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Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones: An Overview of White Imprints and Desire
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Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (1920) is the first ever projection of a black protagonist on Broadway who carries the imprints of white ideals. While the playwright presents the title character Brutus Jones as a kleptocrat, he seems to corroborate the fact that the streetwise black Jones’ growing up in New York has a lot to do with his rule as a despot in the Island. This paper probes O’Neill’s projection of the American mercantile psyche as seen in the Island’s experience of colonial capitalism and the enactment of original sin in America by a journey through Brutus’ personal and racial memory lanes. This article also explores to what extent Jones is a by-product of American capitalist system which considers greed is good and money as the bottom line of success.
Keywords
Eugene O’Neill, American Drama, Race, Capitalism, Kleptocracy, Blackface.
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