American Literature in the Early to Mid Twentieth Century

Yank in "Hairy Ape" by Eugene O'Neill

In the play, "Hairy Ape," by Eugene O'Neill, the character of Yank portrays the individual who seeks to conform in his society and is always in need to belong with other people. Robert Smith, or Yank, is illustrated as an individual who personifies anything that is deviant in the society: O'Neill portrays him as "broader, fiercer, more truculent, more powerful, and surer of himself than the rest. They respect his superior strength -- the grudging respect of fear. Then, too, he represents to them a self-expression, the very last word in what they are, their most highly developed individual." This passage from the play shows how, because of both his physical appearance and personality, Yank is immediately identified as 'distinct' and 'different' from other people.

Looking into his portrayal in the play, Yank also shows apparent dislike for conformity, deviating from all the rules and norms set by society. In Scene 1 of the play, he shows an individualist stance, telling other people, "Care for nobody, dat's de dope! To hell wit 'em all! And nix on nobody else carin'. I kin care for myself, get me!" Yank's deviance reflects the fact that because of his individualist attitude, he needs to find a "new place" for himself, a society where he can be himself without other people's interference, where the ultimate goal of every human being is not to live harmoniously and interact, but to live and survive. Indeed, O'Neill aptly ends his play with the eventual belongingness of Yank in Scene 8, wherein he meets a gorilla that caught his attention because it is "some hard-lookin' guy." It is evident that Yank identifies himself with the gorilla; ironically, though, it is the gorilla that caused Yank's demise, as it killed him in order to become "one" or be considered as part of the "Hairy Ape society" it belongs to ("perhaps, the Hairy Ape at last belongs").

In the short story, "The Big Two-Hearted River," Ernest Hemingway shows through the character of Nick an individual who seeks to isolate and detach himself from the worldly and insatiable wants and needs of human society. The story begins with a symbolic representation of Nick's departure from human society, as implied in the passage, "The train went on up the track out of sight, around one of the hills of burnt timber... There was no town, nothing but the rails and the burned-over country..." In his quest to detach himself with humanity, Nick seeks the comfort of Nature, a place where he belongs and will certainly survive. Even after making his decision, he displays internal conflict, as he tries to control the urge to become 'human' again -- that is, aspire to achieve more than what he can consume and use: "a big trout shot upstream in a long angle... Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling."

This "old feeling" of excesses of human consumption is just one example of the many 'worldly' things that humanity subsists to; this is why Nick tries to control himself when he sees the trout, he tries to control the need to exploit Nature. As he was fishing, he thought of his friend named Hopkins, who succeeded in becoming wealthy and was Nick's fishing mate in Lake Superior. The use of the name Lake Superior explicitly shows the seemingly superior regard of humanity for themselves, much more superior than Nature herself.

Nick, in his journey to live with Nature, attempts to deviate from any human pursuits to eternity, to being like his friend Hopkins. Indeed, Nick finally experiences happiness and contentment: "Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent. He had not been unhappy all day. This was different though. Now things were done. There had been this to do. Now it was done. It had been a hard trip. He was very tired. That was done." In a world where uncertainties and dissatisfaction becomes the norm, Nick felt, for once in his life, happy with the simple life he sought to have with Nature.

In the short story "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, the protagonist, Emily Grierson, is synonymously associated with the traditional American society, where the wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans (WASPs) dominated society for many years. Emily, as part of the WASP society, is considered a "fallen monument" because of her eventual demise, as she failed to cope with the changes in her society and environment, where tolerance to individual differences became the norm as opposed to the conservative stance of Emily's traditional society. There is also existing conflict between Emily and the new American society, where her neighborhood shared a common belief that Emily is an "outsider" in the new, modern society.

Faulknerian dynamics in the short story indeed mirror the conflict between the traditional and modern societies. This conflict is explicitly illustrated in the speaker's description of their community, where Emily's house represents the wealthy families of the past, but has now become only a remembrance of this past, as a new and more powerful class, the middle class, emerged in the Grierson's once exclusive community: "... garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left... eyesore among eyesores..." The difference between Emily's house and that of her community's is not the only manifestation of the conflict between two generations, the past and the present. The community also looks at Emily as an adversary, mainly because she isolates and differentiates herself from her community despite her evident poverty, placing her on a much lower level than her neighbors are. Indeed, this is the opinion of the speaker, who observed Emily's change of fate when her father died: "... In a way, people were glad. At last, they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less." Emily's condition worsened, slowly retreating from society by isolating herself in the security of her old house.