"The Hairy Ape"

Paper Summary:

This paper focuses on the use of animal symbols in the play and its message about society. It explains how the playwright uses animal symbolism liberally throughout the play to create a picture of the character of Yank, a brutish man who, it is implied, might be more at home in a cage. It explains, however, that he is a human being in spite of his animal nature, and the symbolism of the play is used to illuminate the character and to imply certain things about the human race, which often treats its own members more like animals than like human beings.

From the Paper:

"The Old Salt Paddy is a living symbol of the past, and early in the play he mourns for a time about when sailors were free men. He offers a vision of a sailing ship, a symbol of man's freedom through a unity with nature in its exalted form. In the past, he says, "A ship was part of the sea, and a man was part of a ship and the sea joined altogether and made it one" (259). Paddy thus talks of a past where men worked hard but were a part of sea and sky, a partner with weather, with nature. Clearly, this is not at all like the dark and cramped work of Yank and the others, undertaken beneath the deck where they almost never see the sea at all and are separated entirely from nature."

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