The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill detailed summary

 

The Hairy Ape begins in the forecastle (front part of the lower dick of a ship where the sailors and workers live) of a large ocean liner (transportation ship), where Yank and his co-workers spend their time by shoveling coal into the boat’s furnaces. The room is loud and messy, the stokers engage in drinking, singing, and shouting. Despite this chaotic and extremely loud ambiance, Yank sits and listens to his fellow stokers. He is the “most highly developed individual” as O’Neill puts in the play, where most of the men resemble like Neanderthals. The uproar of the stokers get louder until, Yank shouts them to be quiet because he is trying to think of something, which makes all others laugh. Nonetheless, everyone heeds (pay attention) him for a moment, but soon they’re back to their shouting. One stoker sings a sentimental song about home and his awaiting wife, but Yank scorns it. He goes on to say that the only home these men have is the ship itself.

 

Later, a drunken stoker named Long stands upright and expresses his thoughts concerning a number of communist values, describing the ship as hell, and saying that all men are born free. Continuing in this manner, Long says that the “Capitalist clarss” has made the stokers into “wage slaves,” but Yank tells him to be quiet. Instead of agreeing with Long’s critique of the discrimination that arises under capitalism, he insists that the work he and his fellow stokers do in the engine room has nothing to do with the rich people in the first cabin. Indeed, he upholds that rich people aren’t strong or brave enough to work as stokers, arguing that only true men have enough “noive” (nerve) to work in the hell that is the stokehole.

 

The mood takes a sudden turn for the melancholy when Paddy, an old Irish sailor, bursts out with a pained elegy for the good old days of sailing, when men felt both free and healthily involved in the workings of the ship. But Yank remarkably rejects Paddy's criticism and answers with a long speech of his own which includes the spirit of confidence and strength.

 

Having finished his speech, Yank urges Paddy to drink until lose his senses. The bell announcing the work shift sounds, and all the workers suddenly become like mechanical device. Paddy, alone, stays behind, refusing to work anymore.

 

On the upper part of the same ship, young Mildred Douglas relaxes in a deck chair with her aunt. They engage in small talk and little arguments. Her aunt scolds Mildred about her unnecessary engagement into social service and attempts to help the poor. Mildred says she wants “to touch life somewhere,” although she has enjoyed the benefits of the wealth produced by her family’s steel business.

 

Her aunt points out that Mildred is quite artificial and that her efforts in helping the poor are actually thinly veiled attempts at some kind of social credibility. Mildred, however, is intent on visiting the stokehole of the ship, to mingle with the common workers and experience their lifestyle. She has received permission from the ship’s captain by claiming she had a letter from her father, the chairman of the ship line, who requested that she inspect the vessel. 

 

The second engineer escorting her to the stokehole questions her white dress, since she might rub up against dirt or oil; Mildred replies she will throw it out when she comes back up because she has plenty of dresses.

 

She reached there in the stokehole, the men are bare-chested, sweaty, and dirty as they shovel coal into the massive furnace that drives the ship’s engines. The heat appears to be oppressive and unbearable. Paddy is exhausted. Yank ridicules him and brags about his own ability to face the furnace without tiring. He assembles and conveys energy to the men as they put their energy into stoking the furnace.

 

At the height of their brute physical activity, Mildred enters in her lily-white dress. The whistle sounds, signalling the end of the work shift. The men notice Mildred and are shocked by her inappropriate presence. Yank completely ignores her and continues to work, shaking his shovel at the whistle.

Mildred observes Yank’s animal-like force and is greatly horrified by it. Suddenly Yank sees her, sending an obnoxious and hateful glare at her. She faints with fear, nearly fainting into her escort’s arms. She asks to be taken away, labelling Yank as a filthy beast. He is enraged at the insult and throws his shovel at the door through which she has exited.

Yank, unlike the other fireman, has not washed himself after their shift. The men are off-duty and entertaining themselves, while Yank sits, his face covered in coal soot, trying to recapture the previous events in the furnace room. The other men tease him, suggesting he’s fallen in love with the stokehole’s strange visitor. No, he counters, the feeling he has for Mildred is hate.

 

The engineers in the ship try to threat the workers, also insults them collectively calling as monkeys.They also mention that Mildred is the daughter of a steel magnate. Paddy suggests her visit was like a visit to the zoo, where they were pointed out as baboons (a kind of huge hairy monkey). Paddy says it was love at first sight when she saw Yank, like she had seen a great hairy ape escaped from the zoo. He makes fun of how Yank threw the shovel at her exit.

 

Yank seems to like the label “Hairy Ape” and imagines that his encounter with Mildred resulted in violence to her. Long says he would have been punished for such an act. As Yank shows signs of losing his temper and control, the others mockery on him and hold him down. Paddy advises them to give Yank time to cool down.

 

It is some time after the ship’s return to port, Yank and Long walk down Fifth Avenue in New York. Long is once again offering his political rhetoric about the working class while Yank, oblivious to his companion’s words, Focuses his mind on something else. At the same time Yank complains that he doesn’t fit in or belong anywhere. They see the jewellery and the coats in the windows of the store and are infuriated at the prices, which are far beyond the expectations of the common men such as themselves. Yank sees a group of wealthy people coming out of a church and he verbally attacks this group also challenges them to a fight. Before he can commit any physical violence, however, Yank is restrained by police, who arrest him.

 

 

Yank is in jail, angry at being caged like an animal in the zoo. The other prisoners mock him. They ask him what crime he committed, suggesting a domestic argument. Yank explains the root of his anger that was Mildred’s visit to the stokehole. This eventually created a kind of general hatred towards the rich and privileged groups, and his subsequent attack on the rich people. During his shout, he mentions Mildred’s last name. The prisoners inform him that her father is president of the Steel Trust. One inmate suggests that Yank join a group of labor activists, the Wobblies(IWW- Industrial Workers of the World), whose efforts are aimed at raising revenge upon the upper class denizens such as Mildred and her father. The inmate gives Yank information about the union. Yank gets very excited to join them. He talks about the steel bars that are restraining him, imagining himself as a fire that will burn through them. His excitement becomes so intense that he bends the bars and flees from the prison.

 

Yank meets the Wobblies (International Workers of the World) local union office. He asks to join but has to stop and think when they ask him his real name. The union members are happy to find a fireman from the shipping line who is willing to join their cause. They want to know why Yank is joining. He responds that his desire to blow up the Douglas Steel Trust and its president. Quickly sensing that Yank is mentally unstable and dangerous, the union rejects his application. Out on the street, Yank becomes agitated, repeating his belief that there is no place where he truly belongs.

 

Later, Yank visits the monkey house at the zoo. He talks to the animals about his experiences in the city. One gorilla responds by placing hand on his chest, and Yank decides that they are members of the same club, the Hairy Apes. Pondering the similarities in him and the animals’ situations, Yank opens the door of the cage. As the gorilla exits, Yank tries to exchange a secret handshake with his newfound friend. The gorilla clasps him in a crushing hug and throws him into the cage and eventually he dies, realizes that he doesn’t even belong with the hairy apes. The monkeys jump and chatter about the stage.