5:7}; . .
.22 c: If. I.

\3.{ .13... .r.

(5.1.4.?

7:

SF

.t 5
(EL... 1%
{75(15.

:(\

at: if

i... It}?!
tit?)

3:112
.1: «14.:A

{.3} .I

2.. I. I». z

.k... 5‘... . .is.
.. . 71:41.35;

. . 5 11¢: .t ‘ .3 4.5
1:521 rt 3.5.3119...
{:5}...

.1.) s1; . r‘

..!r .

. {.k’f If:
y . (y). 13)

. 1!. 71..

3.; .7...

. 4 4 i5... .3}. ...i\;:.:.
.f . .. ,2»: )4.) . 4!: .,.M.....

 

 

(flank.

15063378

IES l

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\\\\\\\ \\\\l\

 

 

“Harem-STATE WW"? \E\\\\\\\\\ i.

3 1293 00574 35 7

“BEAM so ,
Michigan State
University

 

 

LI

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

ALIENATION AND DEHUMANIZATION IN PLAYS
OF EUGENE O'NEILL AND GEORG KAISER

presented by

Christian Craff

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. American Studies

degree in

 

 

, any/fling

Major professor

Datfljflfw M/ My

0.7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before dme due.

 

DA! g DyE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

{ D‘wfl

1.1113? ‘2‘ 9 a

 

 

Wit 14 9W...
ill—5693194-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MSU Is An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

ALIENATION AND DEHUHANIZATION IN PLAYS
OF EUGENE O'NEILL AND GEORG KAISER

By

Christian Graff

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

College of Arts and Letters

1989

 

ABSTRACT

ALIENATION AND DEHUMANIZATION IN PLAYS
OF EUGENE O'NEILL AND GEORG KAISER

By

Christian Graff

Expressionist dramatists have always been interested in

._..,_.-.. a. ry-H

the impact of industrialization upon man. One of the best—
known plays of this genre, Georg Kaiser's Qas_l (1918),
offers a rural utopia as a possible escape from alienation
and dehumanization through the machine. The .vision‘ is
nonetheless dismissed because the proletarian masses
submit to the technocratic ideal represented in the
Engineer. Qaa_Ll resumes the antithetical discussion on a
spiritual level; internalization is the message of
Kaiser’s "New Man" that appears rather as an intellectual
game, a tranquilizer for the expressionist's feeling of
social responsibility. O'Neill's Tha_Hairx__Aaa (1922)
employs an industrial setting to emphasize the primeval
instincts of his protagonist Yank, who is spiritually lost
in an industrialized environment. O'Neill focuses rather
on the individual than on the alienated masses;
nonetheless, Ihe_HaiIx_A2e resembles Qas_ll in the search
for a spiritual ”belonging” as well as in the failure of

this quest.

A. Introduction

.1

B. Georg Kaiser

1. The Coral

2. Gas I

3. Gas II

4. Dehumanization and alienation in the "Gas"-

trilogy

C. Eugene O'Neill

1. The Hairy Ape

N

Dynamo

Dehumanization and alienation in Ihe_flairx_A2e

(.0

D. Individual and masses
E. Metaphysical and social alienation

F. O'Neill and German Expressionism

iii

The first great wave of industrialization that reached
Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, France a
decade later and Germany in the 50's of the 19th century
didn't change the structure of European societies deci-
sively: the leading position of the old gentility remained
intact. It was a second surge around 1895 that began to
change the political structures and the established socie-
ties in Central Europe. The importance of new production
methods, of industrial fabrication, and the consequent
birth of a new class of industrial proletarians is
mirrored in the shift of the employment figures in the
agricultural and industrial field: in 1882, 42,72 of the
employed population were working in agriculture and fore-
stry, 39,52 in factories and mines. In 1895, the prOpor-
tions had already shifted: 43,61 were now employed in
modern industries while 35,7Z were still working on farms
(1907: 49,3Z - 28,42). This development was not exclu-
sively due to a shift in the economic basis; there was
also an increase in the population, through which Dussel-
dorf for instance grew from 95.000 inhabitants in 1880 to
358.000 in 1910. By 1900, the German economy had surpassed
its old rival Great Britain in most economic fields and

was second as an economic power only to the U.S.

3

The United States turned, accelerated by American war
exports between 1914 and 1917, from a debtor to an
European creditor. It nevertheless didn't assume Britain's
former role in world economic importance: the protection—
ist Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 didn't encourage an
extension of the position in the world economy, but rather
supported expansion in the home economy. The early decades
of the 20th century witnessed the shift from an
agrarian to an industrial base of the economy. The booming
car industry became the pacemaker in terms of mass
production, mechanization and automation. The assembly
line in Henry Ford's factory in Detroit permitted new
heights of productivity, but also brought monotonous work
to the new class of industrial workers. Labor unrest was
met by the Five-Dollar-Day, the reduction of work to eight
hours a day and a profit sharing policy. Yet an increased
speed of the production line and the expendability of the
individual worker put enormous pressure on the industrial

masses .

The expressionists, painters as well as poets and
dramatists, have always been interested in the social and
economic condition of man. They were concerned with the
bourgeois society, criticized industrial system and finan—
cial power, rejected the worship of science and rationa-
lism, and argued polemically against the institution
church. Man was mostly seen as an isolated creature,
imprisoned by the own "I" and isolated by the environment,

exposed to poverty and disease, and thrown into alien,

unhospitable surroundings. Man's existence was defined
through its deficiencies by the expressionists: the world
is chaos, but not of fertile creation, but one of

confusion and desperation.

Georg Kaiser's drama Gas_1 has been labeled the
"most famous drama of all expressionist literature.” It is
commonly seen as part of a trilogy, the so-called "Gas—
trilogy" --which Kaiser himself never intended-- consis-
ting of Ih£_flgral (1917), Gas_1 (1918) and Gas_ll (1920).
Although the thematic concerns especially of The__QQnal
and the two later plays differ substantially, the family
history of the Billionaire that pervades all three plays
links the trilogy genealogically and provides a unifying

continuity.

Eugene O'Neill’s drama Ihe_flairx_Ape is generally not
seen as part of a trilogy but rather as one of the
expressionist plays that O'Neill produced in the 20's.
Nonetheless, the playwright himself put the play into
this context: "it is really the first part of a trilogy
that will dig at the roots of the sickness of today as I
feel lit," announced O’Neill in a letter ‘to 'George Jean
Nathan in 1929.. Although the trilogy was have} ‘completed
in“ the anticipated sense, Dynamo, another of O’Neill's
expressionist plays, is concerned with the same question

of man's spiritual escape in an industrialized society.

5

Both the American and the German plays take place in an
industrial setting. Gaa_L and Gaa_11 especially reflect
the historic conditions in which they came into existence.
In the first part, the dependence on the all-generating
gas reflects the accelerated military production at the
end of the First World War and sets the dramatic back-
ground for the struggle between a humanist and a techno-
cratic utopia. Gas__II has the war itself for a theme;
written after the defeat of the German Empire, it envis-
ions an automatized industry/war-complex that dissolves

itself in suicidal destruction.

O'Neill's The_flairx_Ape plays on a transatlantic liner.
While the Gas-trilogy extends itself spatially to assume -
-symbolically-- general validity, the American playwright
consciously isolates his protagonist on the ocean only to
confront him later with the antagonistic society in a

series of rapidly changing scenes.

The thesis sets out to investigate the impact of indu-
strialization and its implicit symptoms such as automation
and mechanization upon man and his situation in society as
they are reflected in the above mentioned plays. It will
try to illustrate in how far both authors conceive of
industrial work as a mutilating or dehumanizing factor in
modern society. One thematic concern will therefore be the
individual --not necessarily always the protagonist in the
plays in question-- and its situation as well as the

social and economic position of the industrial masses and

6
their interrelationship. The comparison between these two
authors offers itself not only because they were in the
same period concerned with the same themes and motifs, but
also because critics have already compared some of their
works for their common interest in the dehumanization of
man. Some even identified them to the extent to call

O'Neill "the Georg Kaiser of America.”

Industrialization, technique, mechanization have always
fascinated and abhorred men since they became not only
dominant determinants in their daily working routine, but
also began to influence political systems and the struc-
tures of society.//Karl Marx' theories of the individual's
deformity through the industrialized society are always
the background against which man’s dehumanization is
measured. I will focus on Kaiser's later parts of the
trilogy, on Qas_1 and Gas_LL as well as on O'Neill's The
Hairx_Ape in this comparative study. The_§gnal and Dynamg
are too individualized and rather refer to
"particularities" of the industrial world: to the escape
from one's past through an artificially constructed pre-
sent respectively the worship of a maternalized machine-
symbol, the dynamo. Where these two dramas affect the
discussion of the main topic, they will nevertheless be
considered. Otherwise, the focus will be on the indivi-
dual, the individual within the mass and the mass as an
entity in the context and under the impact of mechaniza-
tion and automated work. Since we are dealing with dramas,

some space shall be given to the discussion of stage

devices such as setting, language and dramatic structure,
again with the emphasis on the comparative aspect and its

bearing on the expressionist character of the plays.

B. Georg Kaiser

LIhechral

The_§gral, written in 1917, is the first part of what has
come to be seen as the "Gas"-trilogy. The play, as critics

have noted, stands "as a drama in its own right, not only
because the conflict it poses is solved, but also because
it differs considerably from the two "Gas"-p1ays in style
(Benson, 137). The protagonist of the play is the capita-
list Billionaire who is confronted by Figuren that are not
personalized, but rather defined by their social function
such as the Secretary, the Doctor and the Chaplain. The
play opens in the heiBe Hers der Erde , where the
Billionaire’s secretary distributes money and advice to
the poor. With the Secretary, the Billionaire has found
his perfect double that can only be distinguished by a
piece of coral that the former wears at his watch-chain.
The Secretary can thus substitute his employer in his
charitable deeds as well as in negotiations with the
factory workers. The creation of this alter ego serves to
protect the Billionaire from the contact with poverty and
despair: his wealth shall protect him from the memory of
his unhappy childhood marred by desaster: after the
father, a poor worker, had abandoned the family, the
mother committed suicide, and the Billionaire's life has

been a constant flight from this memory since then. He

attempts to recapture “the happy childhood he never had

9

through his children, especially through his son.
(Benson, 138)

When the son refuses this scheme, initiated to
charitable work through the confrontation with the poor
stoker on a vessel, and the daughter declares her desire
to become a nurse, the Billionaire's dreams are shattered.
He shoots the Secretary and takes the coral to symboli-
cally inherit his employee's happy childhood and even
rejects possible salvation when he is found guilty of

"murdering his employer,“ only to appropriate the happy

memories that he never had.

In 935.14 written one year after The Coral, the focus
shifts from the fate of the individual, the Billionaire,
to the mass of industrial workers. It is an examination of
the effects of industrial mechanization, but it also poses
the question of an alternative political system, of
socialism, and of an altruistic behavior of the individual

in favor of the alienated and short-sighted masses.

The central figure is now the Billionaire's son, who
has inherited his father's factories which are devoted to
the production of gas as the universal source of power for
the world's industries: it "feeds the industry of the
entire world," (Gas_l, 12) and an uninterrupted production

is thus essential for the global economy. The Billionaire's

10

Son has established a social and economic experiment in an
otherwise capitalist society: although he is the owner of
the factory, he derives the same income as the other
workers since the wages are distributed on a "syndicalist"
basis according to each worker's age. The product of
their labor, the gas, is odorless, invisible, not sei-
zable and thus takes on a mystic quality as the center of

the workmen's efforts.

