Saturday 16 March 2024

The Hairy Ape

 The Hairy Ape - Play by Eugene O'Neill

Welcome readers! As a Part of my Bachelor's studies at shamaldas Arts college, affiliated with MK Bhavnagar university. In this Particular blog, I will discuss Eugene O'Neill's Play - 'The Hairy Ape' offering a comprehensive analysis enriched with additional insights. 


The Hairy Ape is a play by American Playwright Eugene O'Neill, that was first performed in the year 1922. The play is a scatching critique of the dehumanizing effects of industrialization and capitalism. It tells the story of yank, a brutish stoker on a transatlantic ocean liner, who feels alienated from both the upper class passengers and the laborers in the ship's engine room. After a chance encountered with Mildred, the daughter of a steel magnate, Yank becomes obsessed with the idea that he is not truly human and embarks on a quest to find his place in the world.  It is considered one of the prime achievements of Expressionism on stage. 

'The Hairy Ape' tells the story of the fall of Yank, a proud and powerful stoker working aboard a steamship. Though respected by his fellow workers, a chance encounter with a millionaire's daughter who disdains him as an "ape" leads to a vain quest for vengeance and the breakdown of his personality, leading eventually to a confrontation with a real gorilla who kills him.

O'Neill based the play in part on a real man, an Irish sailor named Driscoll, whom he roomed with in New York. O'Neill had been terribly impressed by the gruff older man's confident and manly view of life and was duly shocked to hear some years later that Driscoll had committed suicide by jumping from a ship. The play at once represents a personal attempt to come to terms with this suicide and the playwright's finding in the drama of the demise of a manual laborer an essential story of humanity in modern society. 

 About Eugene O'Neill :- 


Eugene Gladstone O'Neill ( 1888- 1953) was an American playwright. His poetically titled plays were among the  first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The tragedy Long Day's Journey into Night is often included on lists of the finest U.S. plays in the 20th century, alongside Tennessee William and Arthur Miller. O'Neill is the only playwright to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. 

 His Plays were among the first to include speechless in American English vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society. They struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusion and despair. Of his very few comedies, only one is well known ( Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism. 

 Beyond the Horizon was Eugene O'Neill's first play to premier on Broadway, in 1920, and won the pulitzer. That same year he wrote The Emperor Jones, which premiered to great acclaim. His other plays include Anna christie, Desire under the Elms, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra. In spite of his success, Eugene O'Neill had an unhappy personal life, with marital struggles and estranged relationships with his children. 

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1936 was awarded to Eugene Gladstone O'Neill "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy"

Eugene O'Neill's father
 was an alcoholic and his mother abused morphine, which she received as a painkiller when her son was born. Addiction is a recurring theme in O’Neill’s works. Before his breakthrough as a playwright, O’Neill lived an itinerant life. He suffered from alcoholism and depression. In the year 1953, he died at the age 65 in a hotel in Boston. 

About the Play :- 


In the play The Hairy Ape, Eugene O’Neill is tempting the audience to look at the Industrial Revolution as a regression in human development, the forwarding of a class system in society, and man’s inability to feel like he belongs in any class other than his own. O’Neill shows the reader that, as the play goes, Yank regresses to an animalistic state. He also gives the reader the view of the differences between classes by displaying that Yank and Mildred will never be in the same class in society. Through Yank’s regression, O’Neill shows that this period in time inhibited lower class men from being able to push forward in society because men only felt like they belonged where they already fit in society.

 Throughout The Hairy Ape, O’Neill illustrates the decline or regression of the character Yank. He demonstrates that the industrialization of America causes Yank to regress to an animalistic state. He uses Yank as a microcosm of the effect on men in the working class by technological advancement and industrialization. This is similar to Pavlov’s dog in the sense that workers transform into machines because they are turned on and off by a whistle at work.  O’Neill paints a picture of the industrialization of man as transforming man into an ape-like creature.

The entire play is essentially Yank’s journey to find belonging outside of his class. The fact that he cannot belong in Mildred’s class affects Yank throughout the play. Mildred represents this place in society that Yank will never be able to achieve. The search that Yank is on leads him all the way to the depths of being a monkey in a cage in the last scene. 

O’Neill describes society in this play in a discerning light. He requests that the reader view the problems of class in society. His depictions of men regressing to an animalistic state, the truth about class in society, and man’s search for belonging express his beliefs that the Industrial Revolution was a setback for American society in the sense that it caused a broad gap between the haves and have nots. O’Neill utilizes the interaction of Mildred and Yank to show how people from different classes view the world contrarily, and as long as society is this way, the lower classes will struggle to advance or belong outside of his or her level in society. 

Character List :- 



1. Robert Yank Smith :- Born on the Brooklyn waterfront to a longshoreman father, Yank ran away from home to escape beatings and his parents' fighting. He also worked on the waterfront until he shipped off as a stoker, thus beginning the only life he has ever known. He is proud as the strongest among the stokers, but his encounter with Mildred sends him into a spiral of doubt and rage.

2. Paddy :-  An Irish stoker on the ocean liner who seems to have lost hope in the world and wishes for the more glorious days of sailing when the love of the sea was what drove a man. He alone is able to exert some sort of influence over the stubborn Yank.

