GSU: ENGL 3860

February 16, 2015

The American Dream conjures images of a hard working person being able to move up in the economic ladder. Starting from nothing and being able to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” in order to make something of oneself the common rhetoric that is bottle fed to Americans. Same can be said of the character Yank in Eugene O’Neill’s play The Hairy Ape. Through this character’s development the audience is able to watch what happens to a person once they are within the grip of naturalistic circumstance. Play goers bare witness to the downfall of an everyday man who is working hard to make his life better, and no amount of work he puts into trying to find his place in the world he will ultimately fail because the natural world is against him.

The story of Yank is like that of many people; he is proud of being who he is and the work that he does. Yank is a very proud, almost hubristic, man who has considered his work as a fireman is what allows him to belong to a group. He in fact has considered himself a very vital part of the group of firemen that work on the Transatlantic Liner as shown in the beginning of scene one:

“I’m steam and oil for de engines; I’m de ting in noise dat makes yuh hear it; I’m smoke and express trains and steamers and factory whistles; I’m de ting in gold dat makes it money! And I’m what makes iron into steel! Steel, dat stands for de whole ting! And I’m steel—steel—steel! I’m de muscles in steel, de punch behind it!”

Belonging to a group of people with a common goal is most likely due to the fact that he grew up in a rough environment. With an abusive father and a mother who suffered from “tremens,” Yank was raised within a poignant circumstance that he later ran away from once his mother passed away. When he did find a group to be with Yank made sure to give his all to it. Yank even sheds his true name, Bob Smith, and his religious upbring to live and work alongside these other firemen on a Transatlantic Liner. He has taken on a new persona of the strong, tough guy in charge of his life when, in reality, he is only the lowly worker who shovels coal with other men of uneducated status.

These fellow laborers of Yank even talk about their hellish life style. One such character is Long, “’E says this ‘ere stinkin’ ship is our ‘ome. And ‘e says as ‘ome is ‘ell.” Yank is working and living in hell-like conditions, but he doesn’t realize that anything is wrong even when the other workers complain. The death of the American Dream, or what I have likened to the American Nightmare, comes when Yank is hit in the gut with the shovel of class awareness in scene three.

His nightmare started when the character Mildred appears in the engine room and fainted at the sight of the laboring men. She, a woman of high class who is also stuck in her own cultural identity as is Yank, screams for the engineers to take her away from the filthy beast [i.e. Yank]. Do notice that, though Mildred could easily be seen as an antagonist to the ‘hero’ of Yank, the two of them share in the fact that they are both characters within a naturalistic play. In such they are unable to control their situation in life because they are both stuck in their cultural identity and both of them are unable or unwilling to shed their view of the world. Mildred is the rich girl who refuses to change out of her white dress even after being told several times that she should, and Yank is unwilling to wash the coal dust off his skin.

Instead of washing himself, as though he ever does, Yank has a “tink” over what Mildred screamed when she fainted. This ‘tink’ makes Yank more and more enraged that he was called a filthy beast, and the men also have likened him to an ape. Yank’s ape-ness is seen through his animalistic tendencies that are listed through the stage directions: He is fierce, he barks, he snarl[es], he roars. The list of his stage directions from scene one through scene four have painted the image of a grimy, ungainly, and grating sort of man. He yells at his men, makes fun of them for not being as strong, he is prideful, and he is happy. That is until his happiness is shaken by one small, white-dress-wearing girl.

When he realizes that there are people who look down on him, call him an animal, people who do not see him as an equal Yank becomes very angry. He lashes out saying that he will show that girl her place toward the end of scene four:

[Enraged.] Yuh tink I made her sick, too, do yuh? Just lookin’ at me, huh? Hairy ape, huh? [In a frenzy of rage.] I’ll fix her! I’ll tell her where to git off! She’ll git down on her knees and take it back or I’ll bust de face offen her!

He is so angry he rushes for the door so he can track her down and, in layman’s terms, beat her up. Yank doesn’t know how to handle someone looking down on him. This could be a steaming back to his abusive childhood where he was always looked down on by his father, whom from which he ran away from, and has never had to deal with that type of situation again until now. This small woman has made him infuriated, and if she wants to see him as an animal then he’ll act like one. Yank then had to be held down by his fellow workers to make sure he didn’t really go after Mildred for fear that he would rip her apart like an animal.

Three weeks later, or scene five, Yank has cooled down enough that he agreed to go with Long off the Transatlantic Liner and to go adventuring around the clean cut area of Fifth Avenue. This is where the audience is given more back story on Yank. We’re told that he was forced to go to church on Sunday, even though his parents never went, and he was beaten by his parents every Saturday if they were not beating each other up. He says that this is where he learned to “take punishment,” and O’Neill adds in stage notes beside this line “[With a grin and a swagger].” At this point in the play the audience has identified that Yank is not only a hard working man who has a problem with aggression, but now we see him as someone trying to live for something more than what his parents provided for him. He is trying to live his life to the American Dream motif that if you work hard and keep on going there will be a reward for all your hard work. O’Neill, if the stage directions are followed correctly, has made more than a big, mean guy. Instead he has created the model of the all American Man who wants to do more for himself, and in Yank’s case he has done better for himself. He has a job and a group of men who look after him. Yank has made a life for himself, but once he realizes that there are other people out there that look down on his style of living Yank becomes angry and demanding to see how they live.

Leading back to the scene on Yank and Long walking along Fifth Avenue. Yank, who has not changed out of his working clothes and still has soot on his skin, looks very different in comparison to his friend Long, who has changed his clothes in order to blend in more. Yank started to feel a pain within him as he looked around the “too clean” street, and he wanted to leave to find a more suitable place for himself. Too a reader or playgoer it is strange that Yank is so in the dark about his own social class, but it is interesting to see that he still feels this invisible boundary. These feelings are made evident through his anger at Mildred for calling him a beast, and now he feels very uneasy being in a place that is so clean and to him unnatural.