It also takes centerstage when it explodes and fulfills
the prophecies of the Gentleman in White from the opening
scene. The formula does not work although all calculations
are correct:" We have reached the limit - works out and
does not work out." (Gas_l, 20) The social experiment of
the Billionaire's Son has failed even before the explosion
occurs: the workers labor even harder in order to increase
their share:” Clerk: The work must go on - not a moment’s
pause! We are working for ourselves - not for the pockets
of others. No 'loafing - no strikes. The work goes on

without a pause. There will always be Gas!” (Gaa_1, 12)

After the explosion, the Billionaire's Son undergoes a
Nandlung and proposes not to rebuild the factory but
rather to settle in rural communes. ”For he sees it as his
moral duty to protect them from themselves, and to free
them from the domination of the machine even at the cost
of bringing the industry of the world to a standstill by

withholding its fuel." (Kentworthy: Myth, 53)

11

The workers, inaccessible to his plans, demand the
dismissal of the engineer as a scapegoat and the rebuil-
ding of the factory. The same demand is made by the
Gentlemen in Black, representing government and capitalist
society. In a rethoric showdown, the Billionaire’s Son, as
the advocate of human happiness, confronts the Engineer,
representing infinite growth of human power. The masses
succumb to the Engineer's technocratic vision, and the
Billionaire's Son's attempt to keep the workers from
returning to the machines is shattered when war impends;
the drama concludes with the promise of the Billionaire's

Son's daughter to give birth to the "New Man.

3. Gas_Il

In Gas_ll, Kaiser dehumanizes his figures even more than
in Qas_l; the Blue and Yellow Figures, opposed in a war,

are even stripped of their social functions in the process
of depersonalization, and can only be identified through
their different colors. The dehumanization is further

emphasized through an automative repetitive behavior:

Second Figure in Blue (at red pane). Report from
third fighting-sector-Enemy concentration preparing
(Pane dark.)

First Figure in Blue (switches red plug).

Fifth Figure in Blue (at green pane): Report from
third works-production one lot below contract.(Pane
dark.)

First Figure in Blue (switches green plug).

Third Figure in Blue (at red pane): Report from
second fighting-sector-Enemy concentration preparing.
(Pane dark.)

First Figure in Blue (switches red plug).

(QaLIl, 3)

12

The three acts are constructed in symmetrical fashion:
the Blue Figures of the first act are replaced by the
Yellow figures in Act Two and Three who are virtually
identical in language and behavior. Act Two opens, anti-
thetically to the framing acts with a celebration of the
possibilities of the workers that are briefly liberated
from their working routine when they leave the shops,
awakened to life through only a short interruption in the
machine rhythm. After the Yellow Figures have replaced the
Blue ones, it is the Chief Engineer who incites the
rebellion among the workers. Once more the antithetical
discussion is resumed, the anti-technocratic side taken by
the Billionaire Worker who is the great-grandson of the

Billionaire of The_QQLnl and the new man promised at the

end of Qas_1.

The Chief Engineer, who has invented a poison gas that
could destroy the masters, advocates annihilation of the
enemy, while the Billionaire Worker rejects the tempta-
tion. Claiming that "your kingdom is not of this world,"
he urges the masses to be "martyrs in the works - freeman
in yourselves." (Gas_11, 40) Again the masses adhere to
their instincts, inable to convert themselves to what is
disclaimed by the Chief Engineer as drudgery and defile-
ment (and not so different from their former life). Gas,
that has been the center of the worker's occupation again

dominates the scene:" Gas the magician works for you,"

13

claims the Engineer (Gas_11, 41). This time, as all the
time before, it works against them: the Billionaire Worker
senses his defeat and seizes the opportunity to extinguish

the masses and himself: I am vindicated! I can fulfill!"
(Qas_Il, 43). The attacking Yellow Figures turn the
weapons against themselves, ending the play in self-

extermination.

4. Dehumanization and alienation in the "Gas"-trilogy

Every reader or spectator of a drama set in an
industrial environment will not only direct his attention
to the question of man's situation in a modern industria-
lized society, but also focus on certain key terms.
Alienation and dehumanization have become almost synonyms
for the process of industrialization that set in in the
middle of the 19th century in Germany and has been
described by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The expres-
sionist theatre has enhanced the image of man as a
depersonalized creature who is alienated from the work
process as well as from the product of its labor: it
invented the term Ich-Dissaziation , the dissolution of
the Ego under the influence of a hostile environment. The
expressionist critique can not easily be laid aside as
romanticism or belated Rousseauism: although it often
rather focuses on deficiencies than to offer positive
alternatives, it does not easily dismiss industrialism as

inhumane. Expressionism has rather focused on the shift

14

from man’s domination of nature to a system that dominates
man and submits him rather than to provide new freedom.

(Meixner, 35)

The idea of the alienated depersonalized individual is
so apparent in Gaa_1, that it has been compared to Fritz
Lang's futuristic motion picture MEtropaIis (1927), that
contrasted workers broken and crushed by the monotonous
work, living in an underground world of darkness, with the

decadence and cruelty of the rulers (Gittleman, 28).

The typical expressionist father-son conflict --as in
The__§gnal and in DynamQ-- provides the chance for the
youth to experience the worker's situation and to confront
the father as the representative of the ruling class. Gas
I, as a comment on technology and society at the end of
World War I, was intended by Kaiser "as a strong antiwar,
antimilitary, antiindustrial statement about the abuses of
technology." (Gittleman, 29) It differs in this regard
remarkably from The_flgral, where the focus is set on an

individual's attempt to achieve happiness.

The exposition of Gas_l sums up the whole dilemma of
the workers in the factory of the Billionaire's Son. The
Clerk who, interrogated by the Gentleman in White explains
the working conditions in the factory, is himself an
example for the unreflecting working mentality. He be-
lieves in the utmost productivity as well as in a

continued production of gas without delay: The work must

15

go on - not a moment’s pause! (Gaa_L, 12) The idea of a
discontinuation of the work process, for instance through
a disaster like the explosion of the gas has never come to
his mind. When the Gentleman in White articulates this
possibility, the Clerk stares at him, speechless, and
finally seizes the telephone, almost screaming for the
Engineer. Although the Clerk is not even integrated into
the work process itself, he nevertheless has been subdued
by automation to a point where his thought process seems
to be mechanical:

Billionaire’s Son: Are your fingers itching to
play at the same old game? Can't you be
anything but a Clerk?

Clerk: I have my calling.

B’s Son: Don't you feel the call - for something
more important?

Clerk: I must earn my living.

B's Son : And what if this particular "must"
should be done away with?

Clerk: I am a clerk.(...)

B's Son: Because you have always been a Clerk?

Clerk: It is my calling. (Gas_l, 24/25)

Forced by the Billionaire Son to question his own
identity and living conditions, the Clerk retreats into
the protection of stereotypical answers that are unreflec—
ted and repetitive. His twofold argumentation consists of
a pragmatic view of life, the need to earn a living, and a
rather spiritual reason when he ascribes his occupation to

a calling and thus shifts the responsibility for his

apathetic life to a higher authority.

The explosion sets a caesura for the workers in Gns__l.

It hands them the possibility to awaken from the stupidity

16
of their work. Not only have their thoughts and actions,
as a result of their enslavement to the machine become
almost instinctively mechanical, (Kentworthy: Myth, 52)
they do not even question the continuation of the labor
after the catastrophe. While they send a delegation to the
Billionaire’s Son to demand the rebuilding of the factory
and the return to production, it is the latter who defends
what he thinks to be the workmen's own interests. Ironi-
cally they refuse to accept his attempts to change their
working conditions: later, they will rather side with the

technocratic vision of the Engineer.

In the fourth act, following the discussion between
the Billionaire’s Son and the Gentlemen in Black about the
resumption of work, workmen and women assemble in the
great circular hall. A Girl, a Mother, a Woman succes-
sively enter a platform and talk about their brother,
their son, their husband, how they became alienated from
them, how they became part of a machine or rather how only
the part of their body that was necessary to do the work
remained important while the rest of the body degenerated

into a mere attachment:

He plunged into work. And this work needed only one
hand - one hand that lifted and depressed the lever -
minute after minute — up and down, to the very
second! He never missed a stroke - the lever was
always true — always exact. And he stood in front of
it and served it like a dead man. (Gas_l, 63)

The hand that ”kept making the same movement - day and

night" (Gas_1, 83) is all that remains of the brother to

17

the girl. The estrangement between brother and sister is
brought about by the depersonification through the monoto-
nous working process. It enhances the typification toge-
ther with Kaiser's technique to deny the figures an
individual characterization: the brother as well as the
Engineer and the workman stand for a multitude of indivi-
duals and thus become at the same time depersonalized and
achieve general validity as representatives of classes of

human beings.

A mother deplores her son who was ground to pieces by

the explosion:

I did not know my son anymore - for I had buried
him long ago - the first morning that he went to

the works. - Are two eyes that had a fixed stare
from looking at the sight—tube — are they a son?
(Gas_l, 84)

The plea of the woman who had only their wedding day
with her husband before he left and became a part of the
machine combines the two foregoing lamentations. The past,
her wedding day, was the only bright day in her life,
while present and future are dark:“ We only got a wedding
once - but the iron car rolls on for ever.” (Gn&_l, 68)
And as with the girl's brother, only one part of him is
important, while the rest decays:” If only the foot were
not so closely tied to the man! The man would have a
chance to live - but his foot pins him to the car which
rolls back and rolls forwards - day after day — with the

man fastened by the foot." (Ges_ld 67)

18

The three speeches are mirrored by the answers of three
workmen, who offer themselves to replace the brother to
the girl, the son to the mother, the husband to the woman.
Yet the cry for revenge focuses on the dismissal of the
Engineer rather than on a substantial change of the
working conditions. Although the Billionaire's Son has
already proved that the Engineer's calculations were
correct and the flaw lies "in eternity": "But beyond this
there rule forces which suffer no rule," (Gns_la 28) the
workers insist upon the Engineer as the scapegoat for the
explosion. Kaiser suggests that the workers’ insistence to
resume work depends not only on the necessity to earn a
living, but also on a self-understanding that demands
continued work almost as an instinctive reflex.
(Kentworthy: Myth, 53) Pressed by the Billionaire's Son
for their reasons, the workers retreat --very much like
the Clerk-- into the engrained and inherited living
conditions they are used to:

First Workman (erecting himself): We must work!
Second Workman: And our work is here!
Third Workman: We are workers! (Gee_1, 29/30)

The Billionaire's Son, as the representative of human—
ity and as the intellectually superior individual detects
the instinctual habits of the workmen and exposes the
self-sufficient character of their work. The failure of
his social experiment of profit-sharing, that incited the
workers to work even harder may be one reason for his

emotional response to the workers' demands:

19

Your work - and your wages in the hollow of
your hands. That cheers you up - that spurs you on

even beyond profit - that makes you work for
work’s sake. It is like an outbreak of fever,
and it clouds the senses. Work - work - a

wedge that is driven forward and which bores
because it bores. To what end? I bore because I
bore - I was a borer - I am a borer - and I
remain a borer! (Gee_1, 30)

And so even the workmen who promise to compensate the
women for their losses demand the Engineer's dismissal
rather than to boycott the work, as if they wanted to
soothe their own conscience if they follow their instincts
and resume work. Besides deploring the lost brother or son
and replacing him to the mourning sister, mother or wife,
they ‘are also ready to replace him at his machine in his
monotonous work. Although they know that every man is " a
mere part, interchangeable with other parts," ($33.1, 67)
they are ready to take the place of the hand or the foot
that has been destroyed in the explosion:" I am lying
under the ashes and dust-—until you send me back to the
1ever--in place of your brother~-who was blown Up.—-Here

is his hand--broad and stiff, for gripping a jerking

lever." (Gaa_l, 38)

Again, it is the Billionaire's Son who confronts the
masses in their assembly and tries to expose their self-
deceitz” ..one of you who was not already mutilated before
the 'explosion?...You who were shattered before the walls
fell-~you who were bleeding from many wounds before the

crash came--you who were cripples--with one foot--with one

20
hand—-with two burning eyes in a dead skull--can the

Engineer make this good?" (Easel, 75)

Man's situation in the factory becomes clear when it
is measured against the ideal of the Billionaire's Son.
The goal that the latter suggests, and that he defends
against the technocratic vision of the Engineer is human-
ity, the creation of man. The workmen represent humanity
in the son, in the brother, in the husband, yet they are
wounded in their humanity, crippled by the machine,
subdued by automation, enslaved by monotony. The Billion-
aire's Son asks the workers to ”realise Man" :" Do we not
expect you to climb still higher? The peasant in you has
been overcome--and now the Workman must be overcome--and
Man must be the goal!” (Gas_l, 82) What Kaiser pronounces
is the creation of the expressionist "New Man", a human
being that develops all his capacities to the utmost. It
resembles and anticipates the ideas of the existentialists
and is at the core of Kaiser's dramatic work. The
emergence of the ”New Man" or rather the failure of his

prophesied rise will be discussed later.

