Notes on Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy ApeNotes on Eugene O'Neill's A Hairy Ape by Azly Rahman And much it grieved my heart to think What Man has made of Man. - WORDSWORTH, Lines written in early Spring. Say! Whats dem slobs in de foist cabin got to de wit us? Were better men dan deyare, aint we? Deyre just baggage. Who makes dis old tub run? Aint it us guys? Wellden, we belong, dont we? We belong and dey dont. Dats all ... (p. 1245) Those are the words of Yank, the protaganist, the hairy ape, who thinks that he is the integral part of progress in Industrial Age and looks to power and steel for his senseof belonging. this is the myth that the character Yank, in ONeills expressionistic play, hovering upon the concept of naturalism, lives in; believing that he is a vital part of the social order. Yanks view, of course, is pure illusion. The playuses its point of departure the shattering of a myth, and it is the purpose of this paper to analyze the character of Yank, expressionistic and symbolic in nature, as he moves from delusion to self-realization; from believing that he is theforce behind the steel to being the victim of steel himself. Each of the eightshort scenes in Eugene ONeills The Hairy Ape seeks to depict a stage in the psychic development of Yank, the hero of the play, and attempt to present in an expressionistic and symbolic manner his bitter struggle against a hostile universe. The play opens with the drinking and singing scene at the firemans forecastle of anocean liner. Yank, described as the most powerful animal there, more sure of himself than the rest (p. 1242), asserts and accepts his position, as stoker on theship, of being great importance. Neither the nostalgic sentimentalism of Paddy nor the socialistic harangues of Long can shake his adament convictions. He emphasizes that the present relies upon power and force and brute strength. the modern ship, which works on steel and coal, needs a new type of man who can cope withnew force, and Yank sees himself as this ideal type. He seees himself as the force that makes the engine moves; the basic force behind the industrial society.He boasted: Im stream and oil for de engines. Im de ting in noise dat makes juh hear it; Im smoke and express trains and steamers and factory whistles; Im de ting in gold dat makes money! And Im what makes iron into steel! Steel, dat stands forthe whole ting! Im steel-steel-steel! Im de muscles in steel, de punch behind it!(p. 1248) It is in the third scene Yanks myth, that he is an integral part of progress; the all important bottom of society is foreever destroyed, when he is givenhis first glimpse of his actual, objective position in the social order. Yank encounters Mildred Douglas, the blueblood, who comes slumming into the stokehole. Horrified at his bellowing and the coldust-caked body of Yank, she cried, Oh, thefilthy beast! and fainted. It is this chance, violent encounter with the somewhatneurotic and unsympathetic daughter of the rich, capitalistic class that opensYanks eyes to his true position; to the realization that he does not belong as he imagined he did. At first, Yank tried to seek a personal justification of his position, trying to reinforce his selfhood. He wondered: I scared her? Why de hellshould I scare her? Who the hell is she? Aint she de same as me? Hairy ape, huh?Ill show her Im bettern her, if she ony knew it, I belong and she dont, see? (p. 1249) Yank then began to see that the earth does not belong to him and those who makeit run, but to a group that see in him and his kind a filthy beast, a hairy ape. Itis at this point we are presented with Yanks psychological crisis - his disharmony within his own self. Thus, in the following scene, Yank is seen assuming the posture of Rodins statue, The Thinker, trying to re-evaluate himself after hearing the words of Mildred. In this scene too Yank, in that posture, symbolizes the Neanderthal man trying to move into the position of the civilized man; by trying tothink, and thus, suggesting the inhuman quality and monotony of the kind of lifeas such as Yanks. Long, interrupting Yank, tries to interpret the previous sceneas indicative of the struggle between social classes. Still, Yank sees the wholeissue as a personal attack on him. Thus, at the ned of the scene, he tries to re-establish his own sense of belonging by condemning Mildred. Yank compares themuscles in his arms with the disgusting skinniness of the girl. He then threatens to leave immediately and bust de face offen her. Here, Yank believes that with the use of brute force alone can he regain his sense of security in the world. Nevertheless, his dangerous intention was stopped by the men around him; in the same manner a captured ape would be held. Scene five takes Yank and his desire for

vindicationto Fifth Avenue, symbolic of the core of Mildreds world. Long has brought him there in order to help him develop some type of social consciousness: Iwant yer to awaken yer bloody class consciousness. Here, Long wants Yank to get even with her kind, that is, Mildreds kind; the rich upper class. Nevertheless, Yankcould not think the way Long wanted him to - in terms of interclass conflict. Yanks self-justification is only aimed at the individual (Mildred); hence, the materialistic emblems of the upper class found at fifth Avenue do not have any effect upon him. He sees the heweeries there attractive; while Long pointed out to him their prices and thinks that one piece will buy food for a starving family for a year. But when Yank discovers the price for a piece of fur made from monkeyfur, he becomes enraged. He feels that this is a personal insult to him. He interprets this in terms of himself: Trowing it up in my face! Christ! Ill fix her! (p.1262) At the end of this scene, Yank, attempting to show his worth and might, and proving his identity (built on brute force), began to insult the passer-bys who came out of the nearby church. He asserts that he belongs amid all this steel, but that these people do not belong. In the process, he tries to attack one man and naturally, this leads him to the prison cell. Scene six seems to present acrucial point in the development of Yanks self-realization. He began to understand the nature of his own delusion. He now sees himself as, instead of being theforce behind the steel, he is now the victim of the substance. Now, reduced to literally, the status of a domesticated ape, having been robbed of his humanity,and his pride in his work, Yank reacts bitterly against the very steel with which he he has previously declared his kinship: He made dis-dis cage! Steel! It dontbelong, dats what! Cages, ceels, locks, bolts, bars - dats what it means! - holding me down (p. 1268). In the prison Yank learns about the IWW, an organization with which he can identify and belong. He now sees his role as a destroyer, tearing down the industrial pillars of the society which has dehumanize him. But, whenhe presents his objectives to the IWW, he is thrown out as a spy, and discoversthat he does not belong there. In the last scene, the next day after been thrown out of IWW, Yank, in his last attempt to find a place to belong to, goes to the monkey house at the zoo. He stops to talk to a large gorilla squatting on his haunches on a bench much the same attitude as Rodins Thinker. At this point, Yank isfinally convinced of his social dispossession. He then decides to free the animal and join him in brotherhood. But even the gorilla rejects Yank and kills him.Before he dies, the hairy ape mourns: He got me, aw right. Im trou. Even him didnt tink I belonged. Christ, where do I get off at? Where do I fit in? (p.1274). Yankdid come to a realization just as he is dying - that he belongs to the cage thatthe gorilla has thrown him in. He is where he really belongs, here is the identifiable structure where he sought. Thus ends the life of Yank, symbol of the modern man, caught in the mechanical development of society, his individuality lost. Yank, deluded by his belief that he is the force behind the steel, at the final scene of the play, came to a point of realization that he is indeed a victim of steel and can no longer find his place in nature. Through the eight short scenes, ONeills The Hairy Ape presents Yanks psychic development. Expressionistic and symbolid in form, it has succeded in depicting Yank, the protagonist, as an outcase of his society, and, whose rootless, bitter struggle against a hostile society is symbolic of the tragedy of the modern man; lost in the indifferent world ofindustrialization.

Eugene O Neill: A Critical StudySocial ImplicationsSECOND VOICE. The child was diseased at birth, stricken with a hereditary ill that only the most vital men are able to shake off.FIRST VOICE. You mean?SECOND VOICE. I mean poverty--the most deadly and prevalent of all diseases. Fog

.1A PLAY which resolves itself into an argument against capitalism or against anything else loses its value as art even though sympathy for the author s point ofview may be quite universal. The opposite is likewise true. A work of art whichis divorced from man s struggle with an unfriendly and an unmoral universe losesthe most abiding appeal that art can have for man. O Neill s tremendous successas a dramatist depends to a great extent upon the fact that he has had something to say about the modern social order that has been worth saying. His techniqueand his form have been admirable vehicles for an interpretation of the conflictwhich arises out of the circumstances of the world in which we live.In Fog, an early one-act play, O Neill s point of view is clearly stated. It ismore of an argument than a play, but for the purpose of understanding O Neill sphilosophy it has real value. The poor workmanship of the young artist is oftenthe key to understanding the implication of the mature work. In O Neill s earlyplays his point of view is clear. Fog is symbolic of the state of mind of the business man who is adrift in a boat with a poet, a woman and a dead child. When the business man expresses concern over the child s death, the poet replies by giving a lecture on social injustice which surrounds the lives of the poor. He says:What chance had that poor child? Naturally sickly and weak from underfeeding, transplanted to the stinking room of a tenement or the filthy hovel of a mining village, what glowing opportunities did life hold out that death should not be regarded as a blessing for him ? I mean if he possessed the ordinary amount of ability and intelligence--considering him as the average child of ignorant Polish immigrants. Surely his prospects of ever becoming anything but a beast of burden were not bright, were they?The business man answers with a doubtful negative, which implies that he thinksthere should be some Way out. He expresses the usual vague hope of those who find it hard to face reality. The poet then pushes the problem still further by asking an embarrassing question:If you could bring him back to life, would you do so? Could you conscientiouslydrag him away from that fine sleep of his to face what he would have to face? Leaving the joy you would give his mother out of the question, would you do it forhim individually?The implications of these questions are very general They apply not only to thedead child in the boat, but to millions of unfortunate victims of our industrialsystem. It is as though O Neill had said: "If you were God would you not prevent this monstrous abortion called the living poor?" What right have we to permitlife to be born that exists only for slavery or worse than slavery--a life of neglect and suffering to end in a charity bread line, and a pauper s grave? The poet is explicit, and defines his terms:I mean poverty--the most deadly and prevalent of all diseases.The business man is irritated by such a statement and tries to escape by asserting that he is "not responsible for the way the world is run." And the poet replies, "But you are responsible," continuing:I mean supposing we--the self-satisfied, successful members of society--are responsible for the injustice visited upon the heads of our less fortunate "brothers-inChrist" because of our shameful indifference to it. We see misery all aroundus and we do not care. We do nothing to prevent it. Are we not then, in part atleast, responsible for it? Have you ever thought of that?

