`The Hairy Ape` by Eugene O`Neill

A Review of Eugene O 'Neill 's The Hairy Ape

A play which is divorced from man 's struggle with an unfriendly and an unmoral universe loses the most abiding appeal that art can have for man . Eugene O 'Neill 's tremendous success as a dramatist depends to a great extent upon the fact that he has had something to say about the modern social that has been worth saying . His technique and his form have been admirable vehicles for an interpretation of the conflict which arises out of the circumstances of the

world in which we live Social criticism supplies a rich background in O 'Neill 's plays . However it is in The Hairy Ape (1922 ) that the modern social is directly and in some cases , bitterly criticized

Clear in its symbolism , The Hairy Ape relates in a series of short scenes the story of a man who loses his old harmony with nature . Here O 'Neill presents a problem that has broader implications than the immediate success or failure of the major character , Yank , a stoker on a transatlantic liner . He becomes aware that he does not belong . Yank has always gloried in his work and in his brute strength until he is startled and infuriated when Mildred Douglas , spoiled daughter of a millionaire , visits the stokehold . Driven to thought and unable to rationalize his place in the scheme of things , Yank is obsessed by the idea that he does not belong

Yank awoke to the fact that he counted for nothing as an individual Yank finds out that the world has been gradually but quite rapidly revolutionized by machinery , a revolution that has not carried him with it . If he could have reasoned it out clearly , he would 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 of invention is for the benefit of those who exploit the workers and not for the good of society as a whole . 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 , vital and human part of a social

And this is not Yank 's problem alone , but the problem of the whole social system . There are literally millions of men and women who are blood relations of Yank in his 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 , 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...