3. Long :-  A stoker on the ocean liner who tries to convince Yank, as well as the other stokers, to believe in the Socialist cause, stressing to Yank that it is not a solution found by brute force but by persuasion and the peaceful uprising of the working class. He takes Yank to Fifth Avenue to try to awaken class consciousness in him, but finds that Yank only goes straight for violence.

4. Mildred Douglas :-  The daughter of the president of the Steel Trust, she expresses a desire to “know how the other half lives” by witnessing the working class in its element. In this way, she desires to find her place in the world and give herself a purpose somehow by helping the less fortunate, though, despite this, O’Neill describes her as insincere and pretentious. She is ultimately disgusted and terrified by Yank’s composure and outburst, calling him a “filthy beast” and sending him on his quest to avenge his honor throughout the play.

5. Mildred's Aunt -  Mildred's very reluctant chaperone on her trip to England, she finds her niece to be a poser. 

6. Second Engineer :-  He takes Mildred down to the stokehole, though he is clearly very uncomfortable with her excursion. He feels intimidated by her higher class. 

7. Guard :-  A prison guard at Blackwell prison, he tells the prisoners to keep quiet, and when Yank starts yelling, he hoses him. 

8. Stokers / Firemen :- Workers in the stokehole on the ocean liner, they seem to be sheep easily led by whoever is the strongest leader of the pack, usually Yank. They often tease other members of their crew in unison, which makes their voices take on a “brazen, metallic quality” as if their throats were gramophones. 

The entire play is divided into eight scenes. 'The Hairy Ape' is a portrayal of the impact industrialization and social class has on the dynamic character yank.  

 Plot :- 


 Scene 1 :-   In the firemen's forecastle of a cruise ship that has just sailed from New York for a trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Off-duty men are talking and singing drunkenly. Yank, portrayed as a leader among the men, is confident in his strength to fuel the machinery of the ship and the world. He shows particular contempt toward two other firemen: Long, an Englishman with socialist leanings, and Paddy, an old Irishman who reflects wistfully on the days of wind-powered sailing ships.

Scene 2 :-  Mildred Douglas (a steel tycoon's daughter) and her aunt are talking above deck on the ship whilst sunbathing. They argue over Mildred's desire to do social work, ending only when two officers come to escort her below decks for her planned visit to the ship's stokehole. Her aunt does not understand why Mildred desires to help the poor. She ends up going below deck regardless.

Scene 3 :-  In the stokehole, Yank and the other firemen take pride in their daily work. Yank does not notice Mildred when she enters, and instead shouts threats toward the unseen engineer ordering the men to keep coaling the engines. The men stop to turn when she enters. Confused as to why they have stopped working, he turns to see Mildred; she is so shocked by his attitude and appearance that she calls him a filthy beast and faints.

Scene 4 :-  In the firemen's forecastle yet again. Yank is mulling over the incident in the stokehole. The other men try to understand his fury by questioning him and asking if he is in love. Yank is infuriated at Mildred for claiming that he resembles a hairy ape. He becomes enraged and tries to charge after Mildred in revenge. However, his men wrestle him to the ground before he can even reach the door.

Scene 5 :-  On Fifth Avenue in New York three weeks later, after the ship has returned from its cruise. Yank and Long argue over how best to attack the upper class while admiring how clean the city is. Still obsessed with avenging himself against Mildred, Yank rudely accosts several churchgoers who come out into the streets as Long flees the scene. Yank punches a gentleman in the face and is arrested shortly thereafter.

Scene 6 :-  The following night at the prison on Blackwell's Island , Yank has begun serving a 30-day sentence. Seeing the prison as a zoo, he tells the other inmates of how he wound up there. One of them tells him about the Industrial Workers of the world and suggests that he think about joining. Enraged by the thought of Mildred and her father again, Yank starts to bend the bars of his cell in an attempt to escape, but the guards retaliate in force.

Scene 7 :-  A month later, Yank visits the local IWW office upon his release from prison and joins the group. The local members are happy to have him in their ranks at first because not many ship's firemen have joined. However, when he expresses his desire to blow up the Steel Trust, they suspect him of working for the government and throw him out. In the streets, Yank comes in contact with a policeman, who shows no interest in arresting him and tells him to move along.

Scene 8 :- The following evening, Yank visits the zoo. He sympathizes with a gorilla, thinking they are one and the same. He releases the animal from his cage and approaches it to introduce himself as if they were friends. The gorilla attacks Yank, fatally crushing his ribs, and throws him into the cage where he dies. 

Themes of the Play :- 

1. Class conflict 
2. Suspicion against ideologies 
3. Mechanization and Dehumanization 
4. Mockery 
5. Historical change 
6. Alienation of Labor 

Conclusion :-  In "The Hairy Ape," Eugene O'Neill skillfully portrays the struggle of the working class in the face of industrialization, exploring themes of alienation and identity. Through the character of Yank, O'Neill emphasizes the dehumanizing effects of societal divisions and the quest for belonging. This play serves as a poignant commentary on the challenges of finding one's place in a rapidly changing world.

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