The subtle association of primitivism with the working class in Eugene O'Neill's expressionist work The Hairy Ape is quite intriguing. In the show we perceive the primitivistic approach towards the firefighters who work together on the ship and who are compared to a group of animals who always do and say the same thing. They have no individuality and represent the same class which is the working class. There are two aspects to O'Neill's use of primitivism to represent this particular class. One is related to their existence as a crowd and the other is to identification with their own physicality, which also shows traces of Darwinism. Therefore, to examine how working class people define themselves and are defined by the modern world, which is quite primitivistic, we can examine their representation as a mob body in The Hairy Ape. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe first approach to firefighters as primitive comes from their existence as a crowd. In order to consider these workers as a crowd in the play, we must examine them in general terms. We see that in the work they are simply called “voices” or “everyone”. We don't know their names except Yank, Paddy and Long, which by themselves show some specific characteristics. Therefore, as Gustave Le Bon asserts, firefighters lose their identity when they are together, becoming a grain of sand among other grains of sand” (Nye 48). Therefore, they are represented as the same thing at both the level of body and mind, which arise in Yank's ideology and actions. In the case of the body image, the firefighters, who resemble chained gorillas with their crouching and inhuman attitudes, move with rhythmic movements and do the same work, shoveling in a tumult of orderly noise (O'Neill 160). The animalistic, “inhuman” and gorilla-like portrayal of firefighters cannot be ignored. As for the rhythm and noise present in the crowd, according to Robert Nye, they elevate the mood and emotions of individuals (42). Sometimes they become more and more enthusiastic and kind of lose control. This is most evident when they say the same thing at the same time, which is related to their being similar in terms of mind. As they exclaim statements such as “Think,” “Love,” “God,” and “Law,” they become barbaric and atavistic because they turn in a certain sense to their prehistoric human state, completely losing their individuality and becoming totally one body. The reason actually is that the meaning of these words is empty, which indicates that they may not be able to think at all since these words are just a sound and there is no communication. Furthermore, the repetitions of these statements are similar to the functioning of machines. Therefore, firefighters become like machines without the ability to contemplate, which in turn deepens their primitivization. This representation of firefighters is rather animalistic, barbaric and atavistic because they live on the edge of animality and repeat what they do without thinking. The existence of firefighters as a crowd is also linked to their identification with their physical strength, which is also a bit animalistic and primitive: their faith and interest in their own physicality derives from the fact that they lose their own identity and the ability to contemplate like a crowd or vice versa. Therefore, there is a binary between body and mind and because working class people represent the body, they do not have an individual voice. As a result, we find their perspective in Yank's words and actions because “it represents an expression of self for firefighters.”.