The Hairy Ape

 # THE HAIRY APE

     BY EUGENE O'NEILL

The Hairy Ape is a 1922 expressionist play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. It is about a beastly, unthinking laborer known as Yank, the protagonist of the play, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich.

# About Author

  Eugene O'Neill

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright. 

#The Hairy Ape

# character Yank

Yank, the protagonist of the play The Hairy Ape, is a humble stoker whose business it is to shovel coal into the furnace of the ship’s engine. For long hours, he has to work in the cramped and low-roofed stokehole. He is beastly, filthy and coarse. He cannot think; he can use only physical force. But he has a sense of identity and sense of belonging to the ship. He is superior to the other stokers in the sense that he is physically more powerful than the rest. He has ape like physical strength and ape, like grossness. 

"I'm a busted Ingersoll, dat's what. Steel was me, and I owned de woild. Now I ain't steel, and de woild owns me. Aw, hell! I can't see—it's all dark, get me? It's all wrong!"

This quotation appears at the conclusion of Scene eight, immediately after Yank has been thrown out of the I.W.W. office. Yank, talking to himself, attempts to negotiate who he is and his personal importance even after being disgraced by The Secretary and the Wobblies. Yank realizes he is no longer as powerful as he once was. He no longer identifies himself as steel, the symbolic metal Yank equates with power, but rather thinks of himself as a busted machine. This quotation also reveals Yank's progression within the play. In Scene one, Yank boasts that he is steel, the muscles and punch behind the power of the ship. However, by the end of Scene Seven, Yank is stripped of this sense of strength and utility. Yank now sees himself as a machine that does not work, he has been exhausted by his efforts to find belonging and purpose and is left as a "busted Ingersoll." The "darkness" he describes is the result of confusion—now that Yank sees himself devoid of function, he cannot see the future or any hope for what's ahead.

Thank you...