What is the environment that this "New Man" shall exist
in? The Billionaire's Son suggests a Rousseau-like back-
to-nature movement that shall provide man with the chance
to find himself, to develop his abilities, to become
"Human." Manfred Durzak has shown that Kaiser's friend

Gustav Landauer probably influenced the dramatist's rural

vision. In his Anfxn£_znm_fiezieliemne (1911), Landauer had

21

presented the idea of a humane socialism that integrated
the principles of anarchy and federation in a society
model described as a "cooperative community;" it envi-
sioned community life without authoritative pressure and
capitalist power. (Durzak: Drama, 156) Interestingly
enough, the same ideas can be found in the industrialized
United States of the 20's and 30’s. Henry Ford, who
announced that "The real future of America is in the
land,“ who promoted clichées such as "God made the country
and man made the town," and who believed that the country
developed man’s character better, represented to many

American farmers the ideal of the anti-corporation, pro-
labor, democratic industrial genius and common man." (Wik,
12) As a reaction to the depression of 1929/30, Ford
promoted decentralization of industry and a back-to-the-
farm movement. Farm and factory were natural allies,
announced Ford, who thus resumed a concept of the French
social utopists Saint-Simon and Fourier from the end of
the 19th century. The village shops nevertheless remained

provincial in scope: in the late 1930's, they employed no

more than 10.000 workers. (Wik, 232)

The Billionaire's Son obviously sees the economic
conditions that dominate the factory work as responsible
for the dehumanization of the workers. If man wants to
realize his own humanity, he has to experience a different

environment.

~.._._.._-_.-....»_,-...‘ -.4 . ..

22

Gee_11 transcends the images that Gae_1 uses in terms of
man's deformation and dehumanization insofar as it inten-
sifies the typification; it nevertheless does not resolve
the pending conflict. As already mentioned, the figures
that are responsible for the running of the factory and
for the approaching war are not even differentiated from
their opponents anymore except for their color. The robot-
like behavior of the Blue Figures from the First Act is
exactly repeated by the Yellow Figures after they have
occupied the factory in the Third act. The explosion in
Gee__1 fulfills two functions: on the one hand, it
illustrates human limitations, especially the limits of
technocracy:" The thing passed beyond the limits of the
human," asserts the Billionaire's Son. (635.14 28) On the
other hand, the explosion provides the dramatic opportu-
nity for the antithetic clash between the technocra-
tic Engineer and the humanist factory owner. Yet as we

have seen, the dilemma is not resolved since no party is

decisively defeated: while the Engineer triumphs for the
moment by appealing to the workers' pride —-”you would be
peasants, slaves to grubbing toil!" (Gee_L, 82)-— the

Billionaire's Son keeps up the vision of the "New Man"
with the announcement of his daughter that she will give

birth to him.

In Ges_llJ the awakening that the Billionaire's Son had
asked for eventually occurs. The collapse of workers at

pressure gauges, at switch-blocks, at levers can not be

23
explained by disease, lack of food or disappointment over
the profits. The Chief Engineer, whose predecessor was the
advocate of machine labor in Gee_l explains the stupi-
fying effect of the routine work:
Movement creates its own law. Excessive repetition of
single action blunts the onspurring will to work. Gas
is no longer a goal-purpose vanished in the
little motion which repeated and repeated
became purposeless, part without whole. Planless the
man at his tool-the work withdrew ever farther out
of sight as the man slipped day by day ever deeper
into sameness and monotony. (Gee_11, 7)

When the advantage over the advancing enemy is lost,
the Blue Figures decide to fight to the end:” Attack and
resistance to the last on either side. Adversary against
adversary to the last drop of blood, and they fall
together." (Gee_ll, 9) Kaiser draws an apocalyptic spec-
tacle of the technocratic society in this scene. The
absence of any ideology —-except for the production of
gas—- or virtues that are defended enhances the impression
of a senseless slaughter that brings annihilation for both
sides. War and industrialism melt together in a technocra-
tic complex of horror. The mobilization of last resources
conjuncts industrial and military vocabulary:

Increase in production of gas without consideration
of man, woman or child. No more shifts--let one shift
overlap the other without release. Every last hand
mobilized from collapse to collapse. No rest, no
respite. Let the last dead hand fall from the lever,
the last dead foot slip of the switch, the last
glazed eye turn sightless from the pressure-gauge--
let this table here show: the last enemy wiped off

the face of the earth, our last fighter dead at his
post. (Qaa_ll, 9)

.-.. _'—'—-s\..-_._‘_ .. ,_ - _

24

It is eventually the machine itself that brings about
rebellion. Kaiser does not provide the workers with the
energy to change their condition: the machine rhythm
doesn't even provide them enough time to reflect upon
their situation. It is rather the machine itself that,
running wild at a different rhythm, breaks down the old
pace and allows the break that is necessary:“ The new
distribution of time has disturbed the old pace and drags
it down to seconds which suffice for remembrance to
remember themselves! Lightning flashes in heads and illu-
minates the path they have been driven along these years
upon years!" (Gas_II, 16) The workers leave their shops,
the work stands still. As a first sign of their awakening
to life, the women pull the kerchiefs off their heads and

begin to smooth their hair.

In Gee_11 even more than in the preceding drama,
Kaiser draws the Chief Engineer as the representative of
an industrial progress that has run amok. The Billion—
aire's Son of Gee_1 has become the Billionaire Worker in
Gee_ll. He is an ordinary worker and preaches a message of
martyrdom, of internalization, of suffering:" Martyrs in
the works--freemen in yourselves. (Silence.) Build up the
kingdom." (Gae_11, 40) This kingdom obtains a spiritual
quality, reminding of Christian symbolism:” Not from
outside can you protect the greatness within you-you
cannot pen it in with colony and colony-your kingdom is

not of this world!" (Gee_11, 40)

25

C. Eugene O'Neill
L'l‘heJlairLAae

The__Heirx_Aee, written in 1922, is the story of the
stoker Yank who works on a transatlantic liner. Broader,
fiercer, more powerful and more sure of himself than the
other stokers, he is their undeclared leader. His view of
life is elaborated in the discussion with Paddy, who
nostalgically longs for the past with its beautiful ships,
”clippers wid tall masts touching the sky," and Long, a
revolutionary socialist who preaches against the capita-
list class. Against these representatives of past nostal—
gia and political utopia, Yank lives in the present and
”belongs.” He is proud to be a part of the ship, to be the

power that moves it.

His self-assurance is destroyed when Mildred Douglas,
daughter of the steel trust owner, enters the stokehole in
an impulse of curiosity and charitable help. Superficial
as this feeling is, she faints when she sees the ape-like
Yank, exclaiming "Oh! the filthy beast." (The_Hairy_Aee,
192) Yank, losing his security and his feeling of
"belonging,” tries to revenge himself by attacking a
snobbish church crowd on Fifth Avenue who refuse to bother
with him and have him thrown in jail. Trying to find
another group to belong to, Yank joins the "Industrial

Workers of the World” but is rejected and thrown out

28

because they suspect him to be a spy. Eventually he walks
to the Zoo, opens a gorilla cage and, offering an embrace
to at least some living creature, is crushed to death:"

And perhaps, the Hairy Ape at last belongs." (The_fleizz
Ass. 232)

2- Dxname

While The_fleiry_Aee still emphasizes an industrial
setting and the implicit consequences such as deformation
and dehumanization for the workers, Diname reveals a
spiritual, almost religious dimension of the individual's
search for integration. It is therefore not as important
for our topic as The_HaiLE_Aae and the two Gas-dramas, but
since it exemplifies man's Ich-Dissoziation in an

extreme case, the contents shall be described briefly.

Reuben Light, son of a minister, rejects the
conservative religiosity of his father because Lucifer,
the ”God of Electricity” is "more modern in his methods"
than his father's God (Dynama, 45). Initiated by the
contact with Light's neighbor Five, a proletarian atheist
and his daughter Ada, Reuben choses electricity as his new
God and becomes fascinated by dynamos, that reveal "the
secret of life, what God is" when one listens to their
song. (Dyname, 128) The father-son conflict forces Reuben
to leave his home. When he comes back, his mother --who
Reuben feels in accordance with O'Neill's psychological

thesis more attached to-- has died, also converted to the

27
God of electricity. Reuben identifies the dynamo with a
female goddess: it appears "with something of a massive
female idol about it, the exciter set on the main
structure like a head with blank, oblong eyes above a

gross, rounded torso." (Dyheme, 125)

Electricity becomes the "Great Mother of Eternal Life"
and the dynamo her divine image on earth to Reuben who, in
a Christian tradition, wants to purify himself to atone
for the death of his mother. Interestingly enough, the
dynamo promises eternal life and thus the same vision as
Christianity. The identification of the the mother with
the dynamo heads to a suicidal climax where Reuben merges
with the dynamo and "is lost in its hum" in an attempt to

reunite himself with the dead mother. (Blackburn, 132)

The play articulates the ideological conflict bet-
ween the generations --that has always been a favorite
expressionist topic--, elements of Freudian sexual psycho-
logy that O'Neill had already employed in Meurhihg_Beeemee
Eleehre and, most important, the worship of the machine in
the course of the individual's search for an object to
identify with, to belong to. The spiritual sphere, that is
already alluded to in Yank's complaint to the man in the
moon in The_Heirx_Aee is more elaborated and occupies the

center of the dramatic development in anene.

28

3. Dehumanization and alienation in The_Heirx_Ane

Although O'Neill's intention in the play differs
substantially from Kaiser's view, the depiction of indus-
trial mechanization and its influence upon man is similar.
Resembling Kaiser furthermore, O'Neill uses an expression-
ist setting and an illustrative language, in this case
dialect, to depict a certain social and economic environ-
ment. The typification or depersonalization is not as far
developed as in the "Gas"-dramas, mostly because O'Neill
pays more attention to the individual's fate and does not

pursue an image of general validity.

