An Examination of Racist Themes in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones

Eugene O'Neill is widely considered the most influential of American playwrights. He is called the "founder of modern drama in the United States", and holds the title of the first American playwright to earn a Nobel Prize in literature. (O' Neill 794) His play, The Emperor Jones, is credited as being one that provided " -- several firsts in American theatre history: the Provincetown Players' first major hit, the first major role for an African American actor on the legitimate Broadway stage (in houses where the audience was still racially segregated), and the play that secured O'Neill's place as a writer for the high-art, experimental theatre worthy of international attention." (Steen 343) Basically, The Emperor Jones made Eugene O'Neill.

However, upon reading the play, I was shocked at its blatant racist content. O'Neill tells a story of Brutus Jones, former Pullman Porter and escaped murderer who made his way to an island in the West Indies where, through cunning and manipulation, he had placed himself as dictator over the black residents of the island. The locals, growing tired of Jones's exploitation, use magic to bring up memories (both personal and racial) that drive Jones into a primitive state while he's trying to make his escape through the jungle.

Without lingering on the obvious insensitivity of a plot that centers on a black man reverting to a "primitive state" (discussed in detail later), O' Neill's description of Brutus having features he classified as "typically negroid, yet there is something decidedly distinctive about his face- and underlying strength of will, a hardy, self-reliant confidence in himself that inspires respect" (O'Neill 799); his gratuitous use of racial slurs that alienated the original actor portraying Jones; and the supposed treachery Jones engages in by not accepting his black status (which ultimately results in his death) seem evidence enough that this play heavily embraces a notion of white superiority that is unacceptable, especially by today's standards.

Still, The Emperor Jones enjoys much support from both past and modern critics. W.E.B. DuBois defended the play, stating "The Negro today fears any attempt of the artist to paint Negroes. He is not satisfied unless everything is perfect and proper and beautiful and joyful. He is afraid to be painted as he is, lest his human foibles and shortcomings be seized by his enemies for the purposes of the ancient and hateful propaganda." (Monks 549-550) Modern analysis tries to completely isolate the play's racist aspects from more positive interpretations, one being that this is not a story of a black man being stripped to primitive African roots, but it's the story of tapping into the collective unconscious of humanity with Jones being a sort of "everyman" figure. (Brietzke 384) Alternately, Jones may be seen as a metaphorical representation of O'Neill himself, as Shannon Steen puts it, "In order to dramatize the problem of whiteness, or at least of Irishness, O'Neill turned to blackness to represent his own crisis of psychic and social alienation." (Steen 356)

Having considered these various interpretations of O'Neill's original intent, I stand by my initial impression: The Emperor Jones indulges in debasing racial stereotyping that, intentional or unintentional, only served to reinforce erroneous beliefs widely held by the white American audience in the 1920's. In this essay, I will explore three of these racist themes: the doctrine of African primitivism, the use of language, and Jones's attempt and failure to mimic white society.

Beginning with the obvious, there is the overall theme of African primitivism incorporated into the depictions of even the most "civilized" black persons. Indeed, the Jazz Age introduced a cultural fad among white artists that embraced African Americans as primitive, symbolic of energy, sensuality, and freedom from restraint. Sociologist Robert Park wrote in 1818 that "the Negro unquestionably had a temperament which differed from that of whites. The Anglo-Saxon was basically a pioneer and a frontiersman, while the Negro was primarily an artist, loving life for its own sake. His m©tier is expression rather than action. He is, so to speak, the lady among the races." (Krasner 67-68) At the root of the white bohemian interest in the "primitivism" of African Americans is the belief in a "race psychology" that claims "blacks everywhere would eventually be tripped up by their primitive minds." (Pfister 130)

The Emperor Jones unashamedly embraces such viewpoints. O'Neill puts a black man on the stage initially dressed as a king, who, stripped of clothing over the course of the play, reveals more of his black skin and falls into a degenerating role in contrast with the powerful emperor to whom they were initially introduced. Joel Pfister explains that this "striptease" served to identify the black actors " -- with a sexuality that white audiences could both fascinate themselves with as an embodiment of their own psychological primitivism, yet at the same time spurn as 'nothing more than a prancing darky on stage.' "(Pfister 130)

In addition to this sexualizing of African Americans, O'Neill uses some imagery that the audience would have recognized from other contexts prior to viewing the play. In scene seven, after Jones finishes kneeling in front of a stone alter (a behavior that instinctively seemed natural to him even though he was born and raised a Baptist in the United States), " -- the figure of a Congo Witch-Doctor appears." The Witch-Doctor summons a crocodile god that wants to eat Jones as a sacrifice. In that moment, he prays to the Christian god, "Lawd, save me! Lawd Jesus, heah my prayer!" (O'Neill 814-815)

This scene seems to give a nod to the many popular racist portrayals of African Americans getting eaten by alligators, called by Jan Faulkner the "alligator-bait" genre. One illustration of this is the "Little African: A Dainty Morsel" cigar brand with a box that features a "naked black infant crawling away from a sharp-toothed alligator climbing over a river bank in a jungle setting." (Pfister 133) Another example--one that Jones seems to imitate in the play--is a once popular postcard called "A Darkey's Prayer." The image shows a well-dressed black man in the jungle with an alligator biting down on the seat of his pants. The text included reads as follows:

"Oh, Lawdy, please deliber me from dese gaters dats got hold ob me. If I only had de chance I'd gib dem my pants if de'd only let de rest ob me be." (Pfister 134)

Pfister explains that these representations, even when they feature an adult, still portray African Americans as immature. "Such images promote the idea that blacks are inept, jungle primitives who- even when costumed as white-collar workers- are incapable of growing up." (Pfister 133) Jones, though adorned as a king, was still portrayed as child-like, given easily into superstition, fears, and the influence of his "suppressed primitiveness."

