SEARCH FOR IDENTITY IN EUGENE O’NEILL’S THE HAIRY APE

Abstract

Eugene O’Neill dedicated a life-time of incessant creative activity to understand the root cause of man’s disillusionment with life and his disenchantment with the cosmos. He searched for faith and human values in a world which does not seem to subscribe to any consistent value system. He tried to find out the meaning of human tragedy. In the apparent meaninglessness and absurdity of life, O’Neill’s protagonists strive hard to seek their identity with other fellowmen. In his plays he tried to discover the causes that erected barriers between man and his self, between man and human society and between man and universe. Man encounters nothingness at every step and a malignant shadow of emptiness hovers over him as he sets out to discover the meaning of life. His plays provide a keen insight into this predicament of man. The present paper examines the identity crisis of Robert Smith ‘Yank’, the central protagonist of Eugene O’Neill’s play The Hairy Ape.