The description of the workers and their working
conditions evokes the same impression of dehumanized labor
as in the "Gas"-trilogy:

The ceiling crushes down upon the men's heads.
They cannot stand upright. This accentuates the
natural stooping posture which shoveling coal and the
resultant overdevelopment of back and shoulder mus-

cles have given them. The men themselves should
resemble those pictures in which the appearance of

Neanderthal Man is guessed at. (Ihe_fle;ny_Aee, 186)

The working process itself is mechanical and repeti-
tivez” They bend over, looking neither to right nor left,
handling their shovels as if they were part of their
bodies, with a strange, awkward, swinging rhythm." (The
Hairy_Aee, 178) Yet there is a determining difference in

the working attitude between the workers in Kaiser's gas

29
factory and O'Neill's Yank. The key term in this context
is “belonging". Yank, as the ideological opponent of Paddy
and Long identifies with the machine, with his work that
moves the ship, with speed:
I'm at de bottom, get me! Dere ain't nothin foi-
ther. I'm de end! I'm de start! I start somep'n and
de woild moves! It—dat's me!-de new dat's moide-
rin' de old! I'm de ting in coal dat makes it
boin; I'm steal and oil for de engines; I'm de
ting in noise dat makes yuh hear it; I'm smoke
and express trains and steamers and factory

whistles; I'm de ting in gold that makes money!
And I'm what makes iron into steel!

(W, 177)

There is a further difference between the gas—workers
and the stokers in terms of their humanity. Kaiser’s
workers are subdued by the machine, but they are
nevertheless human beings. The stokers in Ihe_Hairx__Aee
are ape-like creatures who are not aware of their humanity
anymore. For the gas-workers, it is at least possible to
re-awaken to the consciousness of their humanity, while
the stokers are reduced to their instinctual behavior; it
is this primeval condition of man that makes it possible
for Yank to identify with an inanimate thing such as

steel.

Neither Paddy's nostalgia nor Long's class antagonism
can divert Yank from his view. He has left his parents who
were both drunkards at an early age; the past doesn't
exist for him. He rejects Paddy's longing for the beauty
of the past:" He's dead, but I'm livin'(...)Hittin’ de
pipe of de past, dat's what he's doin! He's old and don't

belong no mere." (Ihe_Heiry_ApeJ 176) Working on a

 

30

steamship is a man’s job, according to Yank; it belongs,
and so does the stoker. His language during the work
mirrors his excitement, his involvement, his integration:"
Come on, youse guys! Git into the game! She's gettin'
hungry! Pile some grub in her. Trow it into her belly!" In
attributing a sex to the machine, the work even obtains
erotic overtones just as in Dynene:” We goter feed de
baby!" (The_fleirx_Aee, 190) Speed is also- a central
topic: moving at twenty-five knots per hour, Yank feels
superior to the passengers of the first class, who are

”only baggage" while he runs the engine:" We move, don't

we? Speed, ain't it?" (111mm, 179)

The insistence upon speed, vitality, power and the
predominance of the present compared to the nostalgic
longing for the past reminds the reader obtrusively of the
ideas of the Italian futurists. In their Menifieete of
1909, F.T.Marinetti describes the feeling of the founding
members, their compliance "alone with stokers feeding the
hellish fires of great ships, alone with the black
spectres who grope in the red-hot bellies of locomotives
launched down their crazy courses.." (Marinetti, 19) The
Manifesto itself celebrates aggressive action, the racer's
stride, the punch and the slap and announces the beauty of
speed that has replaced the antique symbols of beauty: a
racing car is now more beautiful than the Victory of
Samothrace. ”Time and Space died yesterday. We already

live in the absolute, because we have created eternal,

31
omnipresent speed". (Marinetti, 22) Under the last point
of the actual manifesto, Marinetti once more magnifies
speed, power and energy:

We will sing of great crowds exalted by work, by
pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the mul-
ticoloured, polyphonic tides of revolution in the
modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly
fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent
electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour
smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by
the crooked lines of their smoke; (Marinetti, 22)

The importance of the Italian futurists for expression-
ism, dadaism and surrealism has often been stated.
(Arnold, 16) Yet while the futurists found the big city as
a topic, technique as an object and integrated them into
their pathos of an asthetic revolution, the expressionists

dealt with the same objects under reversed premises and

criticized industrialism. (Meixner, 34)

Nonetheless, both authors employ the vitalism of the
futurists in their play; the difference lies in the
respective antagonistic opponent for the technocratic
credo . In O’Neill's play, the protagonist himself is the
representative of the worship of vitality and speed, of
energy and break with the past; in the "Gas“—dramas, the
advocacy of these virtues is left to the Engineer. The
basic situation is similar: Yank identifies instinctually
with his labor because it provides him with the security
to "belong." Kaiser, who is mostly concerned with the
industrial masses in the gas-plays, establishes the same

mode of integration: the workmen demand the rebuilding of

‘32
the factory and the resumption of work because it is an
engrained habit. In both cases, negligent of the fact that
especially Yank is an exponent of a life in the present,
the worker's attitude is a consistently conservative one:
they tend to follow their engrained habits respectively
instincts in their behavior and attitude towards change.
The primitive condition of the stokers in The__Hairy__Aee
further enhances the impression of instinctual habits.
Since the workers in Gee_1 and Gae_11 are most of the time
inarticulate, Kaiser provides them with a mouthpiece that
declares the vitalist vision as their goal: the Engineer,
as the humanist's counterpart, evokes the pride and
identification of the factory workers with their labor in

a language that nearly copies the Futurist Manifesto and

anticipates Was:

It is your work which creates these miracles in

steel. Power, infinite power, throbs in the
machines which you set going-Gas!-You give speed
to the trains which go thundering your triumphs
over bridges which you rivet. You launch
leviathans upon the seas, and you divide the
seas into tracks which Your compasses decree!
(GasJ, 79)

The Engineer thus allows the workers the self-identifi—
cation as the moving power of the world:" Here you are
rulers-~in these works where the motive power of the whole
world is born-~you create Gas! There is your rule, your
mastery--the empire you have established--shift upon

shift-—day and night--full of feverish work!" (Gae_l, 81)

It is rather a rhetorical than an ideological victory

that the Engineer achieves. By appealing to their emotions

 

33

and their pride, he can persuade the workers to reject the
idea to become peasants again, but he declines to argue
with the Billionaire's Son on a non-emotional basis. He
rather displays cynicism when he asks the workers to dare
new devastationz“ Come out of the hall!!--back to the
works!--From Explosion to Explosion!!--Gas!! (Gas_I, 84)
He foreshadows the technocratic fanaticism of the Chief
Engineer in Gee_11 who rather destroys the enemy than to

attempt cooperation.

When Yank loses his sense of "belonging," it is not
only through the intervention of someone who is in his
view ”only baggage," but who doesn't "belong” in her own
estimation. Mildred complains in the discussion with her
aunt:" I would like to be sincere, to touch life some-
where. But I'm afraid I have neither the vitality nor the
integrity...I'm a waste product in the Bessemer product
like the millions. Or rather, I inherit the acquired trait
of the by-product, wealth, but none of the energy, none of
the strength of the steel that made it." (The_Heiry_ApeJ
182/83) It is therefore surprising that the incident in
the stokehole can change Yank's self-perception so funda—
mentally. The mechanical quality of the stoker's work, the
obedience to the engineer's whistle and the ape-like
appearance of the stokers seem to contradict Yank's self-
assured feeling of superiority; (Egri, 85/88) they rather
seem to confirm Paddy's view of a slave-like existence

compared to the free sailors of the past.

34

It is interesting to see this shift from the Gas-
trilogy to O'Neill's drama: it is not the industrial
proletarian who is alienated from his work and from
himself, but the member of the rich bourgeoisie . While
Kaiser depicts the worker as directed by engrained
instincts and the factory owner as the intellectually
superior humanist, who wants to think for the workers and
improve their living conditions, the Mildred of The_Heiry
Age is --as a member of the ruling class-- inferior to the
instinctual habits of the proletarian. Degenerated and
aimless, she has no contact to humanity. It should not be
forgotten that although the expressionists focused on the
industrial society, they were themselves a marginal group
of the bourgeoisie who saw themselves as alienated; the
Ich-Dissoziatian is by no means only an. attribute that
the expressionists used to characterize the industrial

masses. (Meixner, 38)

Yank loses his inner balance, his sense of “belonging”
in the encounter with Mildred (however inconclusive this
scene may appear); he has seen himself as a part of the
machine, of industrialized society so far, an image that
is now inacessible for him. The drama describes, in the
dramatic form of the expressionist Stationendrama, how
Yank tries to re-integrate his image of himself in the
contact with different groups of society: with the high
society, with the "Industrial Workers of the World," with

the ape in the Zoo. O'Neill presents a line of degenera-

 

35

tion between two extremes: between the ”gaudy marionettes"
on Fifth Avenue, representing modern society, and the
gorilla in the cage, illustrating primeval conditions of
mother nature. The attempt to associate himself with
either of these groups fails and leads to Yank's death. In
an interview with the Nen_Xerk_Hereld_Irihuhe of March
16, 1924, O'Neill explained:

The_fleirx_Aee was propaganda in the sense that it
was a symbol of man, who has lost his old harmony

with nature, the harmony which he used to have as
an animal and has not yet acquired in a spiritual
way. Thus, not being able to find it on earth nor

in heaven, he's in the middle, trying to make
peace, taking 'the woist punches from bot' of
'em'...Yank can't go forward, and so he tries to go
back. This is what his shaking hands with the
gorilla meant. But he can't go back to
’belonging' either. (Cargill, 111)

O'Neill employs a scenic image at the opening of the
play to enhance this medial position between animality and
humanity: the ape-like appearance, brought forth through
the stooping posture and the hairy chest, is juxtaposed by
Yank's attempt to think amidst all the turmoil of the
first act. Although he grins cynically when he comments on
his attempt, the pose of Rodin's "Thinker" will become
typically for him throughout the play once he has begun to

question his own position:' I ain’t in oith and I ain't in

heaven, get me? I'm in de middle tryin' to separate

'em. . (W, 231)

The ape-image runs through the play like a leitmotif.
Mildred calls Yank a "filthy beast," inciting his thought

process: Sure, 't was as if she'd seen a great hairy ape

 

38

escaped from the Zoo!" (The_fieiry_Aee, 197) Walking along

Fifth Avenue, Yank sees a monkey fur in a show window. In
the prison, a voice reads an article from a newspaper that
blames the Wobblies that they would make a shambles out of
civilization in which man, God's masterpiece, "would soon
degenerate back to the ape!" (The_Heiry_Aee, 217) The
"Industrial Workers of the World" themselves call Yank a
"brainless ape” until he finally, visiting the gorilla in
the Zoo, seems to accept this image of himself:" Ain't we

both members of de same club-de Hairy Apes?" (Ihe_fleirx
Ape, 229)

The final scene stages the integration with the ape-
vimage that Yank has tried to reject for so long. He sees
himself, once he loses his sense of "belonging," as
somewhere between heaven and earth: the man in the moon,
Yank's spiritual sphere, is as far away as the world of
steel, represented by Mildred. Even more important, they
are both unresponsive: Yank never gets an answer or a
chance to integrate himself since neither the marionettes
on Fifth Avenue nor the man in the moon answers. The sense
of "belonging" is the central motif in the play. Doris V.
Falk goes as far as to say that for O'Neill "the motion
and the spirit that impels all thinking things is the
search for identity." (Falk, 33) To escape the responsi-
bility for one's own destiny is impossible because man can
only belong to himself. Since no spiritual order exists,

man has to create his own values and moral concept, he has

7 m. _‘ -:_'_- L‘ .- a

37
to find his own meaning of life. O'Neill has expressed his
emphasis in a letter to George Jean Nathan:
[The play] is a symbolical and factual biography
of what is happening in a large section of the
American (and not only American) soul right
now. It is really the first play of a trilogy
that will dig at the roots of the sickness of
today as I feel it - the death of the old God
and failure of science and materialism to give
any saticfactory new one for the surviving
primitive religious instinct to find a meaning
for life in, and to comfort its fear of death
with. (Cargill, 115)
O'Neill's own comment makes clear that The_Heirx_Aee is
no criticism of the industrialized society respectively
the effects that modern technique brought for man's
identification with his labor. It is rather a critique of
the loss of a spiritual refuge in this society. Therefore
the” industrial setting of the play rather‘ establishes a
certain milieu than it would denounce the dehumanizing
effect of the mechanized work. To be sure, the workers in
The_Hairx_Aee are apish brutes, rather animals than human
beings. But O'Neill's criticism focuses on their spiritual
loneliness, not on the working conditions. The fact that
the stokehole only serves as a stage setting for the first

four of eight scenes emphasizes this fact; in Kaiser's

drama, the entire action takes place within the factory.

