THE HAIRY APE by Eugene O'Neil

THE HAIRY APE

                        -Eugene O’Neil

                                    All of O’Neill’s plays are written from a personal point of view and reflect on the tragedy of the human condition. His plays deal especially with the American history and social movements.

                          Yank is the protagonist of the play who is portrayed as a British and laborer who searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich like Nazareth Steel. The play is divided into eight scenes and there are many laborers like Yank in the play with some high class characters like Mildred Douglas, her Aunt, the secretary at I.W.W, A Gentle man, Second engineer, etc. Yank’s fellow workers are Paddy, Long and other firemen. So, from the very beginning O’Neill has started presenting the class difference with the use of language and other description.

 Throughout the play Yank searches for his real identity but finds none. O’Neill indirectly asks very significant or suggestive question like; what is more important being dirty as a slave or being filthy like an animal? Are slaves really filthy or the masters themselves? Where does their filthiness come from? If it is mind then neither Yank nor other firemen but the upper class people are, filthy so far as their thinking regarding superiority is concerned.  

       As the lower class people do not have their own belonging, it also shows the question which are raised to their existence. All the workers like Paddy, Long, Yank etc. Consider that Transatlantic Ocean Liner as their own house but their livelihood is something serious problem caused in their life. Though they are force they are bound by their masters so it can be said that they are; free without freedom.

    As the industrial environment is presented as toxic and dehumanizing, O’Neill present how the laborers are seem by the masters also presents humanity is subsiding in this materialistic era. Yank has also been interpreted as representative of the human condition, alienated from nature by his isolated consciousness, unable to find belonging in any social group or environment. This play also reveals how deeply and rightly rigidity class is inscribed into American culture and the cultural and financial boundaries it erects.