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德宏师范高等专科学校 云南 678400
Abstract: The Hairy Ape is one of Eugene O’Neil’s one-act plays as an initial work on expressionism after The Emperor Jones. Despite O’Neil’s obscure political claims, he pictures Yank, who searches for the truth of exploitation of working class in 1920’s of America and sense of belongingness. The Hairy Ape proves a truth of social nature of working class: not belonging.
Key Words: Belongingness; The Hairy Ape; Political Consciousness
1. Introduction
The Hairy Ape is one of Eugene O’Neil’s one-act plays as an initial work on expressionism after The Emperor Jones. The Hairy Ape tells how the protagonist Yank, a brutish but heroic stoker, leaves his place in the bowels of the ship, tries to crash society, but discovers that he can never "belong." By depicting the failure of the uneducated American Yank to "belong" to civilized society, the play marks the beginning of O'Neill's long war with the soul-destroying materialism of American society. However, the portrait of the character Yank’s soul searching journey is virtually a mirror of working class’s struggle with the capitalist’s ideology in terms of social nature of human kind.
2. Neil’s Political Consciousness
O’Neil claimed to be “indifferent” and “anarchist”, as he concluded that he had dramatized a universal theme in The Hairy Ape: “The subject here is the same ancient one that always was and always will be the one subject for drama, and that is man and his struggle with his own fate. The struggle used to be with the gods, but is now with himself, his own past, his attempt 'to belong.'" [2] , no matter it comes form the playwright’s personification of play from his life or simply a belief in the play, this struggle itself involves a political signification inevitably. Gassner. John ever commented that “He found an acceptable channel for his dramatic talent and theatrical interest because he also had an outlet for his personal rebellion in associating himself with an enterprise created by bohemian rebels against materialistic American society and the commercialism of the professional theater.”[2] Despite that O’ Neil didn’t openly announce his political assertions or inclinations, the shaping of protagonist “Yank” in this play as a representative of working class and his failure of inner struggles gives away to his political consciousness unconsciously, which we may call it “the political unconscious”, in accordance with Fredric Jameson and his idea that “Every reading and interpretation is inevitably political and ideological” [3] .
3.Yank’s Searching of Self-value
Yank lived in such a society which member of working class lives in a roaring time driven by machine and technology, a great time of mechanization and materialism in 1920’s of America. He fantasized himself as the engine of his time at the beginning of this play, thus produces a sense of self-value as part of the machine: the main force pushes the advance of society. In the sweaty stokehole, he possesses a comfortable worldview and shows disdain for the upper classes that Long criticizes. However, this tenuous illusion soon faded after the fateful encounter with Mildred, a daughter of a steel industry millionaire. This encounter puts his world on edge.
O'Neill expressed his view on this great American paradox most famously in an interview soon after the 1946 opening of Iceman: “I feel, in that sense, that America is the greatest failure in history. It was given everything, more than any other country in history, but we've squandered our soul by trying to posses something outside it…" (xiii)[5] The statements above may prove that both Diggins and O’ Neil have got a political consciousness or strong sense of social responsibility, but what they attribute to the loss of human soul is just the materialism of American society, which make people concentrate too much on the procession of material wealth instead of soul fulfillment. What they aren’t aware of is that materialism as a value orientation of capitalist society doesn’t come from nowhere, but a typical capitalist ideology that benefits the ruling class. The limitation of O’Neil’s understanding to the nature of capitalist society reflects on a scene of Yank’s unpleasant experience in the Wobblies. Once released from prison, Yank searches out the Wobblies, hoping to find a place in the labor movement, one that will calm his anger and exact the revenge he desires. But his alienation extends even to this arena as he is ousted by the union.
As O’Neil put it, “Yank can't go forward, and so he tries to go back," "This is what his shaking hands with the gorilla (in the last scene, set "in the monkey house at the Zoo" meant. But he can't go back to 'belonging' either. The gorilla kills him." [2] Yank’s death closes his long searching journey that he strikes out, blindly and in vain, against a reality he cannot affect or even comprehend.
4. Conclusion
The journey of soul searching of Yank in The Hairy Ape, proves a truth of social nature of working class: not belonging. The exploitation of working class’s surplus value in capital society deprives their right of getting what they deserve from their hard work. Like machine, they are just tool of production, thus will never be a man of equal and free with the rights endowed by the “democratic” institution. Despite O’Neil’s obscure political claims, he leads us to assume that the problem of the human condition, the problem of alienation, is one that is never truly solved in life.
References:
[1]: Worthington, Etta. "An essay for The Hairy Ape." Drama for Students. Retrieved from Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 25 May 2011.
[2]: Gassner, John. "Eugene O'Neill." American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Ed. Leonard Unger. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974. Retrieved from Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 25 May 2011.
[3]朱刚.二十世纪西方文艺批评理论.上海：上海外语教育出版社.2001.
[4]Retrieved on May 29, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Independence
[5]:刘海平.英美戏剧作品与评论. 上海：上海外语教育出版社.2001.
作者简介：
1 段丽芳（1982- ），女，汉族，云南芒市人，硕士学位，德宏师范高等专科学校讲师，主要研究方向为英美文学和英语教学。
2 段聪丽（1986- ），女，汉族，云南腾冲人，硕士学位，德宏师范高等专科学校助教，主要研究方向为少数民族语言文化和教学研究。
论文作者:段丽芳,段聪丽
论文发表刊物:《语言文字学》2017年4月
论文发表时间:2017/7/27
标签：上海论文; 云南论文; 汉族论文; 师范高等专科学校论文; 腾冲论文; 硕士学位论文; 英美论文; 《语言文字学》2017年4月论文;