SHOUTS AND MURMURS
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bludgeon in the hands of the Neanderthal Man.
At
that
moment
Her
in walks the girl.
face tells
plainly enough that she has come suddenly on
something monstrous and
bestial
a gorilla, perhaps
ape.
fixed for a
—a hairy
and
terrifying,
She stands trans-
moment, staring open-mouthed.
she faints.
It is the world's first notice to
Then Yank
that he does n't belong.
The
rest of the
play
is
just his hurt, bewil-
dered, furious effort to get even if
he can, to rip her finery
off
—
to get at her,
her and to spit in
her white, transparent face. Frustrated in that,
he searches for others
like her to
trample them under foot. the unruffled world deals this revenge
mash them and
The buffetings which him in his pursuit of
(with ever and always the phrase
"hairy ape" spat at him as he flounders along) are
by the play in short, stabbing scenes so distorted and so fantastic that "The Hairy Ape" takes on the bad dream accent and aspect all pictured
of an ugly fable.
That
is
why
it
seems the most
natural of consequences that he should steal into the night-shrouded
Zoo
at last
and acknowledge
the gorilla as his brother, that he should open the
cage and invite the gorilla to come out and join
him
in one last bout with
an unfriendly world.