O Neill has thought a great deal about that and has given his answer in many different plays. It is because he has thought of man in relation to his social system that his plays have become something more than a moment s entertainment. It is not man as an individual alone that concerns O Neill; it is man in a social order, tortured, starved, disillusioned, thwarted and driven to disaster by the forces of a system which cares nothing for the general welfare of society. Man moves across the stage of an O Neill play not as a free and detached individual, not merely as an individual in relation to a few characters who are associated with him in the immediate drama which makes the play, but he treats man against a rich background of social forces. Beyond the backdrop, before the beginning of the play, and beyond the ending lies a definite social system that is as importantto an appreciation of the play as is the action which takes place on the stagein the presence of the audience. It is the skill with which the dramatist has made his audience aware of this larger significance of his theme that lends to O Neill s drama its rich, sympathetic tone. It is the social implication that makeshis play have a life in the mind of the audience after it has left the theaterand scattered to the quiet of individual thought.2In the early one-act plays this is stated in direct speech; but as his techniquedeveloped, O Neill made the background more implicit than explicit, which is exactly as it should be. But O Neill like all great dramatists is not afraid of the direct criticism which, from a technical point of view, may be considered as adigression. No man ever made more digressions to generalize about life and itstragic lot than did Shakespeare or Goethe. They had something to say and they would say it no matter what the consequences might be. O Neill is far more restrained than any of his predecessors in the drama, even than his modern contemporaries, but that he is concerned with the problem of man in relation to the presentsocial order is apparent in all of his plays. Even those that use an historicalbackground come under this classification. The social implication of the greed for empire is boldly set forth in The Fountain, and the direct criticism of modern business ideals is the whole theme of Marco Millions. In such a purely fantastic drama as The Emperor Jones, O Neill does not permit us to forget the social implication. When Brutus Jones lost his nerve in the forest, the grim shadows ofhis past came to haunt him. And what were they? Slavery, crime, penitentiaries,the whole vicious, illogical structure of our modern industrial world, which goad the poverty-stricken day and night to commit crime, and then when it is committed, punishes the criminal it has helped to make-punishes without reference to the causes that inspired the crime. Jones escaped the direct punishment, but he could not escape the deep scars left by a vicious system. In the pantomime of theprison scene and at the auction mart our social order as well as the characterof Jones is clearly revealed.But in the plays mentioned above, the social criticism supplies only a rich background. It is in Anna Christie, Strange Interlude, The Hairy Ape and All God s Chillun Got Wings that the modern social order is directly, and in some cases, bitterly criticized.3In The Hairy Ape O Neill presents a problem that has broader implications than the immediate success or failure of Yank. Yank becomes aware of the fact that hedoes not "belong." He finds out that while he has been doing his work the worldhas been gradually but quite rapidly revolutionized by machinery, a revolution that has not carried him with it. He finds that a new world which disregards human rights and aspirations has left him stranded. The one thing which made his life endurable was that he felt that he "belonged," that he was a necessary, vitaland human part of a social order. But one day he awoke to the fact that he counted for nothing as an individual. If he could have reasoned it out clearly, he wo

uld have known that as soon as a machine known as an automatic stoker could be invented, he would be thrown overboard. He would have known that the progress ofinvention is for the benefit of those who exploit the workers and not for the good of society as a whole. And this is not Yank s problem alone, but the problemof our whole social system. There are literally millions of men and women who are blood relations of Yank in this modern industrial world. Like Yank they have grown up in the faith that they "belonged," that they were a necessary and respected part of a social order, but they have lived to find out that they are nothing of the kind. As they walk up and down the world looking for work only to be turned away with a brutal word; as they stand in thousands of bread lines to receive food not much better than slop that charity flings them; as they shiver fromcold, and see their loved ones die from want, consoled only by the fact that they, too, will soon be dead, they come to the realization that they do not belong.They see an abundance of food, clothing and shelter lavishly wasted on every hand, but nothing is offered them. They taste only the food that has been allowedto rot, because of a system which does not or cannot change its ideals. They stand on the sidewalks of the world, desolate, abandoned, even hated and despised for being something they did not ask to be. They are forced to listen to the empty talk which flows like a garbagechoked river from the vacuous minds of the protected ones. Like Yank they must listen as he listened one bright Sunday morningon Fifth Avenue while the fat ones came past him talking of the church service in the following manner.Dear Doctor Caiaphas! He is so sincere!What was the sermon ? I dozed off.About the radicals, my dear--and the false doctrines that are being preached.We must organize a hundred per cent American bazaar.And let everyone contribute one one-hundredth per cent of their income tax.What an original idea!We can devote the proceeds to rehabilitating the veil of the temple.But that has been done so many times.Nothing could reflect more clearly than does this scene the utter bankruptcy ofthe modern system to deal with the problem that confronts Yank and millions of others, The system has evolved beyond control and each day the gap between Yank and his needs grows wider.Yank tries desperately to cope with the problem and for his pains is thrown intojail where a fellow prisoner makes a plain and direct criticism of the social order by reading a senator s puerile defense of a system that offers imprisonmentor starvation as its only answer to social injustice. This speech, quoted in full, shows the extent to which O Neill introduces a direct approach to the socialproblem. Thus spoke Senator Queen as reported in the Sunday Times:There is a menace existing in this country today which threatens the vitals of our fair Republic--as foul a menace against the very life-blood of the American Eagle as was the foul conspiracy of Catiline against the eagles of ancient Rome!I refer to that devil s brew of rascals, jailbirds, murderers and cutthroats wholibel all honest workingmen by calling themselves the Industrial Workers of theWorld; but in the light of their nefarious plots, I call them the Industrial Wreckers of the World. This fiendish organization is a foul ulcer on the fair bodyof our Democracy--Like Cato I say to this Senate, the I. W. W. must be destroyed! For they represent an ever-present dagger pointed at the heart of the greates

t nation the world has ever known, where all men are born free and equal, with equal opportunities to all, where the Founding Fathers have guaranteed to each one happiness, where Truth, Honor, Liberty, Justice, and the Brotherhood of Man are a religion absorbed with one s mother milk, taught at our father s knee, sealed, signed, and stamped upon in the glorious Constitution of these United States.. . .They plot with fire in one hand and dynamite in the other. They stop not beforemurder to gain their ends, nor at the outraging of defenseless womanhood. They would tear down society, put the lowest scum in the seats of the mighty, turn Almighty God s revealed plan for the world topsy-turvy, and make of our sweet and lovely civilization a shambles, a desolation where man, God s masterpiece, wouldsoon degenerate back to the ape!Literature of all types during the last sixty years has dealt with social problems. Social protest has been the moving spirit in literature since the days of Zola. In The Hairy Ape O Neill reveals himself in sympathy with this tradition, with the one difference that he is not dealing with the condemnation of a particular political order. His problem is the deeper one of the psychological implications of the machine age. His predecessors might have shown how Yank lost his joband finally through starvation was led to crime to support himself and family, or some similar theme. But it should be remembered that Yank s problem was not loss of work. He could have had all the work he wanted. Furthermore, O Neill doesnot appeal to the emotions by having Yank lose a sweetheart, mother, or children. Yank is alone as far as any family connections are concerned. It is not work that Yank is seeking. What Yank wants is to know that he "belongs." He wants to find out what it is that has happened to the world which separates him from the realization that what he is doing is a necessary and a fitting part of the life of the world.In pursuit of the answer to this problem he receives blows and insults--no insult greater than that which is expressed in the typical speech of the senator whoattributes to the workers all the sins of which he and his class are guilty. Thereal danger to modern civilization is the stupidity and timidity of the rulingclasses. Therein lies the real drama of this play. It is not that Yank as an individual moves the audience very deeply. He is neither charming nor likeable, norcapable of arousing deep emotion as a person. Had O Neill meant this play to bethe tragedy of Yank, he would have made him a more likeable character. But Yankis more than an individual. He is a symbol of the deep protest that rises likea wave against the whole structure of modern civilization. He is man crying outagainst a system which has not only exploited man s body but his spirit as well.The play is not a protest against low wages and unemployment as is the case inthe traditional social drama, Hauptmann s The Weavers, for example, but it is acondemnation of the whole structure of machine civilization, a civilization which succeeds only when it destroys the psychological well-being of those who makeit possible. It is this which gives the play universality and enlists the sympathy and understanding of the audience. It is a play which might be called by anyof the many titles of books that describe the disintegration of modern civilization; it is a part of the Decline of the West.Because of its deep psychological and philosophical implication The Hairy Ape cannot be classed with a type of social drama which solves a problem and points away out. The sickness of the machine age is not wholly a problem of relating production and consumption. It goes much deeper than that. The whole concept of life, of man s relation to the world, of his place in it is involved. Yank was notconcerned about distribution --vitally important as that is--he wanted to be a creative part of the social structure, and no man working in the stoke-hole of aliner, or making the two hundred and fifty-sixth part of a shoe in regulation eight-hour shifts can ever "belong" in the same sense that man belonged as a creative worker in the eighteenth century. Yank is a protest against the mordant succ

