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THE EMPEROR JONES, AN EXPRESSIONISTIC PLAY Kristina Sheperi
The 1920s in the United States was a prolific period in literature. After decades of vaudevilles and melodrama and photographic realism, the American public was in search of more qualitative and daring pieces. After many years of struggling with himself, theater companies and theater producers, Eugene O’Neill took a turn in his way of writing. He started to experiment. Together with the Provincetown players, he introduced the American audience with a new literature trend, and that was expressionism. The focus of this paper shall be the analysis of expressionistic elements such as distortion of reality, disjoint and incoherent plot, instrumental characters, simple and fragmented dialogue, and stagecraft such as decoration, lighting, sonics, acting and costumes in “The Emperor Jones”.
Keywords: Eugene O’Neill, experiment, expressionism, plot, characters, stagecraft
Introduction
“I want to be an artist or nothing”1 said Eugene O’Neill when he wrote to George Pierce Baker after being enrolled for his playwriting course called “workshop 47” in an effort to write proper drama. And indeed, he did everything possible to be an artist. He was the first American playwright ever to win a Nobel Prize in 1936. What is interesting to note is that he did not develop his art by going to school and attending professors’ lectures on the craft of writing. Not at all, in fact, he abandoned the university since his freshmen year and led a derelict life at sea. He went to Honduras in search of gold and then ended in a sanatorium because of Tuberculosis. In short, since the purpose of this paper is not writing his autobiography, the time he spent in the sanatorium where he read avidly the most renowned playwrights who were the forefathers of modernism and the time spent with his father on stage, were determinant factors in shaping a new and rebellious American playwright. Watching his father, James O’Neill, perform the same role of the Count of Monte Cristo over and over again, and feeling disgust for the commercial theater, he struggled all his life to create a theater which would be void of the photo-
1 Selected Letters, 26
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graphic reality and which would express the author’s vision by using the stage and the means it offered.
After watching Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” for the ninth time, O’Neill later says that the performance “discovered an entire new world of the drama for me. It gave me my first conception of a modern theater where truth might live.”2 Ibsen’s kind of modernism and then later August Strindberg’s expressionism are what gave Eugene O’Neill a good start to write drama as he himself suggests: “The dramatist does not present life, but interprets it within the limitations of his vision. Rise he’s no better than a camera, plus a dictograph. The dramatist works just as Beethoven did, employing every sound in existence, molding tones, giving them new color, new meaning, thus creating music. Well, when a dramatist interprets the world, and thus creates his own world, he uses the human soul, all his life, if you like, as a keyboard. He is the creator of this world and like all creators absolute boss. If he isn’t a sound creative architect his structure crumbles * * * I don’t think it is the aim of the dramatist to be ‘true to life,’ but to be true to himself, to his vision, which may be of life treated as a fairy tale or as a dream.” 3
This paragraph written by O’Neill serves as a roadmap for the elements treated in this paper. It is evident that O’Neill was a playwright who possessed great vision of the limitless possibilities of stagecraft, and developed a myriad of dramaturgical designs for his many plays. A set was not mere background; its use was a vital component that he relied on in order to achieve his artistic ambitions of revealing a character’s emotion. However, for the purposes of this study I have chosen only one out of a handful of expressionistic dramas, and that is “The Emperor Jones”, since this is considered as his first drama where he fully experiments with the above mentioned elements.
Expressionism in “The Emperor Jones”
The year 1920 when “The Emperor Jones” had its premiere on the American stage can be considered as a breaking point from “photographic realism” and as a starting point for the new literary trend which was expressionism or the “mirror of the soul”. With “The Emperor Jones” O’Neill attempted to reveal a psychic journey for the character which relied on the transition from light to darkness, in which the darkness reflected a departure from the physically defined world to the amorphous dynamics of the mind.
2 Quoted in Gelb 2000, 226
3 The New York Times, November 12, 1961, Arthur and Barbara Gelb
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Brutus Jones, a black former Pullman car porter, has escaped from America after committing two murders and proclaimed himself as the Emperor of an island in the West Indies. Here he exploits the natives, imposes various taxes and convinces them that he was subject of a spell and that he could only be killed by a silver bullet. However, now he faces a revolt, the natives have started a ceremony to hunt and catch him; thus he embarks on a planned escapade through the jungle. During this journey his uniform and his mind fall to pieces. In the following six scenes his mind deteriorates as he has nightmarish visions such as the Little Formless Fears, Jeff, The Negro Convicts, The Prison Guard, The Auctioneer, The Slaves, The Congo Witch-Doctor and finally the Crocodile God to which he shoots with the remaining silver bullet and eventually in the last scene we understand that he has shot himself.
