‘Hairy ape! So dat’s me, huh?’ La figure simienne comme construction sociale dans The Hairy Ape de Eugene O’Neill

Abstract

An eminently political play, O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (1922) offers a dark representation of the industrial America of the 1920s in which social interactions occur along a vertical axis. The author tackles the Simian figure from an aesthetic and social perspective in order to show how the process of man’s “becoming-animal” finds itself entangled in a class conflict. While continuously challenging the frontier between man and beast, O’Neill questions notions of identity and belonging.

Keywords

• simian figure
• social criticism
• politics
• American society of the 1920s
• becoming animal
• language