D. Individual and masses

The discussion of the individual and the masses as
well as their interrelationship in a drama that plays in

an industrial setting, has protagonists belonging to a

38

certain class and class antagonism as a theme, is as
necessary as complex. In the observation of the individual
and his affinities to the mass, the audience learns about
man's fundamental situation, his longings, his
sociability. The masses themselves imply a complexity of
their own: in their relationship to an individual, often a
Fahrer , they can be seen as an individual itself, as a
homogeneous entity, or as a complex, heterogeneous
accumulation of individuals. Individual and mass
infiltrate each other, influence each other, try to direct

each other.

Expressionism has not been the ”inventor" of the
masses. It was rather naturalism that tried to reflect on
amassement as a consequence of the 19th century industrial
revolution and its succinct problems. Many expressionists,
especially poets didn't consider the emergence of the
proletarian masses as a literary topic at all. (Hohendahl,
123) Those who tried to cope with it mostly refused the
naturalists' theory of man's genetic and biological deter-
mination and even modified the formers' concept of an
accumulation of individuals as mass: they rather tried to
see mass as an autonomous being with its own character
traits and wanted to show that mass was more than the sum
of its elements. (Hohendahl, 124) The individual, con-
fronted by the mass has often only two alternatives: to
become a part of it or to confront it and be destroyed by

it.

 

39

"Mass” in an industrial context denotes the proletar-
ians, who cannot produce and sell their own products but
rather offer their labor energy to their employer, the
capitalist who, according to Marx, owns the necessary
capital and machines to initiate the working process. The
worker is not self-, but other-directed: he becomes
alienated from the work process and the product of his
labor, that does not belong to him. The industrial
production of the 19th century is based on the division of
labor: the individual worker becomes a part in a work
process that he can't control anymore, he becomes a cog in
the machine, a part of the mass. Being in a fixed
relationship to their employer, the workers don't develop
a relationship to their co—workers; alienated from the
product of their labor, they;become alienated from them-

selves. (Bussmann, 30/31)

The economically based amassement infiltrates the
individual insofar as it tends to dominate his social and
private sphere; it influences his will, his feeling of
responsibility, his activity. (Bussmann, 32) The indivi-
dual who is a part of the mass —-as opposed to the
individual as Fuhrer -- loses his personality, becomes an
anonymous part that acts collectively. His characteristic
traits are normally described as negative designations, as
losses compared to his former status. The mass is gener-
ally described as less intelligent than the FUhrer ,

dominated by subconscious instincts, lacking personality

 

40
and susceptible to irrationality, suggestion and emotion-

ality. (Hohendahl, 125)

Apart from the social implications of the amassement
and the expressionists' interest for its consequences, the
industrial milieu and especially the class antagonism
offers a wide array of dramatic and stage-technical
possibilities. Both the American and the German dramatist
employ antithetic dialogues between the individual, the
FUhFEF, and the industrial masses. The extent to which
one of the antagonists occupies the discussion or triumphs
over his opponent illustrates the respective author's
emphasis on either the situation of the individual and his
quest for self-identity, or the alienation of the indus-
trial masses with the focus on social circumstances. These
two aspects are of course not totally discernible: espe-
cially if the mass is not seen as an entity, but rather as
a number of individuals, the alienation of the single
proletarian touches the question of his integration and

identity.

Both authors, as critics have mentioned, have been
influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The
interpretation of the antique drama as well as the "social
philosophy" of the German philosopher is present in both
dramas. There are obvious congruities as well as differen-
ces between Nietzsche's concept of the "superman“ and

Kaiser's "New Man." Apart from that, Nietzsche understood

tragedy, as he explained in W, as an

41

"amalgamation of 'barbarous' Dionysianism and Apollonian-
ism," (LaBelle, 436) that was reflected on stage in the
dialogue between chorus and individual. Although the
differentiation does not exactly occur in the expression-
ist drama, both plays have impressive chorus-scenes: in
The_Hairx_Aee, the Dionysian celebration among the wor—
kers in the stokehole sets the background for the
antagonistic clash between Yank's vitalism and Long's
socialist vision respectively Paddy's nostalgia. In the
"Gasf-dramas, the confrontation takes place on a stage in
the factory: the opponents, Billionaire's Son and Engineer
try to persuade the workers of their technocratic ideal
respectively the humanist utopia; the masses repeat the
key terms of the discussion chorus-like. A comparison of
the plays shows that both authors employ the same mode of
automatic repetition that displays the automation of their
working and thinking habits as well as the tendency of the
mass to act collectively and to submit to irrationality
and suggestive persuasion:

Yank [Resentfully] Aw say, youse guys. Lemme alone.

Can't youse see I'm trying to tink?

All [Repeating the word after him as one with cynical

mockery] Think! [The word has a brazen, metallic

quality as if their throats were phonographic horns.
It is followed by a chorus of hard, barking laughter.

(Maw, 194)

Billionaire Worker: (...) Roll the dome clear!

(Silence.)
Voices upon Voices: Roll the dome clear!

All the Voices Together: Roll the dome clear!
Billionaire Worker: Stretch the wire that shall flash
your message around the earth's circle!
Voices: Stretch the wire!
Voices upon Voices: Stretch the wire!
All the Voices Together: Stretch the wire!
(GALIL 25)

42

Apart from the importance for the dramatic dialogue of
the play, the chorus also has a unique quality in terms of
a scenic impression upon the audience. In the Second
Act of Gee_1, following the explosion, three workmen come
to see the Billionaire's Son. They come as representatives
of all workers and demand the rebuilding of the factory
and the resumption of work. In this scene, the mass
evolves as a homogeneous entity. Not only do all workers
want to resume work although the explosion has killed many
of them, but the three delegates also act in perfect
oneness:

First Workman: The Engineer must go!

Second Workman: He must go today!
Third Workman: His going must be announced at once!

(GasJL, 27)

Yet there are more individualized traits in the mass.
The Fourth Act, in which different workers appear on the
platform to tell the mass of their mutilations, of the
alienation between them and their brothers, sons or
husbands has already been described. Not only are some of
the workers here personalized to a certain extent, but
they also show an awareness of their situation. But they
nevertheless still figure as an entity and the different
speakers rather proclaim the feelings and thoughts that
dominate the mass at this moment: they act as mouthpieces
of the collective. (Hohendahl, 128)‘ The different orators
do not divide the mass into a differentiated social

structure, but rather provide it with the possibility of

 

43

an interior monologue. (Hohendahl, 128) This is obvious
in the solidarity that the speakers experience from their
fellow workmen: men offer themselves as brother to the
girl, as son to the mother and the workers from the

circumvening factories also declare their solidarity.

The scene also emphasizes the workers' susceptibi-
lity to emotions while their intellectual capacity seems
to be rather limited, a fact that foreshadows the eventual
triumph of the Engineer's rethoric persuasion. As already
mentioned, the workers' delegates do not understand --or
want to understand—- the Billionaire's Son's logic when he
attempts to explain to them the futility of a dismissal of
the Engineer. Limited in their intellectual scope because
they are used to concentrate on the lever, the sight-tube,
the switch-block, the workers do not understand the
complicated vision and explanations of the factory owner;
the dismissal of the scapegoat is the easiest way to
relieve themselves of the memory of the dead and of the
awareness of the next dooming catastrophe in the rebuilt

factory. (Bussmann, 81)

The argument between the Billionaire's Son and the
Engineer in the Fourth Act of Gee__1 illustrates the
behavior and the intellectual capacities of the mass
because the workers are the object that the opponents try
to persuade to accept their vision: the workers response
to the orators defines their social and intellectual

position. The Billionaire's Son tries to awaken the

 

 

 

44

awareness of their own humanity in the workers. "Be human"
is his demand to the masses, anticipating the existential
philosophy of Karl Jaspers in the urge to develop all
human capacities within oneself. Interestingly enough, the
Billionaire's Son himself designates the workers as a
homogeneous entityz" A thousand ties bind you to all about
you. Now you are parts--each is a perfect unit in the
great Commonwealth. The whole is like a body--a great
living body." (Gee_1, 76) The difference to the well-
known image of man as a cog in the machine is that in this
case the imaginary body describes humanity and not the
working process; it is therefore according to the Billion-
aire's Son's vision man's longing to be a part of this
greater body. Nonetheless, the parts are even here not
individualized but remain a part of a greater unit. The
fact that the Billionaire's Son has to remind the workers
of their humanity tells the story of their labor condi-
tions and the implicit dehumanizing effect. He offers the
vision of a rural commune, in which a new beginning can be
made:

All that you demand--I will grant--To-morrow
you shall be free human beings--in all their
fulness and unity! Pastures broad and green
shall be your new domains. The settlement
shall cover the ashes and the wreckage which
now cover the land. You are dismissed from
bondage and from profit-making. You are settlers
--with only simple needs and with the highest
rewards-~you are men--Men! (Gee_1, 77/78)

The announcement of the new freedom and the urge to

leave the hall, to come into the open, is greeted by

45

silence. The Engineer climbs the platform. He appeals
to the emotions of the mass. He awakens the pride of the
workers by dismissing the "New Man" of the Billionaire's
Son as a peasant and evokes a negative association with
the rural dream of his opponent. Offering his own dismis—
sal to re—integrate the crowd into the technocratic
utopia, he supports the self-identification of the prole-

tarian with his labor:' It is your work which creates
these miracles in steel!" (Qas_1, 79) The scenic image
supports the impression of the Engineer's rhetoric: while
he addresses the mass from the platform, the Billionaire's
Son, who has descended from the stage answers from below.
The irrationality of the workers in this scene is abso-
lute. Not only do they accept the Engineer whose dismissal
they had demanded only hours ago as their leader; they
also respond to the incitement for a self-identification
with their work although they had announced their

awareness of the mutilating effect of the machine and the

dehumanizing effect of the work in the preceding act.

The mass submits to the vision of the Enginer because
his ideas are based on well-known conditions; while the
ideas of the Billionaire's Son are new and unknown, the
Engineer appeals to restorative and conservative behavior
among the workers who are not open to innovations. In
addition, his thoughts are simple and practical as well as
easy to understand while the utopia of his opponent is

abstract and complicated. (Bussmann, 83)

48

In Ihe_Heirx_Aee, the mass is not functionalized to the
same extent as in Gee_l or in Gea_11_. In the opening
scene, the workers are shown in accordance with
Nietzsche's concept of the Dionysian chorus: they are
shouting, cursing, laughing, singing and enjoying them-
selves without any reflection upon their working condi-
tions. They act as homogeneously as the workers in the
"Gas"-trilogy only that they are even less aware of the
dehumanizing conditions of their work. They act instinc-
tively, do their mechanized work and swear against the
Engineer rather as an instinctual resentment against
drudgery than in conscious revolt. Their animal-like
behavior is enhanced in their mocking irony towards human
behavior and emotions; chorus-like, they repeat the words

"Think" and "Love" with cynical mockery.

