In scene two Mildred comes down in the bowls of the ship to see the men working. Yank is there working like a trained animal in the hot dirty drab environment and flies into a blind rage over the sounding of the work whistle. Mildred looks on in horror and consequently faints because of Yank's insane actions. She is then dragged off by her escort and Yank, further in rage, throws a shovel at the door that they exit through. This is symbolic of the way that Yank's actions push people out of his life. This causes him to miss more opportunities. In this case, it might have been more important then Yank realizes because Mildred is a symbol of reform and sympathy for Yank's situation and he presents himself like an animal therefore closing Mildred's mind to his cause.
This is a situation that we see all the time in our lives today. It is a fact that there is a constant flow of missed opportunities that pass us by all the time. We might not even know it, but it happens in the simplest of forms. A right turn instead of a left, for example equals a missed opportunity. To much of your beverage of choice at a party, missed opportunities and certainly we can all relate with the time when we had to have the last word in a argument and we completely close someone's mind our cause. The slightest things change in our lives everyday be it because of us or someone else. This is what Yank is being effected by throughout the entire play. In his case, it is magnified by his eccentric actions, but he, like the rest of, us is only a victim of his environment.
The second example of this plays current relevance is the issue of social blindness that Eugene O?Neill presents in numerous scenes throughoutThe Hairy Ape?. The first example of this also involves Mildred and the scene in which she comes down in the ship to see the men working. Mildred represents the upper class. Even though she is more open minded to upper and lower classes simply because of her curious nature, she is still socially blind.