ess of the machine age.O Neill makes this clear as Yank moves from one defeat to another striving vainly to find some answer to his problem. In prison he heard of the I. W. W.s and thought to find among them an answer. They threw him into the street, just as theCommunists of today would deny him a place. The Communists would not accept Yank, because Yank is an individualist not a party man. What he wants is to be a creative worker proud of what he as an individual has created.Yank s speech after he has been thrown from the I. W. W. s headquarters is an explicit summary of the whole situation. O Neill shows that wages, distribution, shorter hours and all the rest of it is no solution. Yank in the pose of "The Thinker" reviews the whole situation, ending by admitting that his greatest crime was that of being born. Yank speaks, referring first to the men who threw him outinto the street:YANK (Bitterly) So dem boids don t fink I belong, neider. Aw, to hell wit em! Dey re in de wrong pew --de same old bull--soapboxes and Salvation Army-no guts!Cut out an hour often de job a day and make me happy! Gimme a dollar more a dayand make me happy! Tree square a day, and cauliflowers in de front yard--ekal rights--a woman and kids--a lousy vote-and I m all fixed for Jesus, huh? Aw, hell!What does dar get yuh? Dis ring s in your inside, but it ain t your belly. Feedin your face--sinkers and coffee--dat don t touch it. It s way down--at de bottom. Yuh can t grab it, and yuh can t stop it. It moves, and everything moves. Itstops and de whole woild stops. Dat s me now--I don t tick, see?--I m a bustedIngersoll, dat s what. Steel was me, and I owned de woild. Now I ain t steel, and de woild owns me. Aw, Hell! I can t see--it s all dark, get me? It s all wrong! Say, youse up dere, Man in de Moon, yuh look so wise, gimme de answer, huh? Slip me de inside dope, de information right from de stable--where do I get off at, huh?A POLICEMAN (Who has come up the street in time to hear this last--with grim humor) You ll get off at the station, you boob, if you don t get up out of that andkeep movin .YANK (Looking up at him--with a hard, bitter laugh) Sure! Lock me up! Put me ina cage! Dat s de on y answer yuh know. G wan, lock me up!POLICEMAN. What you been doin ?YANK. Enough to gimme life for! I was born, see? Sure, dat s de charge. Write itin de blotter. I was born, get me!POLICEMAN. God pity your old woman! But I ve no time for kidding. You re soused.I d run you in but it s too long a walk to the station. Come on now, get up, orI ll fan your ears with this club. Beat it now!YANK. Say, where do I go from here?POLICEMAN. Go to hell.A careful reading of Yank s analysis makes further comment unnecessary. The machine age has done something to man that wages, food, home, family, shorter hoursand a "lousy vote" won t remedy. As the machine created wealth it destroyed thejoy of living, the only thing that wealth is good for. O Neill has presented theparadox of modern civilization with great insight into its fundamental tragedy.Like Yank we all say, "where do we go from here," and the answer is "Hell."4

The importance of O Neill as a social critic lies in the fact that he emphasizesthe psychological aspect of the modern social order. He points out the diseaseof our acquisitive society. He does not merely stress the fact that workers areexploited to create wealth for the few, but shows how in our modern machine-madeworld they are deprived of the sense of harmony and mental well-being that comes from doing something that seems important and necessary. Man s work is a necessary part of his personality; it is an extension of his ego; it makes him feel that he is a necessary part of the life of the world in which he lives. Modern industry tends to destroy this psychological counterpart of work, and in so far asit does, it leaves the worker a nervous, irritable and dissatisfied misfit. Yank was such a worker, and at the same time, conscious of the thing he had lost. He didn t want a job simply because it would be a means to earning a living; he wanted a job in which he could live.In All God s Chillun Got Wings this problem is carried out still further and applied to one of the great problems of social inequality in modern America. The American Negro is technically free, but psychologically he is still in bondage. Idon t want to give the impression that he is not also in economic bondage, as, indeed, we all are, but that may be taken for granted. O Neill has not overlookedthat, but he has turned to the more subtle and dangerous kind of slavery for his dramatic materials. The serfs of the Middle Ages were economic slaves, but they belonged to a system and were recognized as important individuals in that system. In the terms of Yank, they "belonged." The modern worker does not belong. Heis a number on a tin badge, not a unified and significant personality.Jim Harris the principal character of All God s Chillun Got Wings is a Negro whose problem is to "belong." It is the story of Yank over again from a different angle. Like Yank, Jim s trouble is not primarily economic. He seems to have the means of a livelihood. It is not a problem of physical starvation but of psychological persecution. This persecution leads Jim to fed that only through marryinga white girl can he win the position in life that he craves and that is necessary to his happiness.The love of Ella, the white girl, and Jim, the Negro, is genuine, but in the endit is destroyed, or it destroys them. The social pressure of a society that cannot overcome its race prejudice makes Jim a failure and drives Ella to insanity.It may well be argued that the Negro needs economic security, but beyond that,then what ? Jim tried it and failed. He failed because the social system deniedhim something that he wanted more than wages and votes, it denied him the rightto belong.O Neill has selected the material out of which the modern Negro s tragedy is perpetuated beyond the termination of his physical slavery. He has arraigned the deep and powerful prejudices of American civilization before the bar of true justice, and he has convicted our civilization of enforcing a slavery as gross, disgusting and deadly as any that our forefathers supported before the days of the Civil War. Because modern American civilization is steeped in the prejudices of its past injustice to the Negro, it is now a slave to its own sins. In order to escape the opprobrium of an economic slavery, it has changed the terms but kept the facts as they were. O Neill is not so naive as to believe that this is the result of a conscious program. Few significant social attitudes are. But it is nonethe less deadly.After seventeen years of struggle Jim Harris finally abandons his program. He was generous, sincere, kind hearted, brave and very able as a student. These qualities might have made a white man successful, but because Jim was a Negro, he failed. Even his marriage failed, and his white wife, in spite of herself, turned against him. White supremacy is maintained at the price of social injustice to the Negro. O Neill has made the personal story of Jim Harris and Ella Downey intoa drama of great social importance for America. He has gone beyond the problem o

f economic slavery to the greater dangers of psychological bondage, and throughthe tragic love of these two characters has written an indictment of one important phase of American civilization.The self-righteous recognized the indictment, and acted, as only "good" people can, with vicious hatred and destructive power. A brief quotation from The Provincetown reveals how "Virtue" tried to deal with a play that should have been welcomed for its deep, sympathetic understanding of an American tragedy:The fact that it dealt with a marriage between a Negro and a white girl, and that the wife at one point in the action kisses her husband s hand, had been avidlyseized upon. Ku Kluxers, Citizen Fixits and Southern Gentlewomen, most of whomdid not trouble to read the play (which had been published in the American Mercury) were goaded into action. Facts were enlarged and distorted, and expressionsof opinion from pastors in Mississippi, from Colonels of the Confederate Army, from champions of Nordic integrity in Iowa, were printed and reprinted from one end of the country to the other. A picture of Mary Blair, who was to play the wife, was syndicated hundreds of times with the caption White Actress Kisses Negros Hand, and a harmless little paragraph by Irvin S. Cobb about how All God sChillun would need their wings in Paducah, Kentucky, where he came from, echoedand rehoed in print like a thunderbolt of the demigod Authority. The envelopes from the clipping bureau grew larger and larger until great boxes began to arrive. The office soon gave up the gargantuan task of pasting dippings into the pressbook and began stuffing them into shoe boxes and storing them in the back of the most remote closet in the theater. In the final totaling it was found that thepress-clipping bill exceeded the cost of the scenery.5Marco Millions is an excellent study in the social concept of the Western business ideal. Marco serves as a symbol for big business. Although the play deals with Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, one has no difficulty in recognizing him as a goodAmerican business man whose ideal of life is to buy cheap and sell dear. O Neill has given to this play a touch of light satire which makes his criticism of modern society all the more penetrating.O Neill shows how Marco began his career as a normal child with an idealistic attitude towards life. He was romantic in love, sensitive to beauty, generous in his relations to other people, and unmaterialistic. But under the training of hisfather and his uncle he gradually lost the gentle sweetness of his character and assumed the character of the stereotyped business man. This means more than simply the occupation of trading. Trading for profit in itself seems innocent enough. An uncritical thinker might even hold that a man could pursue the ideal of profit and at the same time maintain a certain personal integrity, love of beauty, generosity and creative imagination.It is on this point that the significance of O Neill s play turns. For he seemsto hold that the profit motive is at the root of the evil in Western civilization. The profit motive destroys that which is best and noblest in man, making himinto a beast who is capable of no great passions and no real love of the beautiful and the good. Under the deadly influence of this practical ideal, he becomesan excellent judge of quantity, and believes that quantity is synonymous with quality.The limitation of this concept leads to others even more destructive. It leads to a narrow selfish bigotry which finds expression in condemning every point of view that does not harmonize with the desire for bigger and better profits. Maffeo expresses it well when he says "All Mahometans are crazy." To the rulers of our Western world all theories which run counter to the profit seeking motive areconsidered manifestations of insanity. When Maffeo saw a dervish dancer, he was