O'Neill uses two human abilities that essentially
distinguish a human being from an animal: his reason and
the ability to love. At the beginning of the play, Yank is
respected for his superior strength because he is
Q 1 .1
sure of himself than the rest." (IhQ_Hain¥_AE§, 186) He
is nevertheless! one of them and not a Fahrer in the
sense of the intellectually superior Billionaire's Son: as
their “most highly developed individual," he represents
their instinct in a more "sophisticated” way yet he cannot

take responsibility for them. His position is insofar

parallel to the one of the Engineer in Ges__l_ as he

47
represents continuity of the work process, pride in one's
own labor, identification with the machine. Both Yank and
the Engineer try to destroy what they feel to be an
obstacle to their feeling in harmony with technique: Yank
wants to blow up the steel trust by joining the I.W.W.,
and the Chief Engineer of Gae_11 invents the poison gas to
destroy the Figures in Yellow. Yet there is a basic
difference: the Engineer respectively Chief Engineer is
sure of his position whereas Yank struggles to find his
place in the environment he was born into, once this

feeling of "belonging" is destroyed.

When Paddy mocks Yank for having fallen in love, this
is not an entirely false statement. Although Yank is
rather puzzled and bewildered by Mildred's appearance .in
Scene Four, love will be one of the options for him when
he gropes for a new direction in life. Desperate as he is,
Yank shifts between destruction of the enemy by attacking
the Gentlemen on Fifth Avenue or by joining the I.W.W. and
love: the concluding scene in the Zoo, anticipating Edward
Albee's ZQQ_SLan is a passionate attempt to find the self
through the affection of any other creature. The fact that
it is an animal that Yank addresses himself to only
emphasizes the desperation and his isolation. As he can't
seem to belong to either the spiritual or the animalistic
sphere, he has to try different escapes from this soli-

tude.

48

Both Paddy and Long are not members of the group of
stokers who acts in solidarity like the "Gas"-workers.
Whereas the girl, the mother and the woman are exponents
of feelings that all the workers share, Paddy and Long
represent alternatives to the existing conditions just as

the Billionaire's Son and the Billionaire Worker do. Long,

"1 non. 9.."

-5.

the socialist, tries to abandon class consciousness and

’4”

blames the fdamned Capitalist 81855?.£°?.fb9_w9fkerfs,l§fe
in hell. (The_Heiny_Aee, 171) He embodies some of the
ideas that the Billionaire's Son may have considered when
he introduced the concept of profit-sharing in the fac-
tory. It should nevertheless be kept in mind that Gustav
Landauer, who most probably provided his friend Kaiser
with his socialist-utopian ideas, rejected Marxism that
according to Landauer didn't abolish the organization
strategies of capitalism, but rather adopted them and only
exchanged the power positions. (Durzak: Drama, 157) Con-
sequently the socialist experiment in Gee_1 runs aground:
the workers labor even harder to increase their share of
the profit and thus increase automation and dehumaniza-

tion.

While Long represents the future, the classless socia-
list society, Paddy longs for the romantic freedom of the
past. His vision may come closest to the one of the
Billionaire's Son. He emphasizes freedom of man and the
soothing influence of nature upon man. A comparison

between the two shows that their ideas are congruent

49

except for the existentialist impetus of the former:

Paddy: For the day that was, was enough, for we
was free men-and I'm thinking 'tis only slaves do be
giving heed to the day that's gone or the day to
come ...And there was the days, too. A warm sun on
the clean decks. Sun warming the blood of you, and
wind over the miles of shiny green ocean like

strong drink to your lungs. (The_Hairy_Aee, 174)

Billionaire's Son: The peasant in you has been

overcome-- and now the Workman in you must be

overcome--and Man must be (the goal!

(Gas I, 82) In you the heavens reflect themselves

and the surface of the Earth is covered with the

garment of many- coloured grasses--as with a flood.

The Day's work is great and full of gladness...
(63.5.1. 77)

A further difference lies within the very position of
the two speakers within the play. The Billionaire's Son is
an alternative to the Engineer's mechanized world; the
mass is audience to an antithetical dispute that is
dissolved in the workers' decision to follow the Engineer.
In Ihe__fleiry_Aee, Paddy’s restorative nostalgia and
i Long's socialist utopia are readily dismissed by Yank as
long as he still feels that he belongs to the machine. It
is only later when he has lost his former security that
Yank tests these alternatives. The attempt to join the
I.W.W. resumes Long's anti-capitalist tirades. The bro-
therly embrace with the gorilla is not only an escape back
to nature as Paddy proclaims it, but it is also a step
back into the past, down the ladder of human evolution

into primeval times.

 

50

Interestingly enough, Long and Paddy never address
themselves to the workers in Ihe_Heiry__Aee. While the
Engineer and the Billionaire's Son in Gee I try to
persuade the masses to accept their vision, the proletar-
ians in O'Neill's drama are never the center of the
dramatic development. It is only Yank who defends his
identity against socialism and nostalgia. The focus is
obviously rather on the individual than on the industrial
masses in Ihe_Heiny_Aee. O'Neill emphasizes this concern
through two basic intellectual conditions: on the one
hand, Yank is not sophisticated enough to function as a
real leader in an intellectual argument: he can represent
his machine-identity, but he is not able to argue ideolo—
gically. On the other hand are the masses even more
stupefied than the ”Gas”-workers: their complacency dimin-
ishes their importance for the drama and further enhances

Yank's position.
E. Metaphysical and social alienation

Besides the above mentioned different mental condi-
tions, there is also a difference in the dramatic struc-
ture of the plays in hand that support a different
emphasis. In Kaiser's Gee_1, the "attack," that poses the
major dramatic question:“ Does technology reach beyond
human limits?" comes with the explosion of the gas. The
rising action leads to the crisis that peaks with the
ideological dispute between the Billionaire's Son and the

Engineer. The resolution is marked by the workers' deci-

 

51

sion to follow the Engineer, yet the announcement of the
daughter of the Billionaire's Son that she will give birth
to the "New Man" keeps the outcome open and foreshadows

Gas—II.

“A, In The_Heiry_Aee, O’Neill poses the central dramatic
'Kquestionz" Where does man belong to?" The "attack" comes
with Mildred's descent into the stokehole and the confron-
tation with Yank; the action henceforth rises to the
tragic climax in the gorilla cage, that embodies a final
solution. The discussion of technocracy versus humanity
thus occurs before the major dramatic question is posed.
Yank's dismissal of Paddy's and Long's ideals, and the
apathy of the workers decides the fate of the masses

before the drama shifts to its dramatic concern for the

individual, for Yank and his ”belonging." The industrial
context thus loses importance: the socialist respectively
nostalgic ideals rather serve to emphasize --in the

juxtaposition--Yank's integration and ”belonging" in the

beginning.

In Kaiser's drama, the antithetical discussion that is

.‘.--.—--u

at the center of Gee_1 as well as Gas__II poses the
question of the fate of the industrial masses: although
the existentialist "humanization" of the individual has
some bearing on the behavior of the mass, the focus is
nevertheless on the mass as a social entity. The impres-
sion that both authors conceive of different questions and

problems in the context of industrialization and dehumani-

 

52

zation is nevertheless not only founded in the observation

of a different dramatic structure.

As already shown above, the situation of the proletar-
ian gas workers resembles the theories that Marx brought
forth concerning the alienation from the product of one's
work and from oneself. The girl, the mother and the woman
tell how their brother, their son, their husband became
mutilated, became alienated from them, became a part of

the machine:' Is not every man a mere part, interchange-
able with other parts-—and the works go on?" (683.1, 67)
If we consider the whole trilogy, we can distinguish a
development from The_Qenel to Gee_11. In The_flenel, social
misery of the masses remains in the background: the
opening scene where the secretary distributes charity to
the poor only serves to show how the Billionaire has
replaced himself with a perfect double in order to escape
from social misery, from the memory of his unhappy
childhood. The individual problem of the Billionaire, his
attempt to rebuild a happy childhood through his secretary
and his son, and the eventual murder of the secretary
occupy the center of the play. (Steffens, 116) The drama
thus starts in a ”purposefully sociological air" only to

retreat into the problemacy of the individual.

(Kentworthy: Ambiguity, 108)

The__Qerel thus seems to resemble The_Hairy__Aee, more
than the other "Gas"-dramas. We are nevertheless not to

forget that while Yank tries to find his identity and

53

attempts to re—integrate himself into some place in
society, the Billionaire artificially creates his own
world around himself: it is rather escapism than true

search for self-identification that pervades Ihe_§enal.

Gee__1 and Gee_ll shift the focus to the fate of the
industrial masses. Nonetheless there are still individuals
dominating the stage; but these individuals try to
influence the mass and direct them towards their vision.
Even when it comes to the idea of the renewal of man, of
the creation of the "New Man" and the focus shifts to the
individual, it still assumes general validity: the Bil-
lionaire Worker as the "New Man" wants to lead the masses
towards the fulfillment of the ideal of humanity and is
insofar only a representative of an utopia that encompas-

ses all human beings.

am Although O'Neill criticized capitalism for "its exploi-
tationof labor, politics and religion for their support
of the status quo," (Lewis, 38) he was not essentially
concerned with the fate of the industrial workers. Only
some critics, such as Virginia Floyd in her new assessment
of O'Neill's plays, have mixed up engaged criticism of

capitalism and an industrial setting that emphasizes a

primeval, instinctual habit of man (just as Tennessee
Williams could use the jungle in The_Night_ef_the__lgnana
(1981) for a similar purpose). Floyd asserted that

O'Neill, like Strindberg and the Central European expres-

sionists, depicted man as "exploited and forced to cope

 

54

with social inequities." (Floyd, 238)

In an interview in 1924, O'Neill made clear that Yank
ratherfi struggles to assert himelf as a human being: The
only point involved in that play was did I or didn' t I
realize the stoker 'Yank'...did I convey, make visual, his

struggle to affirm himself to 'belgng,f_to make his 'I'

- .. . .'. .l ‘ “.13 ‘ ~ 1" > d "- ._ ,v. ‘ ' “ '- ._ -. ix_, _ ._
”A“ “‘7‘” «,4 -J a “A _ . ‘_* 2., ,2 ‘3 ,s‘ ., .- - ' ‘ 'I.JI .' ~ t, sl, a... .5" ”3., . " 4 1‘. _
NM ':

mean something?" (Lewis, 39) This struggle obviously goes
beyond 'social inequities' and labor conditions. Whereas
Kaiser wanted to create the "New Man" as the basis for a

new society, O' Neill focuses on the individual who .Wgflts

'~14--.-—....

_"

to belong in a society that‘doesn' t offer spiritual help;
who “wants, to fulfill man 's _most urgent need: to“ have
contact with another creature. The workers in Gee_L are

not isolated; they are members of a community. But Yank is

..A.....
"'-' ‘-'r..¢--

alone in his world: rejected by the world of steel that he
thought he belonged to, mocked by his fellow workers,
patronized by the high society, misunderstood by the
socialist workers, ”misunderstood also by the animal ,in
‘the 200,9 and misunderstanding himself. To be sure, the
dehumanizing effect of the machine in The_Heirx_Aee is not
different from the one in Gee_l. But Yank can nonetheless
identify with steel as long as nothing infiltrates into
this own world. Once he is attacked in this integrity, he
has to learn that one can not identify with an inanimate
thing such as steel. (Das, 59) So it comes down to the
question what modern society has to offer as a substitute

for the spiritual security that it has destroyed. This is

1
1

once more O'Neill’s concern, "the death of the old God and
failure of science and materialism to give any satisfac-
tory new one for the. surviving primitive religious

instincts to find a meaning for life in.." (Cargill. 115)

The emphasis on the spiritual aspect that is hinted at
in Yank's appeal to the man in the moon is further
enhanced in Dynamo. Here, the machine has replaced the
spirituality that it has destroyed with itself: the
machine itself becomes the new God, made visual in the
idol-like structure of the dynamo. Dynamo nevertheless
doesn’t offer a conclusive utopia since Reuben perishes
when he wants to identify with the machine to the very
extreme: the machine can't replace the human affection
that he used to get from his mother whom he idolizes in
the image of the machine. The mixture of spiritual search
and Freudian motives of sexual psychology does not
resolve any problem; the worship of the machine rather
appears comparable to the technocratic fanaticism of the

Chief Engineer in Qas_11.

