Free Yanks Essay Sample
Yank’s life in the Hairy Ape emerges as a comprehensive issue in the play, beginning from his childhood experiences to his final destiny. Yank meets unique occurrences in every category he is involved in, such as work and social interactions. Yank encounters hurdles in life that tend to change his views on the aspects of life. Nevertheless, Yank still felt alienated and believed to experience caged, controlled environment and thought that he did not fit in any social class.
Yank describes his childhood experience as being dominated by brutality coming from his parents, who engaged in intense fights, especially during the Saturday nights. Though, he emphasizes that his parents ensured that he attended church services every Sunday morning despite their fights. Yank can not remember exactly when he left home but believes to have left after his mother’s death. Yank left home because of beatings and punishments.
Yank works as a fireman on an ocean linear. Yank and his colleagues, including Paddy, are responsible for shoveling coal into the engine to maintain the ship propulsion. Yank is regarded as one without position within the social classes. The engineers recommend that no one should go to the stokehole where Yank and his colleagues work. Mildred refers to him as a filthy beast before fainting. This confirms Yank's fears that he is not regarded as a human being.
Yank’s lack of education restricts him to a laborer position in the industry. His illiteracy influences his reasoning and makes him feel that the stokehole is his home. Later, after several instances of discrimination from different persons, he feels that the gorilla at the zoo is his brother. Yank’s illiteracy traps him in a social and economic cage and eventually leads to his death.
Mildred experiences an extreme shock when she sees the Yank. She prefers to be taken away from that place and refers to Yank as a filthy beast before fainting at the arms of the engineer. The experience prompts Yank to start thinking about life that incorporates a group of classes. Yank feels that the cage restricting the lower class individuals is set by the rich upper class. Yank thinks of revenge and begins to look for the class where he belongs. Yank seeks his class by several means and stumbles into different situations, for instance, he finds himself in jail and eventually at the zoo.
In conclusion, I prefer to watch, than to listen this play, because it entails several features, such as Yank’s body and the gorilla's. Watching the play would expose a vivid description of the events and the characters, hence, invoke the emotions intended by the playwright. The play exposes Yank to belong nowhere within the human and the animal classes. Yank fits nowhere between the upper and the lower classes, but fits well in his work at the stokehole. He feels that he looks like the gorilla and presumes that it is his brother and they are in a similar class. Nonetheless, the gorilla crushes and kills him. Therefore, Yank belongs to the class of machines. This explicitly illustrates how the industry owners treat the workers. The rich treat the workers like machines, not like fellow human beings.