As they walk Long explains that he wants to show Yank that Mildred is ‘on’y a representative of ‘er clarss.’ She is behaving how the other half live. This appears to unfazed Yank who is more amazed than angered, as Long is, that there are people buying jewelry that could feed a starving family for a year.  Yank acts like a kid in a toy store and is hoping from one shiny thing to another, and then he lands on a monkey skin coat that costs $2,000. Yank is like many people who look around at all the things that our society can provide. That is as long as you have the wealth to pay for it. Right then, in this moment of wonder for Yank, that Long makes his case with, “They wouldn’t bloody well pay that for a ‘airy ape’s skin—no, nor for the ‘ole livin’ ape with all ‘is ‘ead, and body, and soul thrown in!”

Long wants Yank to understand that they are being taken advantaged of and that Yank should be angry for that reason. He is trying to get Yank to understand the frustration that he, Yank, and the other workers feel are the same feelings. However this seems to have a stronger effect on Yank than Long realizes and Yank, as the stage direction indicate, takes the skin in the window as a personal insult. This insult is strengthened when the stage is then crowned with rich people coming out of church and they never make eye contact with Yank or acknowledge his existence. Not being seen makes Yank act out and he confronts a man walking by and he demands to know if this man believes that he owns the place. The man responds with a, “I beg your pardon.” Yank’s anger builds the more people surround him and women moon over the monkey fur in the window.

Yank tries to follow Long and keep a cap on his anger , but it is when Yank sees a man running for a bus that he lets out his anger and punches the man in the face. From the context of the stage directions it appears that Yank thought the man was getting into a fight and in delight to join in he throws a punch. These actions are very similar to how an animal in an uncomfortable situation will strikeout without apparent warning. The stage directions also lead the reader or actor to believe that this character is a spring under a lot of pressure and is about to jump at any point. Yank is a man with impulsive urges that makes readers and playgoers sit on the edge of their seats to see what he will do next. He is literally a caged animal wandering around a hierarchical world of the American Nightmare that is not going to forgive him for being himself. After this incident, which left the man unshaken but angry, landed Yank in prison for the next scene.

When Yank wakes up in his cell he believes that he is in the zoo and he looks around hearing several different voices of prisoners. The other men start asking questions about what landed Yank with them, and he tells them about Mildred and how she didn’t belong in their world but in a window display. The prisoners believe that Yank is a nutter, but like to hear him anyway. Yank explained that he was in a fight and the judge told him to have a ‘think’ in the prison for a few days. Through talking Yank realizes that it is he that he isn’t understood anywhere ,and when one prisoner told him about the I.W.W. (the Industrial Workers of the World or “Wobblies”) Yank asks for the newspaper that explains that those people are all about. Yank sits and, though he cannot read very well, he manages to realize that the man that he has been working for is the man who made the steel bars that he is now en-caged in.  Yank begins to piece together class structure and that he is working for the man who has en-caged him both physically and metaphorically. He has been worked to death by a man who is trying to keep him in his place, and he is literally behind the steel bars that he makes too. Yank again flights into a rage and bends the bars as the guards yell at him. The next event is unclear because the curtain drops and all the audience can tell is that someone screams.

In scene seven Yank is out of prison and wants to join the I.W.W. to help stand up to his boss. At first it appeared that Yank had finally found his place, had finally found a group that will accept him, and treat him right. Unfortunately Yank, because of his nervous behavior, is thought to be an informant for the government and he is thrown out of the office. A police officer comes up on the scene in time to see the scuffle and Yank defeated on the ground. Yank realizes that he doesn’t belong anywhere, and that it is not his fault. It is the fault of cultural identity that has forced him into a small cage and that his only crime is being born. All Yank wants is to be apart of something, anything; however when he asks the police officer where to go from here man tells him, “Go to hell.”

The final scene we follow Yank to the zoo where he makes his way to the money house. At this point Yank is in a very low and bitter state. All he wants is for someone to talk to, so he goes to the animal that he keeps being referred to: A Hairy Ape. Yank contemplates how he and the gorilla are alike in many ways. They don’t belong and are stuffed into cages for people to point, stare, and be scared of them. That is what separates them from the world. The only problem is that Yank does belong to this world. He belongs with the people and yet they treat him as though he doesn’t belong. Whereas the gorilla knows he doesn’t belong and he has a past to look back on. In this moment Yank decides to help out his ‘Brother’ and let’s the gorilla out of his cage so that the two of them can be together and form their own group.  Yank wants to show the gorilla human ways so they can be outcasts together. When Yank goes to shake the gorilla’s hand the gorilla grabs Yank and crushes him in a ‘murderous’ hug.

To conclude on the character development of Yank is that Yank is more like the everyday man than even he realizes. This is to be concluded only because in the last scene, even though Yank has finally found someone that he can identify with, he mocks the gorilla. He mocks the gorilla just as the people in Yank’s life mock him. He really is the everyday man who starts as a prideful man, who moves to anger, who moves to trying, who ends in bitterness. Since Yank is trying to live in accordance to the American Dream he is really living out the American Nightmare. His personality starts out large and prideful, and through the course of the play it becomes smaller and smaller; it is as thought his personality is crushed down and he keeps going until his body is literally crushed like his hopes. The purpose of these dashed hopes is that people do not have control over their lives and we cannot break out of our cultural identity no matter how hard we try because it is just part of the naturalistic order of our society. Crush or be crushed.

Works Cited:

O’Neill, Eugene. “The Hairy Ape.” Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg-tm EBooks, 4 June 2009. Web. 10 Feb. 2015. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4015/4015-h/4015-h.htm>