Lakhasly

Themes

1- The search For Identity in Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape

Eugene O'Neill's real concern was the oppressed industrial working class and the effect of capitalists on worker. They enslaved the workers and deprived them from their self-esteem and free will. He criticized the capitalist system, and attacked the movement that should stand by the workers, fulfill their needs and solve their problem. However, Oscar G. Brockett stated that " industrialism and science have kept man's eyes on the ground and have reduced him to machine like creature".

Industrialism dehumanized man, alienated him from society and oppressed his present, past and future. Man was highly effected by the social environment and the materialistic values that started to prevail leaving him an easy prey to the danger of his emptiness and insecurity resulting from loss of faith in himself and in religion. O'Neill perceived this tragedy in The Hairy Ape which was expressionistic. "both in technique and in its disgust at modern humanity. The lower classes in it are hairy apes, the upper classes more marionettes."

Yank, the main character in The Hairy Ape, is a symbolic representation of man who is alienated from the modern world He believes that he "belongs" to the industrial world through his physical strength, yet he is, gradually, transformed into an ape-like creature. He and the fireman in the forecastle of the ship are described by O'Neill as "beasts cage";
The room is crowded with men, shouting, cursing, laughing, singing- a confused inchoate uproar swelling into a sort of unity, a meaning - the bewildered, furious, baffled defiance of a beast in a cage.

This stokehole is a symbol of a prison that keeps men disconnected from the outer world. These men only need their physical strength to keep the ship moving, thus; they become machines without the ability of intellectual thinking. Yank at the beginning, rejects the idea that the capitalist class is the reason behind their predicament and alienation. He believes that he "belongs" and that he is the force that keeps the ship moving; " It's me makes it move... I'm de end! I'm destart... I'm steam and oil for de engines. "Yank is unconscious of the bestial and inhumane treatment to which the stoker are subjected. Yet the appearance of Mildred, the daughter of the owner of " Nazareth " steel, in the stokehole changes Yank. He realizes that his sense of belonging and brotherhood is just an illusion, a self-deception and his. search for identity starts to obsess him.

Mildred is also a victim since she is imprisoned in her cultural identity. She considers herself the waste of her father's steel company, "I'm a waste product in the Bessemer process-like the millions." She wants to be useful to others, as she addresses her aunt; "I would like to be some use in the world. Is it my fault I don't know how? I would like to be sincere, to touch life somewhere."

Mildred intends to discover the life of the sailors in the stokehole, on the other half of ship. The visual and audible aspect used
by O'Neill when presenting the fireman are described as chained gorillas:

A line of men, stripped to the waist, is before the furnace door. They bend over, looking neither to right nor left..., handling their shovels as if they were part of their bodies, with a strange awkward, swinging rhythm...outlined in silhouette in the crouching inhuman attitudes of chained gorillas.

These men lost their identity in a physical work that make theme inferior to human beings and start taking the shape of apes in body and gestures. Mildred is horrified to witness such a scene when Yank. embodies the perfect picture of an ape in a rage;" he [Yank] brandishes his shovel murderously over his head in one hand, pounding on his chest, gorilla-like." Yank's 'brutality' and horrible state lead Mildred to collapse and utter" Oh, the filthy beast!". At this moment, an unbridgeable gap takes place between the upper and lower classes. Consequently, Yank starts to lose harmony with his surroundings;" Yank and Mildred confront each other only for a moment, but that one moment is enough to play havoc with the soul of Yank."

The old Irish man in the ship, Paddy, has a philosophy concerning the sailors in the past. Those sailors were free, empowered and valued more than the sailors today. Paddy is conscious of class discrimination and he tries to explain to Yank that Mildred's behavior is not personal and all the rich are alike in their attitudes toward the poor. Yet, Yank insists on taking the matter personally and vows to have revenge upon
Mildred. To regain his destroyed myth of belonging, Yank decides to go out on a mission of revenge' to the Fifth Avenue.

To intensify class discrimination in the play, O'Neill describes the social environment of the Fifth Avenue as quite an unfit place for Yank: "A general atmosphere of clean, well-tidied, wide street; a flood of mellow, tempered sunshine; gentle genteel breezes." This setting is contrasted with Yank who is described by O'Neill as holding the same appearance of the stokehole;

Yank is in his dirty dungarees. A fireman's cap with black peak is cocked defiantly on the side of his head. He has not shaved for days and around his... eyes the black smudge of coal dust still sticks like make-up.

Such a contrast establishes a further conflict within Yank as he walks unseen by people in the Fifth Avenue street. To help his audience prob into Yank's mind, O'Neill tends to employ monologue as an expressionistic technique. Yank is now pulled apart from his natural surroundings and his inner conflict starts to increase.

Yank is imprisoned because he offends one of the rich people in the Fifth Avenue. The prison is given a description similar to that of the stokehole in the ship which is just like an animal cage, dimly lit and it is

surrounded by heavy steel bars: "one electric bulb from low ceiling of

the narrow corridor sheds its light through the heavy steel bars of the

cell at the extreme front." Yank feels happy while reading about The

World American Labour Union in an "anarchist" paper in the prison.

Still, he discovers that this union will present to him a false deceptive
security since it seeks to have the right in a legal and peaceful way. As for Yank, he desires to have revenge by using dynamite to blow the steel factory of Mildred's father. He soon realizes the bitter fact that he is alone and steel does not give him power, rather, it is a cage wherein he is locked. His free-will is just an illusion and he is unable to determine his own destiny. He wonder; "where do I go from here?" O'Neill asserts Yank's alienation. Since he is a hairy ape, so naturally he belongs to the monkey house in the zoo. He hopes to find " a creature with whom he is in harmony, that there, at least, he will 'belong'."

Through Yank's monologue, we understand that he remains encaged within the person of his soul. He feels worse than the ape in the cage. He does not belong to his surrounding, he has no memories to comfort him and the future is not promising. He addresses the gorilla in the cage as he says:

It's dis way, what I'm drivin' at. Youse can sit and dope dream in de past, green woods de jungle and de rest of it. Den yue belong and dey don't.... But me. I ain't got no past to tink in, nor nothing dat's coming, ony what's now... and dat don't belong.

Thus, in his attempt to befriend the animal group, Yank frees the

gorilla from its cage. Yet dies as the gorilla" wraps his huge arms

around Yank in a murderous hug," Leaving his body, afterwards slips

on the floor. This last scene is a terrifying and universal picture of

man's agonized soul since, as Dr. Tilak puts it; "Yank's sense of

alienation and his quest for identity results in spiritual disintegration
and death. His suffering is symbolic of the suffering of many an alienated soul in the contemporary world."

In conclusion, the need to "belong" in Yank's world has lost its significance and vitality. It is an age of steel and materialism, not an age of free man who can be in harmony with his natural surroundings. Industrialism deprives the working class their spiritual values and humanity. Thus, the play is " a satire on the vacuous world of the rich, and the soulless existence of the poor. But the prime value is not the need to revolt but to 'belong." Yank dies without knowing his real identity. He is not a part of steel and machinery, but actually, he is their salve.