"THE HAIRY APE"

by

EUGENE O'NEILL

Yank is a great, powerful, hulking brute of a man, boss of the stokehold on the liner on which he works; a hard-drinking, hard fighting animal, good-natured except when crossed, popular and respected for his great strength by his fellows. He fight for the pure love of fighting. He is proud of his calling, his ability to do double his share of the gruelling work. He has nothing but scorn for all other classes of society particularly the first class passengers who represent the other end of the scale. He despises their physical weakness, he believes that it is he and his kind who make the ship...and the world move... He feels in a queer way that he is akin to steel, the steel of the engines, of the furnaces he feeds. The other people of the world are just baggage. In his own expression, he 'belongs'. And he has never yet had a single thought to disturb this self-confident pride. In fact he never thinks at all. There has been no cause for his ever thinking seriously about anything.

Mildred Douglas, daughter of the President of Nazareth Steel, David Douglas, sails for England on Yank's ship. She represents the opposite extreme of society. An only child, her mother having died when she was born, she has been the idol of her father who has never remarried. He has spoiled her to the limit. Every slightest whim of hers has been gratified since she was a baby. The result is she has developed into a delicate, highly-neurotic, bored and cruel and self-centered young woman without an interest in life except to find some thrill that will give her apathetic mind and body into some feeling of being alive. It is in pursuit of a thrill that she is making this trip, for she has lately been going

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in for social service work in American cities, visiting the slums for the sense of danger it gives her, for the morbid satisfaction she gets out of witnessing scenes of human degradation and misery, and now she is bound for a tour of the slums of London and Paris and the European capitals. But Mildred is not 'all bad'. She is simply driven on by a hidden feeling of her own uselessness and lifelessness. She longs to be able to feel some genuine emotion about something. She desires some real contact with living forces. She wants to 'belong'.

On the ship, she is received with the deference due to the only daughter of the man who owns the line. In the first hours out, she lies in a deck chair, bored and irritated by the obsequious attentions she is shown, longing for something to occupy her mind.

Down below in the fireman's forecastle, Yank and his mates are finishing up a debauch begun on shore. They are all still drunk. The socialist Long tries to make a speech converting them to socialism. Yank pushes him down. For him socialism is weakness. It doesn't "belong" for strong men. And when the former sailing-ship sailor Paddy makes them a speech on the rotten life on a steamer compared to the old work on clippers in the sun and fresh air, Yank is equally scornful. That's old stuff. It's dead and past. The present is fire and steel and steam. Old timer like Paddy simply don't belong. They're dead and they don't know it. Then Yank boasts. He's steel. He's part of the liner - the main part; He makes it go. He feeds it. If it wasn't for him all the engines all over the world would stop — the world would stop. He "belong." He beats his chest like a gorilla in his pride and challenges any man to fight out who doesn't agree with him. But they all do. He rouses them all to a frenzy of self-pride. They pound the steel walls with their fists. They "belong" with Yank. Then the bell sounds. It

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Back in the forecastle, Yank sits apart and broods in the attitude of Rodin's thinker. He sees her eyes. What did they mean? He feels horribly insulted in his pride without understanding why. The others wonder what's the matter. Paddy jokes at him. The others laugh. Paddy says the girl looked at him as if he was a Hairy Ape escaped from the Zoo. Yank starts. This stings him. For a moment he is about to attack Paddy. Then he makes a mad boast. If she comes again to the stokehole, he'll fling her into the furnace. And he'll go right up on deck now and tell her what he thinks of her. He'll slap her right across those eyes he still feels staring at him. He rushes for the door but they all pile on him and after a terrible struggle pin him down. They know he'll be shot if he tries it. And when they let him up he sits apart again, brooding vengeance, hating her, unable to understand why, trying to think.

The ship reaches Southampton. Yank sneaks ashore, conceals himself near the gangplank, then rushes forward toward Mildred as she comes down. He shouts insults at her, but he is overcome by numbers before he can get near her. She stands in the middle of the gangplank watching him, terrified again but more thrilled and fascinated by the impact of his tremendous physical life and energy.

Yank downs his sorrow in the pubs. He fights. He is wicked now. On the ship in the next few trips, he is avoided. His mates grow to hate and fear him. He bullies them viciously, he sets a pace in the stokehole that breaks their hearts and their backs. And in the forecastle he broods, his hatred and longing for revenge growing. Long, the socialist talks to him, seeing a promising convert. He tells him of the class war, etc. Yank listens bewilderedly. He only understands that he wants revenge against those eyes he now sees before him all the