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INTRODUCTION (SYMBOLIC CHARACTERS)
O’Neill has made frequent use of symbolic characters to add to the imaginative content of his plays. His characters are symbols but are never lifeless abstractions: they are full life and capable of surprising us. They may be facing inevitable defeat, yet they do not give up fighting. The beauty and the tragic dignity of O’Neill’s characters may be seen in their struggle against oppression and injustice.
SYMBOLIC CHARACTERS IN THE HAIRY APE
Yank has a striking resemblance with a ‘hairy ape’. Yank is always smudged with symbolic ‘black’. He is not an individual but a typical representative of the working class. He represents Everyman who is a victim of the modem machine age. Mildred Douglass stands for the rich capitalist class with all its vain glory, artificiality and exhibitionism. She stands for an ‘incongruous artificial figure’. She is ‘dressed in all white’. Long is the symbol of radicalism in American politics. He believes in the Marxian philosophy of class struggle and deals with workers’ alienation in the Industrial Age. The Aunt is the symbol of life of artificiality, affectation and false glamour. She is conscious of her racial superiority and looks down upon those who are socially inferior to her.
LIVELY CHARACTERS
Characters in O’Neill’s plays are not puppets but are extremely lively and engaging. Mostly they are drawn from life, and act with a convincing reality. They speak with the breath of life and can be identified from their tone, behavior and gestures. The characters, in O’Neill’s realistic plays, confront situations in their own way, not the way of a theatrical tradition. They are conceived as a part of their environments.
All the characters in The Hairy Ape are thrillingly alive and engaging. Yank’s fellow stokers regard him as their most highly developed individual. Yank expresses a force of indomitable conviction, the lord of the forecastle, untroubled by doubt or drink. He would snub those in a tone of contemptuous authority for disturbing the peace of the stokehole. Without his shovel, nothing moves. Yank calls the capitalists ‘baggage’ and lifeless who can never belong. He angrily calls the churchgoers “Bums! Pigs! Tarts! Bitches!” who are anti-poor.
Long is totally identified with the working class and makes it conscious about its rights and privileges. He blames the Capitalist class for making them “wage slaves in the bowls of the bloody ship, sweatin’, bumin’ up, eatin’ coal dust”. He calls those who travel in first class cabins ‘lazy, bloated swines’. Paddy is always nostalgic about the past and is never tired of glorifying it.
GROUP BEHAVIOUR
The stokers act like a chorus in The Hairy Ape. O’Neill uses voices for the stokers in The Hairy Ape. They are used for satirical as well as ironical purposes in it. Mostly they speak in chorus in which the separate identity of the voice is deliberately suppressed. Described as a group, and not as individuals, the stokers act like a chorus, responding to what Yank says as “Voices” speaking lines that are meant to sound spontaneous, sometimes sequentially and sometimes simultaneously. O’Neill represents the group of sailors as a geographical and ethnic microcosm. At one point, they chant in unison a “refrain, stamping on the floor, pounding on the benches with fists “Drink, don’t think!”. The voices are dramatically very relevant because they highlight the limitations of the leading characters in the play.
The voices (stokers) are men of ordinary sensibility and devoid of any serious thinking. They are worldly wise and are not unaware of the ground reality of life. They live in the present and accept life with all its limitations. They do not think about the past or the future because it can destabilize their life. They ridicule Paddy for the false glorification of the past and the condemnation of the present. They jeer at Yank when he asks the fellow stokers not to disturb him as he is trying to think. For the voices, thinking is not meant for the brainless apes.
The voices do not grumble about their lot and accept the ship as their home. They wholeheartedly belong to it and never suffer from any sense of alienation in it. They pull up Long for equating ship with hell because they are totally identified with it.
Beside the stokers, there are other characters that function in groups, lacking any distinguishing individual characteristics and representing generic segments of society. In Scene V, O’Neill rejects entirely the status quo but, the ladies and gentlemen on Fifth Avenue lack emotion and personality. They “seem neither to see him nor hear him, he (Yank) flies into a fury”. When threatened, the churchgoers “without seeming to see him, they all answer with mechanical affected politeness”. They look and sound like robots, unaffected by anything Yank says or does, thus increasing his frustration and sense of isolation. In Scene VI, the prisoners on Blackwells Island are merely disembodied voices, not characters, taunting Yank and egging him on to seek vengeance for his perceived wrongs. The voices teasingly asked him if he is jilted in love or severely beaten by the policemen. The Guard in this scene serves only a functional role as the expected figure of authority at the prison from whom Yank must escape. In Scene VII, the Secretary at the I.W.W. headquarters merely represents the group in his dialogue with Yank, fearful of government intervention, cautious in his dealings with strangers, while the other men, defined only by their occupations— ''longshoremen, iron workers, and the like"—do not speak, but support the Secretary with physical action against Yank.
CONCLUSION
O’Neill approaches his characters from a realistic-cum-critical perspective. He often analyses his characters from ‘inside’ rather than ‘outside’. His characters are symbols but are never lifeless abstractions: they are full life and capable of surprising us. The beauty and the tragic dignity of O’Neill’s characters may be seen in their struggle against oppression and injustice. Characters in O’Neill’s plays are not puppets but are extremely lively and engaging. Mostly they are drawn from life and act with a convincing reality. They are conceived as a part of their environments. They are thematically very relevant because they help us in understanding the theme of the play. The stokers act like a chorus in The Hairy Ape. O’Neill uses voices for the stokers in The Hairy Ape. They are used for satirical as well as ironic purposes in it. The voices are dramatically very relevant because they highlight the limitations of the leading characters in the play.