The first thing that you notice when you read “The Emperor Jones” is the way how the plot is revealed. O’Neill uses only one act and eight scenes to show us the escalating deterioration and degeneration of the mind of the criminal Brutus Jones. Instead of crafting a classical play respecting the three unities of action, time and place, O’Neill seems a rebel in merging them. Cramer, in his long study on Expressionism in Eugene O’Neill and Elmer Rice argues that both of them intentionally disregard Aristotle’s theories of dramatic form. According to him, the traditional plot structure of realistic theater follows a linear sequence with one inciting action in the first act, one climax and then the resolution. However, Perrault argues that O’Neill in his expressionistic works uses a pattern that is cyclical in nature rather than linear. Reading or watching The Emperor Jones through this point of view, one can notice different climaxes which end in a cyclical pattern. Each scene has its own climax. We will analyze each of them to understand the fluctuations of the tension that accompanies the regression of Brutus Jones into his own pitfall.
The first scene is opened with a vital piece of information which the old woman gives to Smithers. The natives, exhausted and unable to pay anymore taxes, have started a riot. They have gone to the jungle to perform the war dance which they think will give them courage to catch and kill their Emperor. This serves as the inciting action. Tension starts its way the moment Brutus Jones wakes up by the call of Smithers who gives him the news. Although it seems like Jones expected that thing to happen, he seems a little troubled by the tom-toms of the natives. “[From the distant hills comes the faint, steady thump of a tom-tom, low and vibrating. It starts at a rate exactly corresponding to the normal pulse beat - 72 to the
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minute - and continues at a gradually accelerating rate from this point uninterruptedly to the very end of the play.] [EJ p20]
In the second scene the first vision appears to Jones as he is looking for the white stone he had put as a mark for his food. The Little Formless Fears “[creep out from the deeper blackness of the forest... Jones looks down, leaps backward with yell of terror, yanking out his revolver as he does so - in a quavering voice] What’s dat? What’s dar? What is you? Git away from me befo’ I shoots you up! You don’t?” [EJ 29]. And this is the moment he starts to lose his mind and waste his first lead bullet, after which they disappear. As mentioned earlier, the moment the vision appears serves as a climax point and then eventually this tension depletes as he shoots the little formless fears with his revolver.
The second vision appears in the third scene. That is Jeff the Negro, a Pullman porter who is throwing a pair of dice. “[He walks quickly into the clear space - than stands transfixed as he sees JEFF - in a terrified gasp] Who dar? Who dat? Is dat you, Jeff?” But Jeff continuous mechanically throwing his dice and does not answer to Jones. Mad at him, Jones shoots him and after the smoke is spread, Jeff and the tension created disappear altogether.
In the fourth scene a small gang of Negroes enter, dressed in stripped convict suits. Among them is the Prison Guard who points sternly at Jones to take his place with a shovel. At this moment Brutus Jones is praying God not to have anymore visions. But he can’t stand the Prison Guard give orders to him, and once again he kills him with his shovel as he did in his real life.
In the fifth scene tension increases as Jones’ mind is tired from the previous apparitions. However, there are yet to come. It is the moment Jones sees the vision of an auction and the Auctioneer who points at Jones and invites the planters to give their bids. Jones is relieving his agony once again. And once again he shoots at the auctioneer and the planter at the same time.
In the sixth scene the tension increases as the Negros appear naked only in a loin cloth, silent and motionless, but accompanied by the rapid tom-toms of the natives.
In the seventh scene the Witch-Doctor appears with antelope horns and summons the Crocodile God which requires the sacrifice of Brutus Jones, who eventually kills himself.
The eighth scene is the moment where reality comes back and nightmares are gone, it constitutes the resolution of the whole drama.
Therefore, we conclude that this play offers different climaxes for each of the central six scenes, in which the increase in Jones’s tension is accompanied by the increase in the rhythm of the tom-toms.
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Dialogue is as well an important element in expressionistic drama. It is usually telegraphic and most often substituted by music. In this play, O’Neill made less use of dialogue, mainly in the first and last scene and an extensive use of monologue in the other six scenes which describe the journey of Brutus Jones in his subjective self-search. It is a monologue which makes us feel his escalating terror. This monologue is accompanied by the regular drum beat of the natives which starts at the pulse rhythm and then increasingly accelerates to go with the increasing terror of Brutus Jones as his visions appear one after the other until the end. In order to show the incapacity of language to express one’s feelings and the workings of the mind, O’Neill often makes Jones stutter as in the moment he sees Jeff “[He stares fascinatedly at the other who continues his mechanical play with dice. Jones ’ eyes begin to roll widely. He stutters.] Ain’t you gwine - look up - can’t you speaks to me? Is you - is you - a ha’nt?” [EJ p32], or when the Auctioner appears and the Planters give their bids “[Over his face abject terror gives way to mystification, to gradual realization - stutteringly] What you all doin’, white folks? What’s all dis?” [EJ 41]. Elsewhere Brutus Jones’ monologue has immediate interruptions and changes in topic. O’Neill often makes use of silence to show what language cannot tell.
