THE HAIRY APE by Eugene O'Neill.

THE HAIRY APE

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.