Additionally, the language of the play serves as another clear example of its racism. Charles Gilpin, the African American actor who originally portrayed Brutus Jones, became offended by the language of the script, specifically the number of times O'Neill used the word "nigger." According to Aoife Monks, " -- Gilpin accused O'Neill of being racist, refused to use the term "nigger" in the script, and began to rewrite O'Neill's words, much to the disgust of the playwright, who threatened to beat him up." (Monks 548)

Another language issue regards the character Lem, leader of the rebelling islanders who has a small part in the final scene. When Smithers, a white British trader, asks Lem how he knows Jones is dead, there is the following discourse:

LEM: My men's dey got'um silver bullets. Dey kill him shore.

SMITHERS: (Astonished) They got silver bullets?

LEM: Lead bullet no kill him. He got'um strong charm. I took um money, make um silver bullet, make um strong charm, too. (O'Neill 816)

Evidently O'Neill is under the impression that Caribbean blacks speak like stage "Indians". The language is described as " -- a slightly darkened pidgin-English or the form of speech a big Indian chief would employ -- " (Pfister 132) So here O'Neill decided to go with a randomly chosen (and racist) dialect instead of doing some actual research into the speech islanders actually use.

Finally, we get to the issue of Jones's attempt and failure to attain "whiteness". The first instance of this theme in the play is the description of his attire. The outfit is a parody of a royal uniform a white king would wear, and despite that, O'Neill states "Yet there is something not altogether ridiculous about his grandeur." (O'Neill 799)

While he enjoying his last remaining moments as emperor of the island, he states the following to Smithers:

JONES: Ain't I de Emperor? De laws don't go for him (Judicially.) You heah what I tells you, Smithers. Dere's little stealin' like you does, and dere's big stealin' like I does. For de little stealin' dey gets you in jail soon or late. For de big stealin' dey makes you Emperor and puts you in de Hall 'o Fame when you croaks. (Reminiscently.) If dey's one thing I learns in the ten years on de Pullman ca's listenin' to de white quality talk, it's dat same fact. And when I gits a chance to use it I winds up de Emperor in two years. (O'Neill 800)

This passage illustrates that the key to Jones's successful takeover of the island was his grasp of a white ideology. O'Neill also makes this the key to his downfall, portraying him as " -- too black to succeed in America and too white (in terms of his oppressive policies as Emperor) to sustain his regime on the island -- " (Steen 356)

The problem here is that O'Neill is saying that Jones, because of some inherent deficiency, cannot successfully fill a leadership (read: white) role. Sure, he can act the part for awhile, but it is not something the black man, according to O'Neill, can sustain for a long period of time.

Also, while he's following a white doctrine, his brutal treatment of the islanders makes him out to be imitating, at best, a despicable sort of white person. This is similar to the portrayal of Sarah Jane Johnson in the film Imitation of Life. The young girl passed for white, but could not manage to preserve her integrity at the same time, so she only passed as the lowest tier of white women. (Sirk). Jones is here imitating the most evil of white men. This provides the white audience of the 1920's some relief because to portray an African American as acting like an average white person would have triggered racial fears of the time.

When he escapes into the forest, Jones is haunted by images of his personal past (the man he killed in a dice game, his time spent in prison) and of the collective past of his race (slave auctions, the Middle Passage, African religion). All of these seem to be calling him to embrace his blackness by provoking a sense of guilt. He does not give in to the visions, however, and instead shoots at them, causing him use all his ammunition, leaving him defenseless against the islanders armed with silver bullets. He refused to give up his position and loses his life because of it. And still in the end he's reduced to inferiority, with Smithers grinning over his dead body, saying "Where's yer 'igh an' mighty airs now, yer bloomin' majesty?" (O'Neill 817)

This play is often defended because it allowed the first African American actors a chance to perform on Broadway and prompted the creation of the first film with an all-black cast (released in 1933 staring Paul Robeson). It did try to tackle the issue of race without making the black character a comedic subject (as was typical of the time) but instead serious and dramatic. And it inspired Eugene O'Neill to further explore and write about issues of race.

However, while I grant that Eugene O'Neill was ambitious and daring in his subject matter, he misses the bigger picture. One would expect an artist of O'Neill's talent to have the ability to see beyond the constructs of society and provide the white audience with an honest perspective they've never witnessed before instead of just echoing the status quo in an innovative manner. Whether the entire play is shrouded in metaphor or if he was simply embracing the racist ideology of his time, the result was the same: he delivered a work that confirmed the sentiment of white superiority held by his audience by telling a tale of a tragic black man who desires to be white but cannot escape his own primitive nature, a story that no one really needed to hear at that time.

Sources:

O'Neill, Eugene. "The Emperor Jones" The Bedford Anthology of American Literature Vol 2. 'Ed' 2008. Susan Belasco and Linck Johnson. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 792- 817

Pfister, Joel. Staging Depth: Eugene O'Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995. 121-137.

Steen, Shannon. "Melancholy Bodies: Racial Subjectivity and Whiteness in O'Neill's The Emperor Jones" Theatre Journal 52.3 (2000) 339-359

Monks, Aoife. "Genuine Negroes and Real Bloodhounds: Cross-Dressing, Eugene O'Neill, the Wooster Group, and The Emperor Jones" Modern Drama 48.3 (2005) 540-564

Brietzke, Zander. "Review: Untitled" Theatre Journal 50.3 (1998) 382-385

Krasner, David. "Whose Role is it Anyway? Charles Gilpin and the Harlem Renaissance" African American Review 29.3 (1995) 483-496

Sirk, Douglas. Dir. Imitation of Life. Universal Pictures: 1959, Film.

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