The Hairy Ape features many characters who find themselves unable to escape their oppressive circumstances. While an argument can be made that even Mildred is trapped within the American system of social class, Yank is the foremost sufferer in O'Neill's story. His circumstances are full of a tragic situational irony, since he takes pride in a job that he thinks gives him security, strength, and power but that, in reality, strips him of these things. The audience can readily observe this pride in Scene 1, when Yank quickly defends his job and the workers around him as essential to society:
What’s dem slobs in de foist cabin got to do wit us? We’re better men dan dey are, ain’t we? Sure! One of us guys could clean up de whole mob wit one mit. Put one of ’em down here for one watch in de stokehole, what’d happen?
As the audience is clearly meant to take from this bit of dialogue, Yank is proud to call himself working-class, even believing himself better than the upper-class passengers who sit on the deck of the ship and do nothing. This pride degrades over the course of the play, with Yank attempting but failing to acquire several jobs and eventually dying in the cage he spent the entire play trying to escape.