deeply moved, but not by the art of the performer, but by the thought that "If we had him in Venice we could make a mint of money exhibiting him."Trade with profit is this man s ideal. He will endure any hardship, work long hours, endanger his health and his life for profit. He pursues profit with the passionate intensity of a fanatic. As Maffeo puts it: "Any climate is healthy wheretrade is brisk." He knows no leisure, for his mind is forever stewing in the stink of his profits. He is tortured by new visions of greater incomes wherever hegoes. Only that which is innocuous can give him pleasure. Thus Marco liked thetheater, that is, he liked to go to a play that did not rise above his belly s needs. His excellence asa dramatic critic has been copied by that New Yorker whowrote "Evening Becomes Intolerable."* He and Marco are blood Brothers. Marco summarizes:There s nothing better than to sit down in a good seat at a good play after a good day s work in which you know you ve accomplished something, and after you vehad a good dinner, and just take it easy and enjoy a good wholesome thrill or agood laugh and get your mind off serious things until it s time to go to bed.Marcoing."hrille hasim tolace.

is the perfect business man. "He has memorized everything and learned nothHis capacity for experiencing life is limited to his trade. His greatest tis a balance in his favor on the day s business. As Kublai says of him: "Hnot even a mortal soul; he has only an acquisitive instinct." This leads hdeal with all human values in the terms of profit and loss in the market p

One of Kublai s counsellors described Marco s exploits as mayor of Yang-Chau, saying:I talked recently with a poet who had fled from there in horror. Yang-Chau usedto have a soul, he said. Now it has a brand new Court House. And another, a manof wide culture, told me, our Christian mayor is exterminating our pleasures andour rats as if they were twin breeds of vermin!Marco Millions is a satire on the modern business man. If it were no more than that it might be amusing, but it would scarcely be very important in the study ofO Neill s criticism of life. He chose Marco Polo as his principal character because through him and his exploits he could contrast the East and the West. Through him he could picture the mordant disintegration of Western civilization as itundermines all things beautiful and good in its pursuit of profits. This play,then, is a further indictment of the whole system of Western ideals. Marco is the ruler of the Western world, and with Marco in power, how long can it last? That is what O Neill asks, and from what the world looks like today it might well be said that his question is of vital importance. While economists and bankers worry over Communism and a new system of distribution, O Neill points to the wholephilosophical conception of life which dominates our world and indicates wherethe real cause of disaster ties. Life is the only justification for living, andlife is not measured by mechanical inventions and profits in dollars and cents.The following rather lengthy quotation summarizes the business ideal of the Western world, and by implication reveals the thoroughness of O Neill s indictment of the prevailing ideals:MARCO. My tax scheme, Your Majesty, that got such wonderful results is simplicity itself. I simply reversed the old system. For one thing I found they had a high tax on excess profits. Imagine a profit being excess! Why, it isn t humanly possible! I repealed it. And I repealed the tax on luxuries. I found out the greatmajority in Yang-Chau couldn t afford luxuries. The tax wasn t democratic enough to make it pay! I crossed it off and I wrote on the statute books a law that taxes every necessity in life, a law that hits every man s pocket equally, be he

beggar or banker! And I got results!CHU-YIN. In beggars?KUBLAI. I have received a petition from the inhabitants of Yang-Chau enumeratingover three thousand cases of your gross abuse of power!MARCO. Oh, so they ve sent that vile slander to you, have they? That s the workof a mere handful of radicals-KUBLAI. Five hundred thousand names are signed to it. Half a million citizens accuse you of endeavoring to stamp out their ancient culture.MARCO. What! Why, I even had a law passed that anyone caught interfering with culture would be subject to a fine! It was Section One of a blanket statute that every citizen must be happy or go to jail. I found it was the unhappy ones who were always making trouble and getting discontented. You see, here s the way I figure it; if a man s good, he s happy--and if he isn t happy, it s a sure sign hes no good to himself or anyone else and he better be put where he can t do harm.6The world revealed by Eugene O Neill is tragic because it is without intelligentsocial organization. Ignorance, brutality, selfishness, greed and hatred are the dominant forces in this world of O Neill. The multitude of men and women who pass by in the imagination as one tries to vision the sum total of life that O Neill has presented in his plays is a sorry lot. Here by the roadside lies a youngman coughing his lungs out as he cries for the beauty which lies beyond the horizon; here is a girl tortured into committing a murder; another passes with a fixed look of dry-eyed sorrow that is just breaking into insanity over her lover killed in war; a handsome Negro passes with the sorrow of hopeless despair furrowing every line of his face; in a narrow room another breaks under the strain oflife as his fevered imagination turns gilded trinkets into gold; in the cold seas of the north a woman goes mad from loneliness; in a beautiful New England homestarved and misguided love brings endless tragedy; and so one could go on withthe enumeration.And what has turned potential happiness for these human beings into sure and grim tragedy? Is it that there is something in nature that makes these hard hearts?Is it that man is doomed by his humanity to make every third thought his grave?No doubt that is partially the truth, or at least the only truth that we have tried and practiced. But O Neill also emphasizes the fact of a social system which is destructive in itself, which thwarts every effort to achieve happiness, which puts a value on misery and pain as a good in itself, and worst of all encourages and rewards everything that is predatory and destructive, condemning beauty,wellbeing and happiness as a sin. O Neill s interpretation of the world is grimand terrible. Many have called it lopsided and monstrous. There is no denying that people may feel that he over-emphasizes the gruesome, but if O Neill is to be condemned for his interpretation of life as essentially tragic, then he may take it as an honor to be by such a device classed with Sophocles, Dante and Shakespeare among those who considered this world "an unweeded garden, where things rank and gross in nature possess it merely."It may be that in such protest against injustice as O Neill reveals in his social dramas lies the hope for a better world. He has given dramatic power to this particular aspect of our modern social order and by so doing has helped to makethe problems real to his audience. This may disappoint those who go to the theater to rest as did Marco, but to those who go to the theater for a memorable experience, O Neill has something to say that is worth saying.

The Hairy ApeEugene O NeillContextEugene O Neill was born in New York City on October 16, 1888 to James and Ella ONeill. James was a successful touring actor and O Neill s mother, Ella, accompanied her husband touring around the country. Eugene was born in a hotel room andspent most of his childhood on the road with his family. Summers were spent inthe family s only permanent home in New London, Connecticut. O Neill was educated at boarding schools in his early years and then attended Princeton Universityfor a year, from 1906 to 1907. After Eugene left school he began an education in, what he later called, "life experience." Over the next six years he shipped tosea, lived destitute on the waterfronts of New York, Buenos Aires and Liverpool, became alcoholic and attempted suicide. At age twenty-four, O Neill finally began to recover from this state and held a job as a reporter for the New London Daily Telegraph. Eugene was forced to quit his reporting job when he became extremely ill with tuberculosis and was subsequently hospitalized in Gaylord Farm Sanitarium in Wallington, Connecticut for six months. While in the hospital, Eugenebegan to reevaluate his life in what he later termed his "rebirth." After his hospitalization, O Neill studied the techniques of playwriting at Harvard University from 1914 to 1915 under the famous theater scholar George Pierce Baker.In the summer of 1916, O Neill made his first appearance as a playwright in a tiny playhouse on the wharf of Provincetown, MA. The playhouse was started as a new experimental theater by a group of young writers and painters. The playhouse produced Bound East for Cardiff, O Neill s first play. This same group of writersformed the Playwrights Theater in New York s Greenwich Village, eventually Provincetown Players, where O Neill made his New York debut. For ten years O Neillworked as a dramatist and playwright for this company. O Neill s first full-length endeavor was produced on Broadway on February 2, 1920 at the Morosco Theater.Beyond the Horizon won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, the first of four awardedto O Neill in his lifetime. O Neill was later awarded Pulitzers for Anna Christie, Strange Interlude, and Long Day s Journey into Night. O Neill was also the first American playwright to receive the Nobel Prize for literature.Between 1920 and 1943, O Neill completed twenty long plays and many shorter ones. All of O Neill s plays are written from a personal point of view and reflect on the tragedy of the human condition. There is no doubt that O Neill s early history contributed to his writing. Like O Neill as a boy, many of his characters are caught in destructive situations and paths that they cannot escape. Before ONeill, most American Drama was farce or melodrama. O Neill embraced the theateras a venue to work out serious social issues and ideas. He transformed the American Theater into a serious and important cultural institution.O Neill has been compared to virtually every literary figure in the Western world and is considered the first great American playwright. His plays deal specifically with the American tragedy, rooted in American history and social movements.O Neill had broad vision and was sometimes criticized when this vision seemed to exceed his skill. Some critics even believed O Neill aimed too consciously atgreatness. His dramas are marked by expressionistic theatrical techniques and symbolic devices that function to express religious and philosophical ideas. O Neill even used the Ancient Greek Chorus as a device to comment on the action of many of his plays. By bringing psychological depth, poetic symbolism and expressionistic technique to the American theatre, O Neill raised the standards of American theatre.

