Savages

Is modern society a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on how the options are weighted. In some ways, it is good. Things get done faster. Pain is spared. Machines perform work much more accurately. Everyone can relax and enjoy life. But then again, modern society has made people lazy. They don’t have to do too much and they just lie around and do nothing. No real brain power is required at all. It has in a sense turned us back into barbaric apes. Eugene O’Neill’s play, The Hairy Ape, shows the negative side of modern society. The character, Yank, is imprisoned in the dark side of modern society. He and Mildred seem to be the only humans in the play. Everyone else seems like animals.

What is barbarism? By definition, it is an uncivilized state or condition; rudeness of manners; ignorance of arts, learning, and literature; barbarousness. Mr. O’Neill focuses hard on barbarism. The Hairy Ape is set in New York in the 1920’s. It focuses on a group of firemen. Everything is modern by the standards of that time. The machines of the 20th century have pushed man down the evolutionary scale. Man does not have to think. They just grunt and toil in the hard work. They are only reduced to one task for the whole day over and over again. The speech of Yank shows that his is of low education. Throughout the whole play, everyone is compared to apes and monkeys. Yank and Mildred consider themselves apes. Yank even finds himself face to face with an actual ape in the zoo towards the end of the play. Patty, the oldest man in the firemen work, looks really ape-like. The message is clear in the play: modern society has pushed mankind all the way back to apes again. The older one is in the modern uncivilized world, the more you are pushed back down to the apes and monkeys.

Judging by the pictures in the article, the design of the play fits the whole theme of barbarism. Everything looks dark and dirty here. Even the final scene of the play ties the whole thing together. Yank looks very poor and dirty in his costume. It makes him appear to look uncivilized to the modern eye. The only thing that makes him even more convincing in the end is the part where he dies in the cage with the monkeys. It seems to say that he lived like an ape and now he will like one. Mildred on the other hand, looks pretty and well-educated in her pretty white dress. She refuses to take it off despite warnings that it will get dirty when she visits the firemen. That little act seems to prove that she unconsciously wants to stay above the men despite her work to change the world. The designs are so realistic and highly close to the time period in the 1920’s.

Is modern society a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on who you ask. O’Neill thinks it is a bad thing and he proves it well in his play. This would also serve as a warning to the population of today. Try to think for yourself and strive to change the world is what it all comes down to.