Summery And Theme

The Play is divided into seven scenes . The hero of the play is Yank fat and Muscle Man Who works as a Fireman of the ship .He looks like Hairy Ape because of his big Hairy muscle body .There are many firemen  with him  but he is very energetic and vigorous .They are  outside of  modern civilization .There world is dark Engine room where they puts coal into the engine . 

They are blackened by coal dust, dirty and muscular and  deprived form the civilized people and a matter of mercy to them .
But Yank feels proud to be engaged with this work. He thinks the Ships is beinged powered by them .They runs the ships by putting coal into the Big Engine . He defends the ship as his home and insists that the work he does is vital—it is the force that makes the ship go twenty-five knots an hour.The others workers thinks Yank as a Leader and listen to him .

The ship voyaged  form New York .In the ship the most famous and rich two persons are the owner of NAZARETH STILL and Mildred is the pale and feeble daughter of the owner of Nazareth Steel .

While on the Ocean Liner Mildred asks permission to  visit the lower portions ship  where the Engine room situated . 
As if on a trip to the zoo, she wears a bright white dress , ignoring the Engineer's warning that it will get dirty from the coal dust.Mildred replies that she has fifty dresses just like it and she will simply toss it into the sea when she returns.

As she wanted to see the Engine room she was taken to the Engine room by the engineers cause she is the daughter of the richest person .

When she was taken into the Engine room in this time Yank and his men were putting coal into the Turbine .Yank leads the men at work. When Mildred entered into the room the men take a break to see Mildred . In a rage, Yank screams up at the whistle-blower. Yank suddenly realizes that the men have stopped working. Yank turns to face Mildred. she scared and thought him as a  beast and shouted to take her away .

"Mildred, pale and about to faint, is helped by the engineers. Before she is carried away she whimpers, "Take me away! Oh, the filthy beast!" Yank roars, "God damn yuh!"

When YANK Understand that INSULT  he throw a thing to Mildred but in this time Mildred left the room 

Paddy tells Yank Mildred looked at him like he was a big "hairy ape." Infuriated, Yank lunges toward the door to find Mildred, but is restrained by the other Firemen.

Yank became very furious and he can't bear such an insult against him.He became very angry and promised to teach a lesson to Mildred .

Yank and Long have traveled to 5th Avenue in New York City in Scene Five. 

 Long means to show Yank that all upper class people are like Mildred. Yank tries to attract attention to himself by bumping into people and accosting a young woman, but receives no response but "I beg your pardon." Finally, Yank is arrested because he makes a Gentleman miss his bus. Yank is imprisoned on Blackwell's Island with the other prisoners in Scene Six. 

Yank became mad and shouting to war against the Capitalism in the prison

 .In Scene Seven, Yank visits the local I.W.W.  but is rejected because the Secretary thinks he is a governmental spy. 

Yank is thrown out on the street. Yank spends the night at the Battery and the next morning visits the Monkey House at the Zoo. In Scene Eight, Yank attempts to befriend the ape. He tells the ape that they are alike—both caged and taunted. Yank believes he and the ape belong to the same club and calls him brother. Yank releases the gorilla from his cage and approaches the ape to shake his hand. The gorilla springs on Yank, crushes Yank with his massive arms and then tosses Yank into his cage. Yank dies in the gorilla's cage.

Analysis 

In the play Eugene O'Neil describe the hopes and aspiration of deprived people in the world .

Yank represent the pain, depression and the worst of capitalism .He represent the depraved people of the world .

The hairy ape is a modern tragedy play .



Theme 


HUMAN Regression by industrialization 

The resounding theme of The Hairy Ape is the effect of industrialization and technological progress on the worker. Industrialization has reduced the human worker into a machine. The men are programmed to do one task, are turned on and off by whistles, and are not required to think independently. 
Today, the job of the coal stoker is actually done by a machine. Workers are thus forced into jobs that require nothing but grunt work and physical labor, which has, in turn, caused a general deterioration of the worker into a Neanderthal or Ape- like state. This is made clear by O'Neill's stage direction, which indicates that 

The longer the Firemen work, the further back they fall on the human evolutionary path—thus Paddy, one of the oldest, is especially "monkey-like." As a whole, the play is a close investigation of this regressive pattern through the character Yank—the play marks his regression from a Neanderthal on the ship to an actual ape at the zoo.



THE FRUSTRATION OF CLASS

Mildred and Yank are representative of the highest and lowest societal classes—

 While Mildred and Yank's lifestyles are extremely different, they share similar complaints about class.
 Mildred describes herself as the "waste product" of her father's steel company. 
She has reaped the financial benefits of the company, but has felt none of the vigor or passion that created it. Mildred yearns to find passion—to touch "life" beyond her cushioned, bourgeois world. Yank, on the other hand, has felt too much of the "life" Mildred describes. Yank desires to topple the class structure by re-inscribing the importance and necessity of the working class. Yank defines importance as "who belongs."

Class limits and determines both Mildred and Yank's financial resources, educational opportunities, outlook on life, and culture. The Hairy Ape reveals how deeply and rigidly class is inscribed into American Culture and the cultural and financial boundaries it erects


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