The last twenty years of his life, O Neill battled a crippling nervous disordersimilar to Parkinson s disease. He died in 1953.Plot OverviewThe firemen, workers who shovel coal into the engine of a Transatlantic Ocean Liner, sit in the forecastle of the ship drinking and carrying on with each other.They are an hour out of New York City and have seven more days aboard ship. Themen are burly and muscular. Yank, the fiercest looking of the men, sits in theforeground quietly. Whenever Yank speaks the men immediately hush. Yank asks fora beer and the men immediately give one to him. As Yank and the men drink, Yankremains in control as the leader of the group. Yank and the men joke about thinking as they drink. Yank, in a joke repeated during the play, tells the men to be quiet because he is trying to "tink." The men mockingly repeat after him, "think" and then erupt into a chorus of "Drink, don t think!" Cutting through the general mayhem, a drunken tenor sings a tune about his lass at home. Talk of homeoutside the ocean liner infuriates Yank and he tells the tenor to be quiet. Long, quite drunk, stands up and makes a Marxist speech, preaching to the men that if the ship is home, their home is hell and the Upper Class put them there. Yanktells him to join the Salvation Army and get a soapbox. Paddy, a wise, older fireman tells the men that life on an Ocean Liner is hell by comparison to his lifeon a Clipper Ship. Paddy reminisces about the freedom he enjoyed, the purpose he had and skill for which he was valued. Yank tells Paddy that he is dead, "living in the past of dreams" and glorifies his own job as the strength of the ships speed and force.Mildred and her Aunt lounge on the promenade deck of the Ocean Liner. Mildred and her Aunt discuss Mildred s need to do service for the poor. Mildred worked with the poor in Manhattan s Lower East Side and is currently on her way to do moreservice projects in Europe. Mildred s Aunt characterizes Mildred s service as "slumming" and does not understand why she has to do it internationally. Mildreds Aunt tells Mildred that her service work just makes the poor feel poorer. Mildred is currently waiting for the second engineer to take her down into the stokehole. Mildred told a lie that her father, the president of Nazareth Steel, has given her permission. When he arrives, the second Engineer escorts Mildred, cladin a white dress she refused to change out of, down into the stokehole.Yank and the men are hard at work shoveling coal in the noisy stokehole at the opening of Scene Three. Yank leads the men at work. The men take a break and an anonymous whistle-blower overhead in the darkness commands the men to keep working. In a rage, Yank screams up at the whistle-blower. Yank suddenly realizes thatthe men have stopped working. Still fuming, Yank turns to face Mildred. At thesight of Yank, Mildred whimpers for the men to take her away from the filthy beast and faints into the arms of the engineers.The men have again gathered in the stokehold in Scene Four. They replay and rehash the Mildred scene and mock Yank, the "filthy beast." Paddy tells Yank Mildredlooked at him like he was a big "hairy ape." Infuriated, Yank lunges toward thedoor to find Mildred, but is restrained by the other Firemen.Yank and Long have traveled to 5th Avenue in New York City in Scene Five. Long means to show Yank that all upper class people are like Mildred. Yank tries to attract attention to himself by bumping into people and accosting a young woman, but receives no response but "I beg your pardon." Finally, Yank is arrested because he makes a Gentleman miss his bus. Yank is imprisoned on Blackwell s Island and converses with the other prisoners in Scene Six. The men tell him that if hewants to get even with Mildred and her father s company he should join the Wobblies or the Industrial Workers of the World. Yank realizes that Mildred s fatherbuilt both the physical and metaphorical cage he is trapped in. In a fury, Yank

actually bends the bars of his cell, but is restrained by the guards.Yank visits the local I.W.W. in Scene Seven, but is rejected because the Secretary thinks he is a governmental spy. Yank s radicalism, willingness to blow things up and preoccupation with "belonging" make them suspicious of him. Yank is thrown out on the street. Yank spends the night at the Battery and the next morningvisits the Monkey House at the Zoo. In Scene Eight, Yank attempts to befriend the ape. He tells the ape that they are alikeboth caged and taunted. Yank believeshe and the ape belong to the same club and calls him brother. Yank releases thegorilla from his cage and approaches the ape to shake his hand. The gorilla springs on Yank, crushes Yank with his massive arms and then tosses Yank into his cage. Yank dies in the gorilla s cage.Character AnalysisYankThe struggle of Yank, a fireman who works aboard a Transatlantic Liner, is the subject of The Hairy Ape. Yank, real name is Bob Smith, was born in New York City. Yank does not reveal many details of his family history, but, from what he does say, it is clear that it was painful. His mother died of the "tremens" and hisfather, a shore-worker, was abusive. Yank tells Long that on Saturday nights his parent s fighting was so intense that his parents would break the furniture. Ironically, his parents made him attend church every Sunday morning. After his mother died, Yank ran away from home, tired of lickings and punishment.In the beginning of The Hairy Ape, Yank seems fairly content as, if not proud tobe a fireman. He defends the ship as his home and insists that the work he doesis vitalit is the force that makes the ship go twenty-five knots an hour. Mildred Douglas s reaction to Yank is the catalyst which makes Yank come to class awareness. His attempt to get revenge on Mildred Douglas widens to revenge on the steel industry and finally the entire Bourgeois. Throughout this struggle Yank defines "belonging" as power. When he thinks he "belongs" to something he gains strength, when Yank is rejected by a group, he is terribly weak. However, Yank is rejected by all facets of society: his fellow firemen, Mildred, the street goersof 5th Ave., The I.W.W., and finally the ape in the zoo. Yank symbolizes the struggle of modern man within industrial societyhe cannot break class or ideologicalbarriers, nor create new ones. Yank is the outsider, and eventually just the freak at the zoo for people to cage and point at.Mildred DouglasMildred Douglas, the picture of piety and service, is anything but. Mildred is the pale and feeble daughter of the owner of Nazareth Steel. She has been lavishly spoiled and enjoyed every possible privilege money can buy. In college, Mildred studied sociology and is on a crusade to help the poor. Mildred has previouslyworked with the disadvantaged people in New York s Lower East Side. Mildred s Aunt is accompanying her to Europe where she will embark on more service projects. While on the Ocean Liner Mildred asks permission to visit the lower portions ship to view how the "other half" (Yank and the firemen) live. As if on a trip tothe zoo, she wears a bright white dress down into the stokehole, ignoring the Engineer s warning that is will get dirty from the coal dust.Although Mildred should be considered the antagonist of The Hairy Ape, she is equally victimized by class as Yank. Though Mildred has more education and cultural experience than Yank, she still cannot escape her cultural identity. Mildred describes herself as the waste of her father s steel company, as she has felt thebenefits, but not the hard work that brought them. She shares with Yank the need to find a sense of usefulness or belongingthe fate of both characters were decided before they were born. Thus, Yank and Mildred desperately search to find an

identity that is their own.The failure of both these characters lies in their conscious and unconscious refusal to shed their values and knowledge while searching for a new identity. Forexample, Mildred will not change out of her white dress and Yank s coal dust issaturated into his skin.PaddyAlthough Paddy only appears in The Hairy Ape in two scenes, he is an essential element of the play. Paddy is an old Irishman who likes to drink heavily, and heis known for his rendition of "Whiskey Johnny" and spouting philosophy and stories of the past when intoxicated. Although Paddy is quite a thinker, O Neill describes Paddy s facial features as "extremely monkeywith the sad, patient pathos ofthat animal in his small eyes." Of the men on the ship Paddy could be considered the "extreme-monkey" because he has been doing labor jobs longer than most ofthe firemenlabor jobs fit for monkeys.Paddy brings historical perspective to The Hairy Ape. His extensive monologue inScene One details how shipping used to be aboard Clipper Ships. Without Paddy spresence the audience would not have as much perspective about the revolution brought about by machines. Paddy has experienced life on the sea that was free, where he was empowered and valued. Paddy, unlike many of the men, knows what it is like to not do slave labor.Yank s continual references to Paddy as "dead" and "old" and not "belonging" with the other men aboard the Ocean Liner reveals Yank s own rejection of freedom.The acceptance and attachment to the modern-ship machine enslaves men like Yank.The need for belonging, without the knowledge of what else to belong to, is dangerous as exemplified by Yank s encounter with Mildred.Paddy s characterization of Mildred in Scene Four demonstrates that he has realknowledge of the Bourgeois lifestyle. Paddy s description of Mildred s look andfainting spell in the stokehole defines Yank s own opinion of Mildred. Paddy s experiences let him have real opinions. While the development of one s opinion isdefinitely a process of age, it is also a benefit of freedom.ThemesHuman Regression by IndustrializationThe resounding theme of The Hairy Ape is the effect of industrialization and technological progress on the worker. Industrialization has reduced the human worker into a machine. The men are programmed to do one task, are turned on and off by whistles, and are not required to think independently. Today, the job of the coal stoker is actually done by a machine. Workers are thus forced into jobs thatrequire nothing but grunt work and physical labor, which has, in turn, caused ageneral deterioration of the worker into a Neanderthal or Ape- like state. Thisis made clear by O Neill s stage direction, which indicates that the Firemen actually look like Neanderthals and one of the oldest workers, Paddy, as "extremely monkey-like." The longer the Firemen work, the further back they fall on the human evolutionary paththus Paddy, one of the oldest, is especially "monkey-like."As a whole, the play is a close investigation of this regressive pattern through the character Yankthe play marks his regression from a Neanderthal on the shipto an actual ape at the zoo.The Frustration of ClassMildred and Yank are representative of the highest and lowest societal classesasLong would term it, the bourgeois and the proletariat. However, while Mildred an

