The Emperor Jones (play)
"The Emperor Jones" is a pivotal play written by Eugene O'Neill, first performed in 1920. It marked a significant moment in American theater by providing a leading role specifically crafted for an African American actor, which was unprecedented at the time. The protagonist, Brutus Jones, is an ex-Pullman car porter who becomes the self-proclaimed emperor of a Caribbean island. The plot unfolds as Jones learns of a revolt among his subjects and attempts to flee through the jungle, revealing his psychological decline and the consequences of his oppressive rule.
The play employs expressionist techniques, particularly through the use of a recurring tom-tom rhythm that mirrors Jones's mental state. As he journeys deeper into the jungle, he is stripped of his power and confronts his past, including violent acts and memories rooted in slavery. While "The Emperor Jones" enjoyed initial success and was influential in the evolution of theater, it has also faced criticism for its portrayal of Black characters and reliance on stereotypes. Overall, the play serves as a complex exploration of race, power, and identity, reflecting the tensions of its time and continuing to provoke discussion today.
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The Emperor Jones (play)
Identification: Identification: A one-act play portraying the disintegration of the corrupt ruler of a Caribbean island
Author: Eugene O’Neill
Date: 1920
Significance: After World War I, the 1920s brought renewed vitality and increased experimentation to American theater. Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones presented for the first time a leading dramatic role written for an African American actor, and established O’Neill as an important playwright.
The 1920s were productive for Eugene O’Neill, who saw many of his most important plays produced during this decade. The Emperor Jones,which first opened in November of 1920 at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York’s Greenwich Village, made a successful move to Broadway, where it enjoyed 204 performances.
The central figure of the play is Brutus Jones, an ex–Pullman car porter who has made himself emperor of a small Caribbean island whose inhabitants he has exploited and terrorized. In the opening scene, Jones learns that the palace servants have revolted and that he must flee, an eventuality for which he has already prepared. He plans to escape through the jungle to a waiting ship loaded with his ill-gotten gains. Furthermore, he has persuaded his superstitious subjects that he can be killed only by a silver bullet.
In the middle of the first scene, a tom-tom is introduced, an expressionist device that externalizes the protagonist’s interior state. It continues throughout the play, increasing in intensity and speed, fusing the physical reality of the natives’ uprising with the psychological reality of Jones’s increasing panic.
As Jones travels through the jungle, he is stripped physically, emotionally, and mentally of the trappings of civilization. In scenes portraying his own past in flashback, Jones shoots the black man he first killed in a craps game, as well as the white foreman of his prison chain gang. Then, his feverish mind takes him further back, to times before his birth: to a slave auction, a slave ship, and finally to Africa, where a monstrous crocodile emerges from the river. Jones shoots the beast, the tom-tom stops, and the scene shifts to the outside world where the rebels, who cast their own silver bullets, have killed Jones.
Impact
The Emperor Jones met with success worldwide, first as a play and later as a film and opera. The psychological reality of Jones’s downfall and his descent into madness fascinated an American public bored with the superficial plays presented in the early decades of the twentieth century. Despite receiving praise from contemporary critics, both white and black, The Emperor Jones has subsequently proven controversial because of its stereotyped representations of black people.
Bibliography
Manual, Carme. “A Ghost in the Expressionist Jungle of O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones.” African American Review 39, nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer, 2005): 67–85.
Monks, Aoife. “‘Genuine Negroes and Real Bloodhounds’: Cross-Dressing, Eugene O’Neill, the Wooster Group, and The Emperor Jones.” Modern Drama 48, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 540–564.
Steen, Shannon. “Melancholy Bodies: Racial Subjectivity and Whiteness in O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones.” Theatre Journal 52, no. 3 (October, 2000): 339–359.