Analyse the Theme of Identity and Isolation the ‘The Hairy Ape’.

Theme of Identity and Isolation the ‘The Hairy Ape’

 
Eugene O’Neill, the Nobel winner dramatist and the Shakespeare of America, has exposed in ‘The Hairy Ape’ man’s eternal quest for identity. O'Neill moves his hero Yank, through a series of rapidly changing scenes in his quest to belong, to find his place in the universe. Alienation and search for identity is the basic theme in The Hairy Ape.

In the beginning of the drama Yank feels that he is satisfied with his condition of life as a stoker in a large ship. Yank says that ship is everything to him and he belongs to ship. He is satisfied with the present, and is proud of his ability and strength. He asserts that it is his energy on which the ship and the passengers ultimately depend.

 

In the second scene, Mildred Doughlas is introduced in a free manner. She has inherited the wealth acquired through steel, but not the energy and strength which steel has. She wants to help the poor and to study the conditions of the poor stokers in the ship. Obtaining permission from the captain of the ship she stands at the back of Yank and monitors their work. Suddenly, Yank turns towards her, he glares into her eyes, and she is terrified by his "Abysmal brutality". Then she utters a low, chocking cry, faints with fear and heat, and is carried away from there. Before leaving the place she exclaims, "Oh, the filthy beast”.

Yank feels "Himself insulted in some unknown fashion in the very heart of his pride". The story here begins to change yank's life. This is the greatest blow to yank's belief as well as to his concept of belongingness. His pride and sense of security have been shattered by at the hands of a woman insult. It makes him to realise that he "does not belong".  After that crucial incident he no longer feels that he "belongs" Yank in the search of his identity, discovers firstly that he is alone, lonely and the world is impossible to live in, and secondly, that steel is no power within him, but a prison but it also makes the cage in which Yank is imprisoned.

Yank is released from the prison and wants to take revenge on the girl for his insult. He goes out to the Fifth Avenue, the locality where the rich people live to kill Mildred. But he does not find her there and he attacks people there. Then he is arrested after assaulting a person of the upper class and put into prison of Blackwell’s Island. There he felt like an ape caged and tried to break open the prison bars.

After being released from the prison, he went to join the I.W.W and organization: he was told by his fellow prisoners, was interested in terrorizing the rich. He is confident that he will be able to wreak vengeance on Mildred and her class by joining the IWW. But the officer in the IWW takes Yank to be an agent provocateur, a secret service man. He says that Yank is a Spy and is ‘a brainless ape’. Yank passions are aroused, but the very moment he is thrown out of the office into the street. His rejection by the I.W.W. is a terrible shock to his belief. Yank realizes that he does not belong even to the I.W.W. He now felt completely isolated alienated from the human society, and thought himself a complete hairy ape.

Finally he goes to a Zoo and stands before the cage of a gorilla in a zoo. He regards the gorilla as his own brother, as a place he belongs to. Yank opens the door and enters into the cage. The next moment the gorilla wraps his huge arms round him and crushes him to death. Yank falls down like a heap. The gorilla takes him up throws him into the cage, and closes the door. The final scene shows that Yank is rejected not only by man and nature but also by animals. As Yank dies, he mutters and in deep agony he cries "Christ, where do I get off? AT? Where do I fit in”?

Thus the end of Yank’s quest for identity and belongingness implies the endless effort of mankind to find out a sustainable and permanent position of dignity and honor in human society irrespective of class, creed, color, cast and community.