d Yank s lifestyles are extremely different, they share similar complaints aboutclass. Mildred describes herself as the "waste product" of her father s steel company. She has reaped the financial benefits of the company, but has felt noneof the vigor or passion that created it. Mildred yearns to find passionto touch "life" beyond her cushioned, bourgeois world. Yank, on the other hand, has felt too much of the "life" Mildred describes. Yank desires to topple the class structure by re-inscribing the importance and necessity of the working class. Yank defines importance as "who belongs."Class limits and determines both Mildred and Yank s financial resources, educational opportunities, outlook on life, and culture. The Hairy Ape reveals how deeply and rigidly class is inscribed into American Culture and the cultural and financial boundaries it erects.MotifsBelongingThe motif and idea of who "belongs" and the idea of "belonging" are continuallyreinforced throughout The Hairy Ape. Yank equates "belonging" with power and importance and uses "belonging" as a way to reverse societal power structures. In Scene One, Yank claims that he "belongs" to the ship, as opposed to the passengers in first class who are merely "baggage." Yank also associates "belonging" withan individual s usefulness and functionality. The firemen "belong" because theymake the ship run and are essential to its workings.Yank is especially affected by Mildred because she presents a world and class which he cannot belong to. After their meeting, the play essentially follows Yankin his quest to find belonging, finally leading him to the monkey- house at thezoo.ThoughtFor Yank, thought is the ultimate boundary. Whether pressing his fingers to hishead or sitting in the position of Rodin s "The Thinker," he cannot muster enough thought to make sense of or come to peace with the world around him. Thought only becomes necessary for Yank after he encounters Mildred in the stokehole. Mildred and he class present a new threat that Yank cannot eliminate or get rid ofby physical might. Yank is forced to think how he can defend himself. This transition is exemplified in the "tink" joke among the men. Before Mildred enters thestokehole Yank finds thinking ridiculous and unnecessary, he laughs when he tells the other men he is "trying to tink." However, after the encounter, Yank earnestly tells the men that he is trying to "tink." When they joke and correct himin a mocking chorus, "Think!," he is genuinely hurt.Yank s inability to think not only reveals his regression to a lower animal form, but also renders him unable to adapt to or defend himself in the world beyondthe ship.LanguageYank s idiosyncratic speech, characterized by chopped and mangled words eliminate the possibility of Yank s successes or acceptance in a world or class other than his own. His deformed language makes real communication impossible. Ann Massain "Intention and Effect in The Hairy Ape" puts it quite beautifully, "Yank canonly break the bounds of his vocabulary and his style in the same violent and ultimately frustrated way that he bends the bars of his cell he can t break the mould of the apparently flexible yet imprisoning medium that is language and thatis life." Yank s speech defines his class and place in societyrigid, unchangingand binding.

SettingThe settings and environments of The Hairy Ape reveal larger social and culturalrealities. Yank and the Firemen exist within the cramped and hot forecastle andstokehole, described as a formidable cage. In contrast, Mildred and her Aunt senvironment, the Promenade Deck of the ship, is filled with fresh air and sun. The ocean that surrounds them is infinitely spacious and the general feeling of freedom abounds. The promenade deck is also symbolically situated above at the top of the ship, far above the stokehole. Both the stokehole and the promenade deck setting epitomize the lifestyles and characteristics of the ship s literal decks and subsequent upper and lower classes aboard.SymbolsRodin s "The Thinker"Yank s impression of Rodin s statue, "The Thinker" is symbolic of Yank s need tothink. While he physically embodies the cultural symbol of a "thinker" he cannot think himself. Every time O Neill s stage direction calls for the actor to take the position of "The Thinker" Yank has come up against an obstacle that cannotbe tackled by any other means but thoughtwhen Yank cannot process the realitiesbefore him. After Yank is thrown out of the I.W.W he immediately gets into "TheThinker" pose. He is desperate to make sense of his situation and understand whythe union would throw him outThe real ape in Scene Eight is the only other character that takes "The Thinker"position. The ape sharing this habitual body position reflects on Yanks own animalistic statehis mode of thought is no more advanced than the ape s.ApesApes are everywhere in The Hairy Ape: Yank is called an ape, Yank thinks he is an ape, Mildred thinks she sees an ape, Yank tells people he is an ape, Senator Queen writes that the Wobblies will degenerate American civilization "back to theape" and, most importantly, there is a real live ape in Scene 8. The ape symbolizes man in a primitive state before technology, complex language structures, complex thought or money was necessary. The ape represents man that is not only behind in an evolutionary sense, but is free of class, technology and other elements of modern society. The ape is only concerned with survival.Thus Yank, constantly compared with apes, does share some characteristics with his early primate relatives. Yank, like the ape, struggles with thought, doesn tunderstand the class system, has at best basic language skills and is most concerned with his survival on Earth. In addition, male apes are known to be very territorial, obstinate, bull headed and aggressiveall descriptors that could be usedto describe Yank.SteelSteel is both a symbol of power and oppression in The Hairy Ape. While Yank exclaims in Scene One that he is steel, "the muscles and the punch behind it," he isall the while penned in a virtual cage of steel created by the ship around him.Steel creates other cages in the playYank s jail cell and the cell of the Ape. Steel is also oppressive because it creates jobs like Yank s, it is symbolic of the technology that force Yank and the Firemen into slave-like jobs.Scene OneSummary

The firemen have gathered in the ship s forecastle, the crew s cramped quartersin the bow of the ship, on break from shoveling coal. The ocean liner has sailedan hour out of New York. The men are sitting around on their bunks drinking beer, carrying on with each other and singing in a clamorous uproar. Yank, "broader, fiercer, more truculent, more powerful, more sure of himself than the rest" turns his attention to the mob and asks for a beer. When Yank speaks the men are immediately quiet, they don t hesitate to hand him two drinks. Yank, satisfied, turns away and the rowdy men cajole an older fireman, Paddy to sing his "Whisky Song." Intoxicated, swaying and clutching his bunk he wails "Whisky! O Johnny!" and is quickly joined by the other men. Yank again turns his attention to the crowd and commands them to be quiet as he is trying to "tink." The men, in unison,repeat after him mockingly, "Think!"Above the men s noise a tenor voice is heard singing, about a "lass who fondly waits/Making a home for me." Yank silences the tenor and fiercely tells him that the ship is his home, nowhere else. A drunken Long jumps on a table in support ofwhat Yank has said, but adds to it. Long declares that the ship is home, home is hell and the first class passengers, the "capitalist class" is to blame. Yankstands and threatens to knock Long down calling his ideas "Salvation Armysocialist bull." He defiantly states that the firemen are superior to the first class passengers because they are physically stronger and they "belong" to the ship. Paddy emerges from his stupor and cries out, "We belong to this you re saying? We make the ship go, you re saying? God have pity on us!" Paddy persists in a lengthy and passionate speech, detailing his former life on the sea. Paddy explains that in his youth men had reason to be proud to work on ships. The tall clipper ships, powered by sails rather than coal were, "clean" and "free." The ship gave Paddy a fantastic feeling of freedom and speed, rather than entrapment and slavery in the coal steamers. Paddy argues that working aboard the clipper ship required skill and guts. Men could belong to clipper ships, but do not belong to steamers. Paddy concludes that the men aboard the steam ship shoveling coal are cagedin by steel, without the sight of land or sea like "apes in the Zoo!"Yank gets up to fight Paddy, but controls himself. He tells Paddy to calm down,that he is crazy and too old to understand. Excitedly, Yank suddenly cries out that he belongs to the ship and Paddy does not, Paddy is dead and he is alive. Yank declares that he is part of the engines: he moves, he breathes coal dust andhe eats it up. Without Yank, without the engines, everything would stop. Like Long, Yank describes the bottom of the ship as hell, but it "takes a man to work in hell." Yank equates himself with steel, the "muscles" and the "punch behind it."AnalysisThrough the plight and struggle of an ocean liner fireman, Eugene O Neill exposes the regression of civilized man to an animalistic state. The firemen are reduced to work animals, caged and abused. The ocean liner functions as a metaphor for the larger confinement and oppression of blue-collar workers into a tight niche in the bottom of society. The cage-like forecastle is representative or the cramped world, void of opportunity, that the men exist in. O Neill suggests that the men should "resemble those pictures in which the appearance of Neanderthal man is guessed at." The tight quarters of the forecastle and low ceilings force men to stoop low, preventing the men from having normal, upright posture. Only valued for their physical might, their ability to shovel coal into the ship s furnace, the men have abandoned the need for modern or complex thought and have regressed into a Neanderthal state.O Neill reinforces the firemen s Neanderthal state in the firemen s speech patterns. O Neill carefully spells out the broken words and vocal patterns of the mento ensure that the actor will effectively use speech as another barrier and div

