O'Neill himself acknowledged that The Hairy Ape straddles a number of styles. "It seems to run the gamut from extreme naturalism to extreme expressionism—with more of the latter than the former," he wrote in 1921. The initial response to productions of The Hairy Ape focused on the skill of the play's staging and its forceful impact on a viewer. Describing O'Neill's skill with the voice of the working men, Alexander Woollcoot of the New York Times said, "Squirm as you may, he holds you while you listen to the rumble of their discontent, and while you listen... it is true talk, all of it, and only those who have been so softly bred that they have never really heard the vulgate spoken in all its richness would venture to suggest that he has exaggerated it."

The playwright's intentions in depicting the world of the ship...