The Hairy Ape by Shakespeare Eugene O'Neill.
The
Hairy Ape is a love to read kind of play by American Shakespeare Eugene
O'Neill.
Because
of its lively imagery and lucid, simple language it looks as if things are
happening in front of our eyes.
The Hairy
Ape (1922)
is an expressionist play by Eugene O'Neill about a brutish,
unthinking laborer known as Yank as he searches for a sense of belonging in a
world controlled by the rich. At first Yank feels secure as he stokes the
engines of an oceanliner, and is highly confident in his physical power over
the ship's engines.
However, when the weak but rich
daughter of an industrialist in the steel business refers to him as a
"filthy beast," Yank undergoes a crisis of identity. He leaves the
ship and wanders into Manhattan, only to find he does not belong
anywhere—neither with the socialites on Fifth Avenue, nor with the labor
organizers on the waterfront.
The
worst condition of Yank, Paddy and other characters makes us as a reader
sensitive towards them. And the way they are looked and treated by rich people/
owner of industries is terrible. Rich people's sophistication and mannerisms
looks artificial and stupid. Actually they are responsible for poor condition
of working class people.
Mildred
Doughlas considers herself as a waste product of her father's company. When she
comes down & saw Yank, Paddy and other workers working, she fainted down.
She calls Yank a Hairy Ape.
Characters
go on drinking and singing "Home is hell" shows their mentality and
condition. Workers are uprooted in this industrialised era. All the profit earn
by owners and lives a grand life. There is one scene in which Yank was shouting
and other people coming out of church, did not paying attention to him !!!
The Hairy
Ape displays
O'Neill's social concern for the oppressed industrial working class.
Despite demonstrating in The Hairy Ape his clear belief that
the capitalistsystem persecutes the working man, O'Neill is critical of
a socialist movement that can't fulfill individual needs or solve unique
problems.
The industrial environment is
presented as toxic and dehumanizing; the world of the rich, superficial and
dehumanized. 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.
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