Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape

[Karl Rommel]

Hi all

What reputation does this play have?

Is it worth reading?

Does it attract any particular theoretical approaches that bring a greater understanding to the play?

I'm interested to know your views.

K.R.

[dfloyd]

It was made into a movie starring William Bendix. I remember more about the movie probably because plays and movies are obviously more visible than reading a play. Bendix was a boiler fireman on some kind of steam ship, and naked to the waist, he was quite covered with body hair. While taking a tour of the ship, a young socialite spies Bendix and I think this is where she dubs Bendix as 'the Hairy Ape'. Is the play worth reading? Personally, I think all of O'Neil's plays are worth reading.

I would try to see if the movie is on dvd. You probably would get more out of the movie than reading the play. William Bendix was a character actor who made many, many movies and television appearances. He was also adept at comedy and starred in 'The Life of Riley' series on early tv. His classic line in his tv series was 'What a revolting development this is" or something to that affect. He made pretty fair mysteries with leading men such as Robert Mitchum and Alan Ladd. He died relatively young of lung cancer, I believe. Almost all the movie stars or the 30s and 40s smoked excessively.

[Karl Rommel]

Thanks dfloyd

I'm glad I read it http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Hairy-Ape.html it's all about belonging with a heavy dose of class/place consciousness.

It's wonderfully circular - At the end Yank takes the role of the woman who had visited him, when he visits a gorilla in a cage at a zoo with a tragic result.

I'm, surprised that it's not better known.

[dfloyd]

but his popularity waned as has Tennessee Williams. Try reading 'Mourning Becomes Electra', O'Neils retelling of Aeschylus' 'The Orestaia'.

[kelby_lake]

The Hairy Ape is incredibly miserable, as are all of his plays except for a comedy called 'Ah, Wilderness'. Eugene O'Neill was basically the father of modern American theatre. He used the American vernacular of the working classes and made it poetic.

The Hairy Ape is a classic example of American expressionist theatre- a movement which became popular in the twenties and thirties, although it fell out of fashion. American expressionist theatre is left-wing, focusing on an individual and his struggle with society. Other examples are The Adding Machine and Machinal- there can be something quite mechanic about expressionist theatre. Dialogue is often fragmented- it's very abstract- and things are exaggerated for emphasis.

[Heteronym]

I've been reading Eugene O'Neill again, since I tackled Long Day's Journey Into Night a long time ago at the university. I got Signet's collection of four plays, The Hairy Ape included, and I was riveted with the force and modernism of the plays. Not only have the plays not aged, but after having read Pinter, Albee, Ionesco, and Havel recently, I can't help noticing how this play in particular foreshadows so many of their themes of isolation, dehumanization, failure to communicate, and the meaninglessness of life.

Not to mention similar metaphors and techniques. For instance, the idea of Yank trying to establish contact with a gorilla is just an early version of Albee's Jerry and the dog in The Zoo Story. The dialogues full of non sequiturs, in which characters don't really communicate because they misinterpret each other, is similar in spirit to Pinter's barrage of senseless dialogues and Havel's mockery of bureaucratic jargon.

Even the premise itself is absurdist: a man is accused by a woman of being a 'hairy ape' and that sends him on a journey that leaves him emotionally shattered. That's basically the plot of the first plays by Pinter and Albee, respectively The Birthday Party and The Zoo Story.

Plus, neither of them wrote a scene about gorilla crushing the protagonist. Thirty years in advance O'Neill was out-absurding the Theater of the Absurd.

I returned to O'Neill with some reticence because he seemed like a stuffy old playwright; instead I discovered plays still full of intellectual vigor.

[Babak Movahed]

It's not bad, but it really depends on style of plays you might like. If you're not a fan of fairly didactic works, then I wouldn't suggest it. It's quite a sad perspective, yet interesting though.

[Heteronym]

What do you mean by didactic?

[kelby_lake]

What do you mean by didactic?

I think he means that the moral messages behind them are not exactly concealed. In other words, it's telling you what to think.

I disagree with the assertion. True, I haven't read The Hairy Ape but I've read other major works by O'Neill and I haven't found it to be the case. Like him or not, O'Neill is the father of American Theatre. Techniques such as using vernacular for anything other than a comic effect were not prominent at all. He created a highly poetic form of theatre, which has disadvantages as well as advantages and is unlikely to appeal to everybody, but didactism is not one of the most prominent features of his work.

[Heteronym]

I think he means that the moral messages behind them are not exactly concealed. In other words, it's telling you what to think.

There is a socialist character, a minor one, in the play who sees everything in terms of class difference and class conflict. He unsuccessfully attempts to make Yank, the protagonist, understand these ideas. The character is clearly played for laughs and to show Yank's inability to side with any form of group or ideology. The play is about loneliness, about losing one's place in the order of things, not socialist propaganda.

[Babak Movahed]

Oh sorry I didn't explain what I meant by didactic, but yes essentially what I meant was that O'Neill explicitly does try to push his message onto his audience. However, as a proletariat work it's message is clearly for that of a more united, and socially aware working class. The cause of all the conflict associated with Yank, was solely due to the fact that he was completely out of touch with his fellow workers. There's no reason why one shouldn't read something because it's didactic, but I just meant it might not be for some readers who enjoy more ambiguity in regards to theme.

[Heteronym]

Yank's fellow workers derided the one socialist worker trying to get them united against the rich. His fellow workers worked the furnaces without a fuss, indifferent to their social position.

Yank's problem is a classical one: hubris, arrogance, pride. Yank has an overglorified vision of his role throwing coal into the furnaces; he thinks he's an important figure in society because he makes the world move. His unraveling comes when this identity is put in question by the young socialite calling him a hairy ape. The funny thing is - in accordance with the classic tradition - this acts like an oracular prophecy, initiating Yank in a journey to become a real ape, to the point he dies crushed by a gorilla in a cage at the Zoo.

Reading this play just from a proletarian/Marxist perspective is reductive. O'Neill is clearly tackling bigger and more intemporal questions here.