ide between the firemen and the higher class characters. With the exception of Paddy and Long, the men speak in short, simple phrases in broken English. Paddy and Long also have thick accents, but express complex though through their dialogue. In this scene the dialogue between the firemen comes in waves of exclamations:"Gif me trink dere, you! Ave a wet! Salute! Gasundheit! Skoal! Drunk as a lord,God stiffen you! Here s How! Luck!"The firemen s lines are like animal sounds, void of structure or cohesiveness. This is not to ignore the fact that the firemen, in a life outside the play may communicate full sentences and ideas, but within the text the firemen are characterized like a pack of dogs. The men are reactive and easily bothered, defensiveand constantly ready to put up a fight. Yank, the leader of the pack, gains respect not because he is the smartest, but because he is physically the strongest.The repetition and mockery of Yank s language is a clear indication that the mendo not respect Yank for his brainpower. When Yank tells the men to "nix on de loud noise" because he is trying to "tink" the men to repeat in unison "think!" The men purposefully point out the irony of Yank, barely able to form the word, attempting to think. In a wave of barking exclamations, the men warn Yank not tocrack his head thinking, "You gat headache, py yingo! One thing about itit rhymeswith drink!" The men equate thought with physical labor and alcohol, the factors which posses and drive their lives. The chorus that erupts reinforces this, "Drink, don t think" repeated three times.Whether by necessity or comfort physical labor and alcohol allow the men to exist within their societal niche and confines of the ship. Yank s reaction to the tenor who sings of his home and lassie is deeply offensive to Yank because it suggests thought and life beyond that of a laborer. Yank is equally offended by Paddy, who reminisces about life on a clipper ship. Yank desperately attempts to weight his existence, reverse societal structure on the basis of "belonging," a theme that is developed extensively in the play.Scenes TwoThreeSummaryMildred Douglas and her Aunt lounge on the ship s promenade deck. Basking in thebright sunlight, Mildred remarks at the beauty of the black plumes of smoke wafting into the blue sky. Unfettered and relaxed, Mildred and her Aunt sit painfully disconnected from the workings of the ship, the world of Yank and the other firemen below. Mildred and her Aunt are "artificial characters," solely bred fromand pampered by aristocratic and monetary pleasures. Mildred, the daughter of asteel tycoon, is aware of her disconnection from the poorer classes. She attempts regain some connection to and understanding of the "other half" by studying sociology and doing various service projects.Mildred currently awaits the Second Engineer who will take her on a tour of thestokehole so she can investigate the state the workers on the ship. As she waits, Mildred and her Aunt quibble about Mildred s desire to help the poor. Mildredabhors her Aunt s apathy. Mildred s Aunt kindly tells her niece she is a "ghoul," that Mildred s work with the poor will only make them feel poorer. Mildred s Aunt has no idea why Mildred would desire to work with such people, as she loathes "deformity." Mildred describes her dispassionate Aunt as a "cold pork puddingagainst a background of linoleum." Mildred not only wishes to understand and help the poor, but she seeks to find purpose in life. Mildred expresses to her Auntthat she feels like a "waste product" of her family s steel business. She has reaped the rewards, but has no taste for the vigor and fight that brought them. Mildred s Aunt thinks Mildred s service projects are simply fanciful indulgences,

a trendy suit of sincerity and humbleness that will be short-lived. Mildred compares herself to a leopard who complains of his spots. Mildred is trapped in anidentity with spots she cannot "scratch off." The first engineer interrupts Mildred and her Aunt to escort Mildred to the stokehole. He asks Mildred if she would like to change out of her bright white dress before descending. Mildred replies that she has fifty dresses just like it and she will simply toss it into the sea when she returns. As Mildred follows after the engineer to the lower decks her Aunt calls after her, "poser!" Laughing, without pause, Mildred fires, "Old Hag!"Scene Three opens in the stokehole where Yank and the Firemen are busy shovelingfire into the ship s furnace. The men shovel in a rhythmic motion, swinging shovels of coal from the pile into the furnace doors. The sound of steel doors slamming, the clank of the shovels against the engine and the raging fire is deafening. The men stop for a short break. Paddy remarks that his back is broken and Yank tells him he is being weak. Yank rallies the other men to keep working and enthusiastically cheers them on. Paddy once again interjects that his back is broken. From the dark region above a whistle sounds instructing the men to keep going. Yank furiously shakes his fist at the whistle blower and shouts that he is the one to decide when people move. In a fit he starts to work once again with theother men. Meanwhile, Mildred has entered the stokehole with the Engineer. While Yank keeps shoveling, the other men turn to stare at the ghostly Mildred, in stark white against the coal-blackened room. As the workers have stopped to stare, the whistle blows once again. Yank yells threats up to the whistle-blower andbrandishes his shovel. Suddenly he becomes aware that the other men have stoppedworking and swings around violently to see Mildred. Mildred, pale and about tofaint, is helped by the engineers. Before she is carried away she whimpers, "Take me away! Oh, the filthy beast!" Yank roars, "God damn yuh!"AnalysisThe progression of and stark contrast between Scene One to Scene Three exemplifythe wide gulf between the world of the worker and the world of the passenger onthe Ocean Liner. The audience experiences these two worlds, representative of upper and lower social classes, through Mildred Douglas and Yankthe epitome of theworker and the aristocratic and over-privledged child. The audience is taken from the brightly lit promenade deck where Mildred and her Aunt bask in the sun tothe stokehole where "one hanging electric bulb shed just enough light through the murky air laden with coal dust to pile up masses of shadows everywhere." In contrast, the promenade deck where Mildred and her Aunt sit is "beautiful sunshine in a great flood, the fresh sea wind blowing across it."There are also enormous physical differences between Mildred and the firemen. She is skinny, pale and wears white. The firemen are characteristically blackenedby coal dust, dirty and muscular. O Neill describes Mildred s expression as "looking as if the vitality of her stock had been sapped before she was conceived, the expression not of its life energy but merely of the artificialities that energy had won for itself in the spending." The Firemen are perhaps as "natural" or"in-human" imaginable, constantly compared with Neanderthals and animals, described as a "chained gorillas."Mildred and Yank, artificial and animal, are both transposed onto canvasses thatcontrast their character. Mildred (the unnatural) is surrounded by powerful ocean, Yank (the animal) is caged in steel. It would seem that neither character belongs in his or her environment. This is not to suggest that Yank should live ina jungle and Mildred should sit in a plastic box, but it shows that both of these characters actively struggle with their environmental and class boundaries. Yank yearns to become steel and Mildred desires to learn what is natural. Their attempts to do so drive the action of the play.

In Scene Two, Mildred attempts to leave her environment and visit the men in thestokehole. Yank leaves his boundaries as he visits New York City later in the play. Both characters meet disaster when they try to cross their social boundaries. When Mildred goes to visit the stokehole where Yank and the Men are working she is overwhelmed and faints. When Yank visits 5th Avenue he is incapable of communicating with or existing within "civilized" society and retreats to the zoo.Both characters are stuck in worlds they wish to escape, but are ill equipped physically and emotionally to do so.Thus, both Mildred and Yank attempt to scratch off their "spots." Like the leopard Mildred describes to her Aunt, Mildred and Yank are unsatisfied with the life, bodies and society they have been born into, but are powerless to change them.Both the aristocracy and the lower classes instruct Mildred and Yank to "Purr,scratch, tear, kill gorge yourself and be happyonly stay in the jungle where yourspots are camouflage in a cage they make you conspicuous." O Neill develops thetheme of entrapment through characters that exist within extremely different social strata. The mutual discontent and helplessness shared by Yank and Mildred is not only imposed by the greater societal structure. Their discontentment alsostems from a restless ignorance of their societal and natural otherYanks lack ofknowledge of Mildred and Mildred s ignorance of Yank.Scene FourSummaryThe firemen are gathered in the ship s forecastle. Yank s watch, the men in hiswork shift, have completed their work and the men gather to rest. All but Yank have showered. The men are unable to fully clean the areas around their eyes, giving them a slightly menacing appearance. In contrast, Yank is still fully covered in coal dust, brooding and hunched over in the position of Rodin s "The Thinker." The men watch Yank carefully, expecting some sort of outburst after his encounter with Mildred. They tease he has forgotten to wash and he remains sullen. They tell Yank the dust will not come off his skin, that it will make him itch and give him spots like a leopard. Insulted, he tells the men to lay off, that heis trying to "tink" and, like always, the men chime, "think!" Yank jumps up andasks them what is wrong with his "tinking?"Paddy finally decides to speak and suggests that Yank has fallen in love with Mildred. The men repeat Paddy s statement mockingly, shouting "love!" Yank tells the men he has fallen in hate, not love. Paddy informs Yank that only a very wiseman could tell the difference between love and hate. Paddy tells Yank that Mildred must love himafter all, why else would she have come into the stokehole? Longjumps up on a bench and cries out that Mildred and the engineers greatly insulted the men. Long asks the firemen what right Mildred and the engineers have to come look at the firemen like animals in a zoo. Long also informs the men that Mildred is the daughter of a millionaire who makes half of the steel in the worldand that is why she was able to get into the stokehole. Long then suggests thatthe men can go to the law for the insult they suffered. Yank replies, "Hell! Law!" The men, in unison, repeat after him, "Law!" Paddy suggests that they go to the governments. In the same pattern, Yank scorns "Hell! Governments!" Again, theentire crew of firemen repeats after Yank, "Governments!" Long frantically suggests that at least God would look at the men equally. Again Yank and the men repeat, "God!" Yank tells Long to join the Salvation Army.Long gets off the table and Paddy speaks. Paddy bitterly describes the engineertalking to Mildred about the men working, pointing at the workers like animals in the circus. Yank defensively tells Paddy he thought Mildred was a ghost. Paddyonce a gain suggeststhis time sarcasticallythat he could see the kind, loving look in her eyes, just as if she saw a "great hairy ape" escapes from the zoo. Yankis struck by the thought of Mildred calling him a hairy ape. Yank tries to expl