Kaiser's ”New Man” has been described as one who
dismisses envy, egotism, greed, as one who takes the bible
quote "love thy neighbor” seriously, as an ideal Chris-
tian. (Arnold, 120) The philosophy of the Billionaire
Worker in Qas_ll certainly includes various Christian
elements such as the martyrdom and the renunciation of
self-defense. Yet even the protagonist's assessment "your

kingdom is not of this world" does not necessarily produce

56
a Christian vision; it rather designates a possible
spiritual refuge for the workers and is thus closer to The
Hairx__Ape than Gas_1 that deals entirely with the social
and economic conditions of the workers. Yet the Billion-
aire Worker fails, the poSSible spiritual escape is soon

dismissed' and the Engineer triumphs.

Taking Kaiser's sympathy for the Billionaire's Son and
the Billionaire Worker, who embodies his "New Man" for
granted, it becomes obvious that the dramas rather deplore
the dehumanizing effect of industrialization than they
would offer an actual alternative with the "New Man." The
"extension" that runs through the "Gas"-trilogy illus-
trates how the dominance of industrialization --and the
negative aspects associated with it-- increases regardless
of the small spiritual hope that the Billionaire Worker
announces. Ihe_flgral deals with an individual within the
sphere of the factory, Gas_l focuses on the mass of the
proletarian workers, and Gas_ll eventually illustrates the
human catastrophe that is brought about through the
ultimate belief in technology. It is therefore the techno—
logical development that --just as in Ihe__Hainx__Ape—-

replaces spiritual and humanist ideals.

F. O'Neill and German Expressionism

The relationship between O'Neill and German Expresionism,
especially Georg Kaiser is at the first glimpse confusing.

On the one hand, critics have called O'Neill "the Georg

57
Kaiser of America" and described The__Heirx__Aee as
"unthinkable without Kaiser and Toller." (Reger, 30/31)
Many critics have also commented on the obvious similari-
ties between Kaiser's Eren_hern_tg_hidnighh and O’Neill's
The_Emnergr_Jenes. 0n the other hand, O'Neill was quoted

as saying that he had never had a high opinion of the
German play and that he hadn’t known Kaiser's work prior
to ’the New York production of Erem_hern_te__hidnight in
1922 which he "attended after he had already completed The
Emsercr_lgnes and The_Heirx__Aee." (Frenz: Kaiser, 172)
O'Neill's Nobel Prize address, in which he emphasized his
indebtedness to Strindberg reinforced the denial of a

strong influence of the German expressionist theatre.

Mardi Valgamae has shown that O'Neill’s acquaintance
with the German theatre dates back to a course in
playwriting with George Pierce Baker at Harvard. O'Neill
began at this time to learn German in order to read
Nietzsche and Wedekind in the original and admitted in a
letter to George Jean Nathan in 1920 that he was "familiar
enough with the best modern drama of all countries,“ among

them obviously German expressionism. (Valgamae, 28/29)

Horst Frenz, in his Engene_Q;fleill, has compared The
Emnsrnr_lgnes.and Ernm_nnrn_ta_nidnizht:
Thematically, both plays deal with the
externalization of internal emotional states, the
radical, subjective transformation of objective

reality as a result of an extreme psychological
crisis. The central figure in each play is driven by
an overwhelming emotional force, which, growing
increasingly stronger, finally shatters the
conscious, rational control of the intellect in the
apprehension of reality. (Frenz: O'Neill, 33)

58

Structurally, the jungle scene in O’Neill’s drama and

the snow scene in Ernm_norn_tc__nidniiht resemble each

other; in addition, the former play, like Kaiser's drama -
-and like Ges_1 and Ges_TL-- adheres to the form of the

Stationendrama , initiated by Strindberg and later adop-

ted by the German expressionists. (Frenz: O'Neill, 33)

Frenz doesn't see O'Neill as a mere imitator because
he perceives important differences. O'Neill thus focuses
on the individual rather than on the industrial masses
while Kaiser and most of the German expressionists were
essentially social reformers:" As O'Neill ‘himself has
pointed out, the crucial problem of his plays is not the
individual's relationship to society, but rather the
individual's relationship to some superior power, to God."
(Frenz: O'Neill, 33/34) Interestingly enough, when The
Empezez_lehea was produced in Berlin in 1924, ”reviewers
were amazed at the idea of importing such a play, for
'expressionist idistortions of emotion were prevalent
(Valgamae, 30) The_Heizy__Aee re-

ceived similar criticism. The contemporary English critic

enough in Germany.’

William Archer wrote that ”in his opinion, 'The Hairy Ape'
was a little too much in the latter-day German style."

(Lewis, 37)

Similarities between Ih&_Haiz!_A2& and the "Gas“-
trilogy, especially The Canal, are obvious. In both plays,

a key scene contrasts the idle rich on deck of a vessel

59
with the hellish life of the workers in the stokehole.
Nevertheless, whereas in The_flain¥_AE&.Mildred descends
into the stokehole and faints at the sight of Yank, in The
Canal the stoker is brought to the upper deck and causes a
”andlung of the Billionaire's daughter to assume chari-
table tasks. Paddy's provocative question "Is it a flesh
and blood wheel of the engines you'd be?" reflects the
reduction of the machine workers in Gaa_1 to a hand, a
foot, an eye at the sight-tube, to an interchangeable part
of the machine. (Blackburn, 118) Last but not least,
critics have compared the split personality of Dion
Anthony and William Brown in The_§reah_§ed_fizean_and the
transfer of personality from one to the other after the

former's death with the Billionaire and his double, the

Secretary in The_Ca1al.

The influences are obvious and in an interview in 1924,
O'Neill disclosed ”that he employed the dynamic quality of
German expressionism” in The_flainy__A2e, “having gained
familiarity with this technique primarily from his rea-

ding." (Cargill, 111)

There are also similarities in the dramatic devices
that both authors employ. I have already mentioned the
Stationendrama as one congruity. The importance of this
dramatic structure lies in the substitution of --rather
than the preparation for-- broader dramatic units through
a series of scenes:" This is its means and method of

reflecting a state or view of the world in which reality

60
has no truth any longer, and truth has no reality yet, and
in which, therefore, truth can only be guessed at in spite
of reality.." (Egri, 101) Both authors also employ an
expressionist stage decoration that enhances the impres-
sion of enclosure. Especially in The_Haizx_AaeJ the image
of the cage or the prison runs through the whole play. The
exposition describes the noise that the workers produce as
"the bewildered,furious,baffled defiance of a beast in a
cage.” (The_flairy_Aee, 165) O'Neill continues:" The
effect sought after is a cramped space in the bowels of a
ship, imprisoned by white steel. The lines of bunks, the
uprights supporting them, cross each other like the steel
framework of a cage.” (The_Hairy_Aae, 165) The image of
the cage prevails in the prison that Yank is thrown into
as well as in the cage in which he symbolically eventually
dies. Kaiser describes his setting in Gas_Tl as a concrete
hall, in which dusty beams of light fall from an arc-lamp.
The impression is deliberately juxtaposed to the moment.
when the dome is opened in the Second Act to emphasize the
contrast between nature, embodied by the sunlight, and the

cold industrial atmosphere of the concrete dome.

Finally, we have another expressionist stage property,
the typification of the actors. Kaiser used the "accepted
expressionist device of labelling his figures according to
their function, instead of distinguishing them indivi—

dually by name.’ (Kentworthy: Ambiguity, 97) One effect
that the expressionists searched for was a more imminent.

impression upon the audience. In an interview with the

61

WW. published on March 26. 1924.

O'Neill rejected this device:

the newest thing now in playwriting is the opposite
of the character play. It is the expressionist play.
For expressionism denies the value of character-
ization. As I understand it, expressionism tries to
minimize everything on the stage that stands be-
tween the author and the audience. (Cargill, 111)
O'Neill himself disagreed with this idea and claimed
that the character Yank "remains a man and everyone
recognizes him as such." (Egri, 99) Perhaps it is not only
a question of the impression made upon the audience, but
also one of the tasks that a play undertakes. The extreme
typification of Kaiser's Figuren assumes a general vali—
dity for the conditions and developments that he illus-
trates in his plays. The focus on the individual and his
situation as we have seen it predominantly in O’Neill's
drama doesn't require a depersonalization since it doesn't
aim at a goal as far-fetched as the creation of a "New

Man as the basis of a new society. Nevertheless, critics
have marked that the stokers, the figures on Fifth Avenue
and even Yank himself are only insufficiently characte-

rized. (Frenz: O'Neill, 182)

Some years later, O'Neill changed his mind concerning
the use of masks and the value of characterization. In his
essay “Memoranda on Masks," that was published in 1932 in

the Amerieah_figeehahea, he alluded to the use of masks

as "the freest solution of the modern dramatist's problem

62
as to how -—with the greatest possible dramatic clarity
and economy of means-- he can express those profound
hidden conflicts of the mind which the probings of
psychology continue to disclose to us." (Cargill, 116)
In the very same article O'Neill also recommended the use
of masks for The_Hairy_Aee. The mask, that( Kaiser had
already used in Ergm_hezn_he_hidnighh , should be used in
a 'non-realistic theatre' in terms of ’inner drama' and
’inner reality’: the theatre should 'be a refuge from the
facts of life which...have nothing to do with the truth'

and drive us 'deep into the unknown within and behind

ourselves.’ (Cargill, 116)

These are beliefs that O’Neill shared with the
expressionists. It was always the goal of the anti-
bourgeois theatre to get beyond ordinary truths and to
probe under the surface of things. The typification
nevertheless has yet another context for the theatre of
Georg Kaiser. Critics have often claimed that Kaiser's
drama lacks a coherent structure of thoughts in its
theory, that it even had implicit contradictions. (Durzak:
Theorie, 30) This view derives from Kaiser's assessment
that equated expressionism with art itself, saw it as the
climax of a historical development of art and excluded an
artistic activism from the beginning. The goal of art thus
became the progression of thinking while the object of the
process became less important. The increasing typification
of Kaiser’s Figuren is thus only the expression of an

increasing process of abstraction that reduces the drama-

63

tic action to a mere "intellectual game.” (Durzak: Theo-

rie, 34) Kaiser claimed: writing drama means: to pursue
an idea to the end," (Benson, 144) a theory that renders
the “New Man“ into an object that is only realizable in
the ivory tower and remote from reality. (Benson, 142) An
example for Kaiser's "intellectual game" is the establish-
ment of the system of profit-sharing in Gae_T, that, after
it has failed, is easily dismissed in Qas_ll, The play
thus seems to become a mere vehicle for an intellectual
social experiment. In this respect, O'Neill’s concern for

the Hairy Ape and his situation appears a lot more sincere

than Kaiser’s humanist utopia.

Some questions concerning the validity of Kaiser's
”ideology" remain. Wilhelm Steffens criticizes Kaiser's
sociological critique of the industrialized society as
emotional and pathetic. The political verve of the
expressionists was, according to Steffens, often only the
emotional structure over an illusionary and often non-
political subjective basis. (Steffens, 45/46) He thus
accuses Kaiser of exactly the faults that the latter
attributes to the primitive, instinctual proletarians who.
submit to the emotional appeal of the Engineer. The
expressonist look "inwards" implies the abandonment of any
belief in external modifications as a tool towards the

regeneration of man:' now social reform must start with
the spiritual regeneration of the individual."

