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221I’m smoke and express trains and steamers and factorywhistles; I ’m de ting in gold dat makes it money ’ and I ’m whatmakes iron into steel! (O’Neill I: THA 216)His getting infuriated , and deciding to kill Mildr ed when Paddy tellshim that Mildred called him hairy ape, a fi lthy beast , symbolises hisdisenchantment with his false image of life. He gets infuriated as Mildreddevo ids him of his identity. His unconscious identification of himself withpower is robed of , and to get it back, he decides to kill Mildred. The end ofYank is terrible, a frightful symbol of the decay and disintegration ofspiritual values in a mechani zed, materialised age. O ’Neill himself says:The public saw just the st oker, not the symbol , and the symbolmakes the play either important or just another play.(qtd. inFalk 34)In The Hairy Ape , the ship ’s low ceiling forecastle and stokehole aresuggestive of a prison. In the very first scene, the description of thestokehole is given to com municate an impression of cramped space:The ceiling crushes down upon the men ’s heads. They can notstand upright. This accentuates the natural stooping posturewhich shovelling coal and the resultant over -development ofback and shoulder muscles have gi ven them. The men shouldresemble those pictures in which the appearance of NeanderthalMa n is guessed at. All are hairy -chested, with long arms oftremendous power, and low, receding brows above their small,fierce, resentful eyes. All the civilized whiteraces arerepresented. (O’Neill I: THA 20 7)As a contrast designed to deepen the effect of the prison, there arescenes of sunshine and fresh -air on the upper deck of the sea. The title ofthe play is avowedly symbolic. O ’Neill himself gave it the sub -tit le, ‘AComedy of Ancient and Modern Life ’. The ancient life is represented by thegorilla, the biological ancestor of man, and Yank represents modern life. Heis the modern hairy ape. There is regression instead of progression. Yankpsychologically retrace s the stages of man ’s evolution till he sees himself as
222a hairy ape. Thus there is a union of the ancient and modern hairy apes, andthis union is comedy or a pungent irony. Clifford Leach says:Thus, then, is offered as a modern tragedy correlative with theancient presentation of man at odds with a supernaturallycontrolled destiny; yet is it more truly a comedy, as the sub -title claims... In a n interview O ’Neill gave in 1922 he made itplain that he was not agitating for better conditions for sailors :‘Yank is yourself and myself ’. (41)The Hairy Ape also represents life ’s endless struggle and conflict.This has been artistically brought out through Yank ’s endless struggle andhis inner conflict resulting into his final death. In this tragedy, the dramatisthighlights the three fold struggle of man – the conflict between man andman, between man and hostile society, and between conscious andunconscious or what we can say bad faith or fate. O ’Neill believes that lackof faith i n some higher, supreme power is the cause of the tragedy of themodern man. His soul is sick on account of too much of materialism, and hesuffers from inner emptiness on account of his lack of faith. The dramatisttries to probe into the secret of man ’s personality, to find out the hiddenugliness and conflict which are masked under a bright covering. He wants toshow man in his nakedness as he really is – mean, ugly and selfish – manengaged in a heroic struggle of self expression against all types ofinhibitions. This man is Yan k, and Yank is everyman . There is a hairy ape ineveryman , and everyman like Yank challenges the wo rld, struggle to thelast, and d ies.In All Gods Chillun Got Wings , Jim Harris is a symbolic embodimentof the ‘black ’, or the darker side of man ’s nature, whi ch conflicts with the‘white ’ or socially accepted side. Ella ’s feeling of subconscious hatred forhim is justified psychologically by his own masochistic self-abasementbefore her. He desires only “to become your slave that adores you assacred.” (O’Neill II: ACG 318) She becomes the embodiment of thesubconscious racism of American values. Mask also serves as a powerfulsymbol for Ella. It becomes an embodiment of all the blackness she hates.To her, the Congo -mask is a symbol of all she wants to negate. It shows
Page 1 and 2: `O’NEILL'S TECHNIQUE OFEXPRESSION
Page 3 and 4: 206inadequate because speech does n
Page 5 and 6: 208I advocated masks for stage crow
Page 7 and 8: 210was the deep experience that int
Page 9 and 10: 212pro ne to consump tion. Environm
Page 11 and 12: 214images, all expressionistically
Page 13 and 14: 216stage only to givea tragic touch
Page 15 and 16: 218the number of characters is cut
Page 17: 220brings symbolically before us Ma
Page 21 and 22: 224his characters ’ personalities
Page 23 and 24: 226present to the past times. Time
Page 25 and 26: 228no laws, there can be no conscio
Page 27 and 28: 230with tuber culosis and only as a
Page 29 and 30: 232the purpose of which is to extri
Page 31 and 32: 234Works CitedAbrams, M. H. A Gloss
Page 33: 236Winther, S. K. Eugene O ’Neill

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