinterestedness by refusing alcohol. Because he is known to be a heavy drinker before he soberly enters the stage in Act 1 (as Maxine reveals in her suggestion that Shannon appears to be "off the wagon") and because he returns to drinking at the play's end, the play's three acts can be understood as a sort of withdrawal period for Shannon. Ironically, his devotion to being "on the wagon" leads him not into clarity, but insanity. His anxieties build throughout the play until finally he finds release in the form of none other than a rum-coco.
By the end of the third act, alcohol acts as a humbling medication for Shannon (serving him like "a few deep breathes" serve Hannah) allowing him to cope with his feelings of anxiety. He admits to Hannah, in reference to Maxine: "The widow was right about one thing: me needing a drink. The spook has left the rain-forest, yep, he's beat a temporary retreat." Like Alexandra Del Lago in Sweet Bird of Youth, Shannon has successfully found a way to silence the tiger raging in his jungle of nerves. Though unlike Del Lago the reverend is not forgetting, but rather he is coping. He knows the spook will eventually return. Nonetheless, by the end of Act 3 Shannon is drinking rum-cocos and is planning to stay with Maxine, not only as her "drinking companion" but also as her "co-manager." Alcohol is what allows him to re-engage with those around him.
The play's ending is ambiguous, but Shannon's liberation of the Iguana seems to be an achievement. Just as the Iguana is released from its torture, so is Nonno freed from debilitating old age (and allowed to pass on, having finished his finest poem). Likewise, Shannon is freed from not only his responsibilities as a tour guide, but with the help of rum-cocos he is also freed from his guilt. His liberation from the staunch moral code, which his religious affiliation obliges him to uphold, can most obviously be seen when he rips his gold chain and cross off his neck. Shannon is no longer blaming his crude tendencies on a weakness for liquor or sex, nor is he attributing his divine tendencies to a spiritual clarity. Instead, the reverend is accepting that such tendencies are a part of him whether he is sober or not, for better or worse. He is merely human.