(Kentworthy: Ambiguity, 96) Kaiser's pseudo-Rousseauan

64
idyll is therefore an inappropriate means to achieve the
”New Man”; even more important, Kaiser’s "reactionary
pastoralism" is not even central to the Expressionist

vision. (Sokel, 195)

This fact becomes even more obvious if we look into
Kaiser's own essays from the years 1920-1922. In "Ein
Dichtwerk in der Zeit" (1922), Kaiser emphasized his non-
historic view of literature in general. He rejects the
”costume" and "decoration” of history that only distorts
the view of literature on life. This attitude produces a
preference for the present, that is again comparable to

the Futurists and their aesthetic revolt: We will destroy
the museums, libraries, academies of every kind..”
(Marinetti, 22) In the following, Marinetti rejects the
idea that antique art has any bearing on the condition of
modern man:”
And what is there to see in an old picture except the
laborious contortions of an artist throwing himself
against the barriers that thwart his desire to
express his dream completely?...Admiring an old pic-
ture is the same as pouring our sensibility into a
funerary urn instead of hurling it far off, in
violent spasms of action and creation.
(Marinetti, 22)

I have already shown how the question of nostalgic past
and utopian vision occupies Yank once that his security to
belong into the present is destroyed. In Kaiser's trilogy,
it is Th§_QQnal that reminds the reader of the Futurist

Manifesto. Act Two finds the Billionaire, his Daughter,

the Museum Director, the Doctor and the Captain on board

65
of the Billionaire's yacht. The Museum Director refuses to
accept an old painting offered by the Billionaire and
incites a discussion with the doctor:

Museum Director: In the new museum I am to be the
director of, my aim is to achieve a complete break
with the past, however recentE...] And that very
circumstance will be a spur to new productions.
Emphatically a beginning. Which means especially no
more dissaproving criticism based on comparisons with

what has gone before. We are all sitting in that
shadow - in one way or another it is a source of

torment to us all. (The_Qenal, 29)
This is the "new moiderin' de old" that Yank proclaims.
The difference between O'Neill and Kaiser lies in the
respective bearing of this view for man and his situation;

while Yank will learn that his self-identification was

/——._A-

wrong, Kaiser uses the present as a place to experiment
for the future. Gas and workers are only means of the
present to reach into infinity, into the sphere of

Kaiser's "New Man.‘ (Kaiser: Shaeehe, 678) In another
essay called “Der kommende Mensch” (1922), Kaiser de-
scribed man as the strongest figurative expression of
energy; drama, on the other hand, is a form of energy and
its highest goal is to express this energy. This emphasis
moves Kaiser's view of man close to the Futurists. He is
probably closer than most expressionists that, as I have
mentioned, reversed the premises of Futurism and criti-
cized capitalism for its exploitation of man. Kaiser's
intellectual artifact deals with man and his condition as

a presupposition, but he never seems seriously concerned

for his protagonists.

66

The abandonment of a mode of production is obviously not
the way to realize the "New Man" who wants, as opposed to
the vitalist's action for its own sake, “action guided by
reason in the cause of love." (Sokel, 173) The industrial
modern society may be a place where man's inhumanity
towards man is more obvious than in another environment,
but the change must nevertheless come from within. This is
the lesson Kaiser learns between Qaa_1 and Gae__TL: the
rural utopia of the former play, that only cures the
symptoms but not the disease is replaced by the urge for
internalization in the latter drama. It is only that
Kaiser’s "New Man" still remains an artifact and never
seems to become a real alternative. His clashes with
reality always end with destruction or suicide; he
therefore appears rather as the embodiement of an idea
like many of Kaiser's Figuren than as an actual human
being. (Schfirer, 102) Brian Kentworthy goes so far as to
see Kaiser's ”New Man“ as a "tranquilizer of his social
conscience," as a method to evade reality very much like
the Billionaire in The_QQnal protects himself from the
reality of his past:

It seems, then, that the ethical attitudes of the New
Man are the artistic means of salving the dramatist's
conscience, of resolving the tension arising out of a
sense of social responsibility and the recurrent
temptation to escape from this harsh world into a
world of fancy. The concept of the moral regeneration
of humanity embodied in Kaiser’s New Man may well be a

compensation for this uneasy sense of guilt..
(Kentworthy: Ambiguity, 105/106)

67

O'Neill follows a different path since he does not
attempt to imagine a solution for the spiritual isolation
of the individual. His heroes perish very much like the

expressionist "New Man: Yank is crushed to death, and
Reuben Light dies in the electric current of the dynamo:
both have not achieved spiritual harmony. The congruities
between O'Neill and Kaiser seem nevertheless to be more
prevalent than formerly thought. We have already seen that
O'Neill employed many expressionist stage devices and
properties and was obviously more influenced by the German
drama than he wanted to admit. But furthermore, the
differentiation that critics have made between Kaiser as
the activist who is concerned with "the liberation of man
from social and political evils" and O'Neill as the
"mystic, concerned with the liberation of man's soul,”
(Frenz: O'Neill, 182) is inappropriate. Especially in Gas
11, Kaiser focuses on man's inner Nendlung as the
presupposition for a new society. It is true that. for
Kaiser the impact of the machine and its dehumanizing
effect is more important as a disease to be done away
with; it is also true that he is rather concerned with the
industrial masses than O'Neill. But while Gaa_1 attempts a
liberation of man from the industrial bondage and believes
that it can thus create a free human being, 633.11 and
The__Hairx__Ape_ show some congruities: in the former,
internalization is offered as utopic salvation for the
individual within the mass as the basis of a new society;

in the latter, an industrial setting serves to emphasize

68

the primeval condition of an apish brute, that has lost
its spiritual belonging and cannot find a sphere to

"belong" to. In both dramas, human beings who identify

«~— ..-0— .. .. -.-

1nst1nct1vely with their work are awakened to. the

rrrr

w ”fiam’fi.‘p

consc1ousness of their spiritual alienation. Both authors

1‘.“ ;'A.I-

believe in a spiritual regeneration of man; yet O'Neill's
individual protagonist as well as Kaiser's industrial

masses eventually perish. Man has lost his spiritual

u'h' ”W .19
Mafia—oh"

security, and neither Yank nor the gas-workers find

,NM“"M ‘14”), '_ .fl-Jk

something new that they can "belong" to.i-

69

Erimarx_59urcesi

Kaiser, Georg. Ih§_QQnal. 1917. New York: Ungar, 1963.
Qas_L. 1918. New York: Ungar, 1957.
" Gas_ll. 1920. New York: Ungar, 1963.

SI" 1 E .1] E E "I G I' ll
Ed. Walter Huder. Koeln, Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch,
1966.

O'Neill, Eugene. Dynamg. New York: Horace Liveright, 1929.

" Ihe_Em2eror_lcnes. 1921. Anna_QhLisLia.
1922. Ihg_Haizx_Ape. 1922. New York: Vintage, 1972.

Secondarx_fionrnes;

Arnold. Armin. Dis___LiLeratn1__das___Exnnessionismusi
SarachliQha_und_thematische_Quellen. Stuttgart: Kohl-
hammer, 1966.

Benson, Renate.

and_fiegrg_Ka1sen. London: Macmillan, 1984.

Blackburn, Clara, "Continental Influences on Eugene

O'Neill’s Expressionistis Dramas." American_Lit§Latnza,
1941 (May), 13. 109-133.

Bussmann, Rudolf. Einzelnar_und_nassei__an_dnamatischen

H§Lk_§ggrg_fiaisgzs. (Monographien Literaturwissenschaft
Band 41) Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor, 1978.

Cargill, Oscar (Ed ). QLNaill_and_His_Elaxsi_Enur_Decades
Q£_Qritizism, New York: New York University Press,
1961.

088, P.N., "The Alienated Ape ” Ih£_LiLeznnx_Hal£;Xeanlx,
1970, Vol. XI (1). 53-69.

Durzak, Manfred.
Sifixnhfiim:fiflnzi___Kaiaen. Munchen: Nymphenburger
Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1978.

70
" "Georg Kaiser s Theorie des Dramas."
G§91g_Kaiaen. Ed. Armin Arnold. (LGH- Interpretationen
49) Stuttgart: Klett, 1980. 30-36.

Egri, Peter, "Belonging Lost: Alienation and Dramatic
Form in Eugene O' Neill' s The Hairy Ape ." Critical
. Ed. James J. Martina. Boston:

Hall, 1984. 77—113.

Falk. Doris V. Enzene_Q;Neill_and_the_Ixnzic_Iensinn1_An
interpretixe_fitudx_g£_the_Elaxs. New York: Gordian,
1982.

Floyd, Virginia.
Assessment. New York: Ungar, 1985.

Frenz, Horst. Engeng_Q;Ngill. New York: Ungar, 1971.

" , "Eugene O'Neill and Georg Kaiser." Eugene

QLflfiill1__A_Hind_¥ifin. Ed. Virginia Floyd. New York:
Ungar, 1979. 173-185.

Gittleman, Sol, "Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Georg
Kaiser's Gas I : Film, Literature, and the Crisis of

Technology.” D1e_flnterrichtsnnaxis 1979 (Fall), V01-
XII (2). 27-30.

Hohendahl, Peter Uwe.
exaressionistisghen_nrama. Heidelberg: Winter, 1967.

Kentworthy, Brian J. Gegng__Kaisez, (Modern Language
Studies. Ed. J. Boyd) Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957.

, "Georg Kaiser: The Ambiguity of The
Expressionist New Man." Georg___Kaise11____EinQ
9 E I 1 I l . S . .

EdmontgnLKanada. Ed. Holger A. Pausch & Ernest
Reinhold. Darmstadt, Berlin: Agora, 1980. 95-111.

LaBelle, Maurice M., ”Dionysus and Despair: The Influence

of Nietzsche upon O'Neill's Drama." Educational_1heatne
Journal 1973 (December), Vol. 25 (4). 436-442.

Lewis, Ward B. Eugene O'Neill. Ina German Beggptjgn Qf
Ame212a;s__Enrst__Dramatist (Germanic Studies in
America, No. 50) New York, Frankfurt: Lang, 1984.

Marinetti, F. T. "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism

1909. " Futurist_flanifigstga. Ed. Umbro Apollonio London:
Thames and Hudson, 1973. 19- 24.

Meixner, Horst, "Drama im Technischen Zeitalter - Die

Expressionistische Innovation. -
' Ed. Horst

sQz1alen_Eandel_und_kfinstlerische_Er£ahrungn
Meixner & Silvio Vietta. Mfinchen: Wilhelm Fink, 1982.
30-40.

71

Reger, Erik, “The Georg Kaiser of America (1929). 'Engene
' ' ' . Ed. Horst Frenz

Q_Ne1ll_s_Qr1t1cs1__lgines_£rnm_Abroad
& Susan Tuck. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1984.
30-32.

Schfirer, Ernst, “Die Gas Dramen." Georg_Kaisen. Ed. Armin
Arnold. (LGH—Intrepretationen 49) Stuttgart: Klett
1980. 92-110.

Sokel,Wa1ter H.

E111er_1n_Extremisi__Exnressionism__1n
IHent1ethzQentu11_§erman_L1tarature Stanford: Stanford
UP, 1959.

Steffens, Wilhelm. Georg_Kaisen. Velber: Friedrich, 1969.

Valgamae, Mardi.
' Carbondale: Southern

Illinois UP, 1972.

Wik. Reynold M. Henrx_Eo1d_and_firass:roots_Amarica. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972.

"ITFIIIIEIIIIWMWIIF