The Hairy Ape is a play by Eugene O'Neill, produced first in 1922. It follows the trials of a sailor named Robert Smith, nicknamed "Yank" by his fellows, as he seeks both true belonging, and revenge on Mildred Douglas, a rich girl who, when confronted with him, calls him a beast, leading to his characterization as the titular hairy ape. The play was well received at its opening, and explores key themes of belonging and progress in an expressionistic manner.
The Hairy Ape
"A Comedy of Ancient and Modern Life in Eight Scenes"
History
The Hairy Ape opened at the Playwright's Theatre on Mc Dougal Street in New York in March of 1922. It starred Louis Wolhelm (also credited elsewhere as Louis Wolheim) as Yank, Henry O'Neill as Paddy, and Mary Blair as Mildred.
The designers were Cleon Throckmorton and Robert Edmond Jones.
Criticism
"A bitter, brutal, wildly fantastic play of nightmare hue and nightmare distortion."
"That preposterous little theatre has one of the most cramped stages New York has ever known, and yet on it the artists have created the illusion of vast spaces and endless perspectives."
"...so vital and interesting and teeming with life that those playgoers who let it escape them will be missing one of the real events of the year." --Alexander Woollcott, New York Times
Characters
Yank (Robert Smith)
A rough man who works shoveling coal on a cruise liner
Paddy
An older sailor who longs for the old days
Long
A fellow sailor and budding "proletarian"
Mildred Douglas
A rich girl who wishes to help the lower classes and resents her own privilege
Mildred's Aunt
A fat, self-important old woman
Second Engineer
A Guard
Secretary of an Organization
Stokers, Ladies, Gentlemen, etc.
Plot Summary
Scene 1
- Fireman's forecastle of an ocean liner
The sailors--specifically firemen, who shovel coal into the engine furnaces--relax and drink, singing songs and teasing each other. Yank, the biggest and hairiest of them, sits apart, trying to think, and repeatedly chastises them, threatening violence, for interrupting him at this task. Paddy gives a mournful, reminiscent speech about the old days of sailing ships, and Yank counters violently with his own monologue about coal, power, steel, and his immense pride in his job.
Scene 2
- Section of promenade deck
Mildred and her aunt sit sunning on deck, exchanging unpleasantries with one another, making their contempt for each other known. Mildred resents that she has inherited the wealth of her forefathers--who own the ship--but none of the strength that made it. Mildred arranges to be taken down into the stokehole to watch the men work. The Secong Engineer advises her not to wear her white dress down into the dirty hole, but she respnds that she has fifty just like it and can throw it into the sea if it gets soiled.
Scene 3
The firemen work shoveling coal into the flaming furnaces, working to the rhythm of the whistle signals of an unseen supervisor. Mildred enters and grows faint but forces herself to move forward. The other men stop working at the sight of her, but Yank continues; the continuing sound of the whistle infuriates him, and he turns, brandishing his shovel to brain the owner of the whistle, only to come face-to-face with Mildred. Mildred faints in fear, calling Yank a "filthy beast" and is carried away. Yank flings his shovel in rage, and the whistle sounds again.
Scene 4
Yank sits in a stupor, trying again to think. The other firemen tease that he is in love with Mildred. Long reveals that she is the daughter of the man who owns the ship and makes "half the bloody steel in the world," and so they, the workers on the ship, also belong to her. Paddy teases Yank about being in love with Mildred, and her rejection of him, and Yank goes berserk, vowing to get even with her, and show her who's really an ape.
Scene 5
Three weeks later, Yank and Long wander down Fifth Avenue. Yank is looking for Mildred, and is bored and put off by all the displays of finery and expensive goods in the windows of shops. Rich churchgoers begin to pour into the streets, moving like robots and chanting characteristic phrases, paying no heed to Yank and Long. Yank is furious, and tries to make them see him: he pushes and hits them, knocking them down, but to no avail. But when he makes a rich man miss his bus, the police come and apprehend him.
Scene 6
Yank is in jail, attempting once more to think, and begins to believe he has been put into a zoo, embracing the idea that he is an ape. He hears about a workers' organization from the other inmates, and thinks it an attractive idea. Pondering his situation, he comes to the realization that steel is not his freedom, as he had thought earlier, but his prison. He realizes that Mildred and her father probably made the very bars that imprison him, and resolves to become the fire that melts it. He flies into a rage and begins to bend the bars of his cell; the guards respond by turning a fire hose on him.
Scene 7
Yank attempts to join and Industrial Workers of the World branch, but the members think that he is a spy and throw him out. Upset that he doesn't seem to belong anywhere, Yank concludes that he is broken and the world is all wrong.
Scene 8
Yank wanders to the monkey house of a zoo by night and comes across a gorilla. He is impressed by the ape and finds some form of kinship with it. He concludes that the gorilla at least belongs because he is all ape, while he can never belong anywhere because he is neither human nor ape enough. He talks the gorilla into a battling spirit, proposing that they give the world a last beating before they go down, and lets the gorilla out of its cage so they can go on a rampage together. He makes to shake hands, but the gorilla instead grabs him up in an embrace and crushes him fatally. The gorilla flings a crushed Yank into its own cage and shuts the door. Yank dies in the cage while the gorilla roams free, and "perhaps, the Hairy Ape at last belongs."
Themes
Belonging is the chief theme in this play. All throughout the play, Yank comes to conclusions about what does and doesn't "belong," in his view of the world. He has built an idea of the world as a place where the new is constantly replacing the old, and where everything is moving; everything that moves is pushed by something else. Therefore, at first he believes that he and the other firemen belong: old sailors like Paddy do not belong because they are nostalgic rather than excited for progress, and rich people like Mildred and her father do not belong because they don't actually move anything--they do no physical labor. As the play progresses, his ideas about belonging begin to change as his view of the world changes. Though he realizes that those in power are those with money, whether they labor or not, and that those who labor are caged by their masters, he stubbornly insists over and over that it is society that does not belong, not him. He reaches a low point when he compares himself to a broken watch, and nearly admits his own feelings of placelessness, but remains stubborn and accuses other things--including the steel he so cherished--of not belonging instead. Unwilling to admit that he doesn't belong, and unwilling to change to fit in, Yank eventually faces off against the whole world. His attempt to put it in its place is unsuccessful, as he is killed by the gorilla; but, as O'Neill points out, he finally belongs when he lies dead in a cage.
A second key theme is that of progress--of "de new dat's moiderin' de old," as Yank puts it. The world is changing in all directions: political, societal, economic, technological. Yank sees and desires to be a part of the progress, of the steel buildings going up, of the steel ships and burning coal engines, of the machinery that is replacing the human and the natural. He is a part of the society that sees this progress as not only inevitable but highly desirable, as a symbol of wealth and power. Mildred is a self-labeled "by-product" or waste product of this progress. She has benefited from the money it produces, but resents the power it gives her societally because she did not gain any power physically.
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