"The Hairy Ape" in the Context of Early 20th Century American Modernism Author(s): Thomas F.

Connolly Source: The Eugene O'Neill Review, Vol. 25, No. 1/2 (Spring/Fall 2001), pp. 77-79 Published by: Penn State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29784712 . Accessed: 01/04/2013 10:48
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Early 20th Century American Modernism

Thomas F. Connolly Suffolk University
at the American {This paper began as a presentation Literature Association's April 2001 panel on O'Neill literature canon.?TFC} and the American

Context of TheHairy Ape in the

The

American drama seminar, but to expect sophomores to question the subtext of a syllabus is to fail to respect theirdeferences. For similar reasons, I do not believe a discussion of any sort of "drama versus literature" debate is war?
ranted.

Has it made all thedifference?Perhaps. I believe that it strongly implieswhere American literature. I believe thatthis is thebest thatI can O'Neill's place is in a do as professor in an American literature survey course. It is one thing to chide graduate students about not falling into the "chronological trap" in an

Hairy Ape is placed in the chapter entitled 'The 20th Century" in thewidely used Prentice-Hall Concise Anthology ofAmerican Lit? erature, edited by George McMichael, an anthology that my English department has favored through its various editions formany decades. The textbook's arrangement places O'Neill's play between Sherwood Anderson and Ezra Pound. On my syllabus The Hairy Ape comes after poems by Robinson, Frost, Pound and Eliot. After O'Neill, the next author taken up is Cummings. (I do not teach Sherwood Anderson.) Admittedly by staying close to theorder of the textbook's table of contents, I take the roadmore traveled by.

I begin by emphasizing O'Neill's subtitle"A Comedy ofAncient andMod? em Life in remarks. (This is especially important my introductory Eight Scenes" in since the subtitle is not included in the anthology's text.) By so doing I con

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78

The

Eugene

O'Neill

Review

nect theplay toPound's famous dictum "Make itnew." By stressing the form of theplay I am able to emphasize the importance of form toO'Neill's modern? ist contemporaries and place the playwright within one context of his time, since "ancient" tiesO'Neill to the classical traditions that Pound and Eliot were want to show that O'Neill should reworking in theirpoetry.With "modern," I not only be linked toPound and Eliot's modernist aesthetic, but that it is also O'Neill was a leftist importantto stress that political radical unlike some of the otherAmerican modernists of the time,Pound, Eliot and Frost. This enables me tobring up theplay's political contentwithout seeming to impose "current relevance" on the play. It is necessary to spend some time talking about the Industrial Workers of the World, (why do students instinctivelycall the I.W.W. "The International Workers of the World") and radical concepts such as so? cialism and anarchism and the significance of "the damned capitalist clarss" that Long imprecates. In some semesters, I also find itnecessary to comment on the Social Darwinism that Yank seems to represent in his famous speech about how he is steel," how he makes the shipmove?that he "belongs." He dismisses every immaterial thing as bunk?this is also perfectly "naturalist." Depending on the interest level of the class, even though I am wary of having students load up on toomany "isms", Imight mention naturalism and deter? minism as well in order to show some of the artistic trends that the modernist writers were reacting against. Of course, in a discussion of the staging I bring up expressionism. The cage-like atmosphere of the stoke hole, 5th Avenue crowd of grotesque marionettes and the "gorilla" at the play's conclusion are among the expressionist aspects of the text that I emphasize. It is almost always necessary to explain O'Neill's particular importance to American drama. Even when I have encountered studentswho have studied O'Neill before, theyalmost never have sufficient knowledge ofAmerican drama to accept The Hairy Ape without any prologue. I have encountered several students over the years who have often studied Long Day's Journey in a high

Bloom's that O'Neill is not influenced at all by anyAmerican dramatists impel my emphasis on The Hairy Ape's close relationship toAmerican modernism. On my syllabus I entitle this portion of the course "The American Cen? tury?" I do this to stress the ambiguous role ofAmerican-ness in our time and

Elms. Itwould appear that studentswho are introduced toO'Neill are taught that he is part of "drama." Indeed this is how I recall being introduced to O'Neill inhigh school.We read Sophocles, Miller, Ibsen, Williams, Shakespeare and others strictly as dramatic literature separated from any local context. These experiences and representatively ignorant comments such as Harold

school AP English class. Such students also sometimes know aboutMourn? ing Becomes Electra and The Oresteia. And I once had a studentwho had written a high school research paper on Greek tragedy and Desire Under the

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Thomas

F. Connolly

79

O'Neill's

antipathy to conventional American values. Such a title is also a good place fromwhich to encourage students to understand O'Neill's ques? tioningof conventional American values. As faras The Hairy Ape is concerned I offer some background on Israel Zangwill's 1908 play, TheMelting Pot and Theodore Roosevelt's 1915 diatribe against "hyphenated Americanism" to bolster Yank's initial disengagement fromLong's political and social agita? mention the stage directions and descriptions that tion?not to O'Neill provides for Scene V's FifthAvenue confrontation. When we take up the text, tobetter dramatize the choral aspect of theplay I assign each student one line from the opening of the play and have each student recite it. I direct them to speak as a chorus. While the ensuing ca?

between Mildred Douglas and her Aunt in Scene II. To convey O'Neill's strong theatricalityI call particular attention to the importance ofwhat we see and hear in the scene. Mildred's "whimpering" of "Oh the filthybeast!' fol? lowed by the clang as the iron door slams shut, the clang of Yank's shovel when he hurls itand the screech of the ship's whistle thatconcludes the scene. This picks up on our class discussion of how innerand outer voices and forces resonate throughoutEliot's "The Waste Land." I conclude our study of the play by asking the class to discuss why O'Neill calls theplay a comedy even though Yank dies at itsend. I recall earlier class discussions of transcendentalism during the Emerson unit. We also recall Whitman and his orgiastic celebration ofAmericanness and what seemed tobe amore assured sense of the self. Once again we look carefully atO'Neill's stage directions and in particular to the finalwords, "and perhaps, theHairy Ape at last belongs. Thus I insure that the theme of "belonging" is thoroughly
considered.

cophony almost always incites laughter, I use that laughterwhen itoccurs as a cue to loudly intone Yank's line, "Choke offdat noise!" I thenexplain what I have done to show the class how theatre seems to invite spontaneity, but is in fact a form of spontaneity. Then we move, by way of contrast to the affected, enervated dialogue

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