ain that he was just as scared by Mildred as she was by him he thought she was aghost. However, the damage is done and no amount of explanation can dispel the insult.Yank vows to get revenge on Mildred. Yank tells the men that Mildred does not "belong," but the firemen do, all the while his anger escalating. Finally enraged,he madly dashes to find Mildred, but, before he reaches the door, is tackled bythe other men. Paddy reminds Yank it is foolish to try to get revenge on Mildredshe has not a real drop of blood in her.AnalysisLanguage and speech distinguish class differences among characters within The Hairy Ape. A character s ability to think and reason is exposed by his speech within the play. The Firemen are immediately identified as less intelligent than Mildred, her Aunt and other higher class characters because they speak in broken and at times incomprehensible utterances. Yank cannot even properly say the word "think," a running joke among the men. In Scene One, Yank himself even laughs athis pronunciation because the word and concept of "thought" is itself a jokethoroughly unnecessary in the stokehole. Yet, in Scene four the "tink" joke is replayed once again, but Yank reaction has changed. Yank is truly offended by the Fireman s mockery: "Yes, tink! Tink, dat s what I said! What about it?" Mildred s surprise visit to the stokehole has posed a danger that Yank cannot ward off withpunches or physical might and thought is suddenly essential.O Neill specifically notes that Yank takes on the physical stance of Rodin s sculpture, "The Thinker during this moment in the play. Although he cannot think, this is his best attempt. He takes on the physical characteristics and interpretation of the quintessential thinker. As Scene Four opens Yank rests in this position while the other men sit about smoking. They look at him "half- amusedly, as if they saw a joke."In Scene One Yank is described as the fireman s most "highly evolved individual." However, Yank s inability to deal with Mildred reveals Yank has evolved only to specifically survive the rigors of the Ocean Liner and industrial worknot to process complex, cerebral issues. The men kid and taunt Yank, repeatedly recallingthe scene of Yank turning to see the ghostly Mildred. Paddy recalls Mildred s reaction, "She [Mildred] shriveled away with her hands over her eyes to shut outthe sight of him twas as if she d seen a great hairy ape escaped from the Zoo!"Yank is stung by Paddy s descriptions of how Mildred looked at him. In an odd mixture of "thought-punches," Yank vows to "brain her! I ll brain her yet, wait nsee!" Yank threatens to kill her by a blow he head, the word choice is revealing about his character. The word "brain" can refer to the physical organ, a verysmart person or killing by smashing one s skull. Yank wants to take aim at whatmakes Mildred smarter and superior to himto "brain" as in to hit and also to "brain" as to be smarter than Mildred.Unable to physically "get even" with Mildred, Yank resorts to the adolescent tactic of "belonging"insisting that Mildred does not "belong." Mildred is inferior to the likes of Yank because he "moves," helps run the ship engine, and she s "dead." Yank reduces Mildred to "baggage" that he physically carries. Because Mildred has no physical function, because she does not help to propel the ship, she is lesser.Scene FiveSummaryYank and Long walk down "Fif Avenoo" (Yank s pronunciation of Fifth Avenue) in N

ew York City somewhere in the Fifties. On Fifth Avenue we can see the storefrontwindows of a furrier and a jeweler. Both stores have outrageously priced items,such as monkey fur and diamonds, in the windows. Long has brought Yank to FifthAvenue to seek out Mildred. Long tells Yank that they are trespasses on Fifth Avenue as members of the Proletariat. Yank cannot believe how clean the sidewalksare and tells Long he could eat an egg off them. Yank asks Long where all the white collar workers are. Long informs Yank that they are in church and will be out on the streets soon. Yank discloses that he once went to church when he was akid. Although his parents never attended, they made Yank go. Yank also shares that his father worked on the shore in New York and his mother died of the "tremens." After his mother died, Yank briefly helped with trucking in the market andthen shipped in the stokehold.After waiting a while longer, Yank is becomes angry that he sees no one like Mildred on the streets and tells Long he wants to get out of the area, as it is tooclean and fancy and gives him pain. Long remind Yank that he came to get even with Mildred for the incident in the stokehole. Yank bursts, "Sure ting I do!" and tirades about how he will get even. Long tells Yank he s been looking at the whole issue between him and Mildred wrong, that he should not just be upset at Mildred, but at the whole bourgeois class. Long wants Yank to be class conscious.When Yank hears this he tells Long to "bring on the gang!" Yank and Long s attention is suddenly caught by the jeweler and furrier s windows. While peering in the windows, Long rages about the prices of the furs and diamonds, prices that easily equal the work of many firemen s voyages or even the price of feeding a family for a year. Yank seems momentarily impressed by the furs and diamonds, but admits they do not "belong," just like Mildred. Long notices monkey fur in the window and tells Yank the rich certainly would not pay for a hairy ape s skin. Clenching his fists, Yanks anger grows.Churchgoers begin to filter down the street. Long tries to calm Yank down and tells Yank to treat the people with "proper contempt"treat them like horses. As Yank glares at the rouged, overdressed women and men, a "procession of gaudy marionettes" he snorts in disgust. He places himself directly in the middle of the churchgoer s path. The people ignore Yank and walk around him. Yank purposefully jumps in front of a gentleman with a top hat, but the man only mutters, "beg yourpardon." Long is frightened and is certain the cops will come soon, but he cannot control Yank. Yank approaches a woman and asks her if she would like to crawlunder the docks with him. The lady walks by Yank without a glance. Yank yells that she does not belong, and that none of the people belong. Yank proudly pointsto the towering skyscraper above. Yank tells them that he is the skyscraper, heis the steel, he is the engine that puts the skyscraper together and pushes it higher. Yank tells the people that they are dolls and do not move like he does, the do not possess the force that he does. Still without an audience, he yells the people that they are garbage and ash the firemen throw out to sea. Enraged, Yank forcefully bumps into more people but is still unable to get a reaction. Thepeople mechanically squawk, "beg your pardon." Yank pushes himself into a Gentleman calling for a bus. Yank is knocked down, but sees the opportunity to start afight. Yank punches to man in the face, but the man does not react and tells Yank that he made him loose his bus. The man calls on the nearby police who club Yank to the ground, all the while no one noticing.AnalysisIn Scene Five, Long attempts to teach Yank a lesson. According to Peter Egri, Long means to demonstrate that "Yank s individual [humiliation from Mildred] is part of a general pattern."Acting as the voice of Marxism, Long has cleanly divided Mildred and Yank into the proletariat and the bourgeois classes. The proletariat is the lower, workingclass and the bourgeois is considered the upper, aristocratic class. Yank is a M

arxist student. Although he does not recognize the proper class names (bourgeoisand proletariat) or know the philosophy, he embodies the spirit of Marxism. Marxism predicts that the lower classes, the workers will rise and take over the Bourgeois in a great revolution. Yank attempts to start this revolution on his own. On 5th Avenue he attempts to disrupt and bother "her [Mildred s] kind."Long does, however, give Yank the needed encouragement to start his rampage. When the men first arrive at 5th Avenue, Yank wants to leave. He tells Long it is "too clean and quiet and dolled-up" and gives him pain. Long reminds Yank that they came to get back at Mildred. He also informs Yank that everyone he will see on 5th Avenue is just like Mildred, effectually giving Yank a bigger target. Yanktells Long to "bring on de gang!" A Marxist is made.Yank s fails to impose himself on the Bourgeois he encounters on the street. Hecannot attract attention to himself even by forcefully bumping into people, accosting a lady or screaming out, "Bums! Pigs! Tarts! Bitches!" The person that finally takes notice of Yank is a Gentleman that Yank causes to loose his bus. TheGentleman only calls the police because Yank interfered with his bus schedule. The Proletariat s helplessness is only equaled by the Bourgeois egocentrism. Themen and women of 5th Avenue are, indeed, like Mildred. They are described as "aprocession of gaudy marionettes, yet with something of the relentless horror ofFrankenstein in their detached, mechanical unawareness." The people on Fifth Avenue are detached from all things natural and have become artificial, solely concerned with themselves. O Neil has suggested that human faces might even be obscured in this scene with masks, saying that "From the opening of the fourth scene, where Yank begins to think he enters into a masked world, even the familiar faces of his mates in the forecastle have become strange and alien. They should bemasked, and the faces of everyone he encounters thereafter, including the symbolic gorilla s."Yank is awakened to the sameness and great generality of members belonging to alike social class. In Scene Four, Yank begin