For a drama to fall under the expressionism genre, it should not only have an incoherent and disjointed plot with quick scenes having different climaxes, but it should also have instrumental characters; characters who are able to represent the everyman and all the torturing issues of that group of the society he represents. In his Modern Drama in Theory and Practice, Volume IV: Expressionism and Epic Theatre, Styan argues that expressionistic characters,
“lost their individuality and were merely identified by nameless designations, like “The Man”, “The Father”, “The Son”, ‘The Workman”, “The Engineer”, and so on. Such characters were stereotypes and caricatures rather than individual personalities, and represented social groups rather than particular people”. 4
Analyzed in this point of view, Brutus Jones is an expressionistic character. He does not only represent himself, but he is merely a stereotype of all tortured, guilt-trodden people of a suppressing society. As Jordan Miller cites in his study “It is aimless to criticize this play because it “does not elevate the Negro” since it could have been written about any race anywhere.”5
4 Styan, p.5
5 Miller, p290
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Lionel Trilling writes on the back cover of a collection of three dramas Anna Christie, The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape that,
“The emperor, Brutus Jones, does not typify the Negro. He typifies all men with their raw ignorance and hysterical fear under the layers of intellect.”
However, this type of characters and this plot line, in order to reveal themselves need an appropriate environment and that is the stage with its enthralling effects and decor. In The Emperor Jones O’Neill makes use of a sky dome in the upper part of the stage in order to play with lighting effects. This dome made it possible to diffuse light and transform a small stage so that it attained a dream-like quality in an open and infinite-like stage. Through this, O’Neill attempted to reveal a psychic journey for the character which relied on the transition from light to darkness, in which the darkness reflected a departure from the physically defined world to the amorphous dynamics of the mind. The physical world, represented by a night-time venture through a forest, is transformed into a psychic nightmare. Experimental scenic elements, in this instance lighting, enable the transition.
Another innovative scenic element is the sonic scheme which featured a drum beating throughout the entire production. O’Neill, always voracious with regard to the background reading he did for a play, explained that he was inspired by his “reading of the religious fests in the Congo and the uses to which the drum is put there; how it starts at a normal pulse-beat and is slowly intensified until the heart-beat of every one present corresponds to the frenzied beat of the drum. In this drama, the drum beat functioned to represent both the ceremonial element of the natives’ hunt for Jones as well as a suggestion of the inner intensity that Jones experienced during his flight through the jungle. In this way, O’Neill relied on the drumbeat, just as he had on his use of lighting, to pivot from a recognizable realistic world to the dream world of Jones’s inner psyche.
Another experimental sonic element that is associated with expressionism is rapid sequencing of scenes, like the cuts and shifts in a movie. Jones’s pistol shots signal the quick shifts from scene to scene. Scenes three through seven culminate with him firing at some imagined demon. The stagecraft conflates with realistic objects and acts with subjective impulses, such as using a pistol to shoot an apparition. These juxtapositions reveal the seams of expressionism and are among the most overtly symbolic moments of the production.
Acting is also different from the ordinary plays. More than once,
O.Neill underlines in his long stage directions that actors should perform
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mechanical movements. For instance, Jeff in scene three [He is throwing a pair of dice on the ground before him, picking them up, shaking them, casting them out with the regular, rigid, mechanical movements of an automaton.] [EJ, 31] The movements of prisoners in scene four are those of automatons. Jones enters the line and he too starts to shovel with mechanical moves. In scene five O’Neill describes the planters in the auction as performing “marionettish movements’". Whereas in scene seven, Jones’ dance becomes “clearly one of a narrative in pantomime”.
One of O’Neill’s greatest assets was his ability to develop sets so that they achieve symbolic poignancy. In scene one, the throne room represents the corrupt nature of Jones’s monarchy. The dramaturgy, with its emphasis on expressionistic exaggerations, subverts the normative expectations of what a throne room looks like. In scene on at the palace:
In the right wall, center, a small arched doorway leading to the living quarters of the palace. The room is bare of furniture with the exception of one huge chair made of uncut wood which stands at the center, its back to rear. This is very apparently the Emperor’s throne. It is painted a dazzling eye-smiting scarlet. There is a brilliant orange cushion on the seat and another smaller one is placed on the floor to serve as a footstool. Strips of matting, dyed scarlet, lead fom the foot of the throne to the two entrances. (EJ 3)
In order to distinguish Jones’s corruption as a monarch, deviates and distorts the portrayal of the throne itself. The choice of color as well as the rough hewn construction of the throne challenges an audience by violating expectations of what a throne should look like. Purple and other more muted, rich colors are generally associated with a monarch’s throne room and the “dazzling, eye-smiting scarlet” is an overt perversion of the conventional norm of representation. Its use is intended to force the audience to make sense of the distorted qualities, specifically to connect the brilliant red with the tainted quality of Jones’s monarchy.
Another scenic element which complements the throne set is the Emperor’s costume. O’Neill’s stage directions develop Brutus Jones’s wardrobe in great detail; his costuming, just as the throne room, is characterized by its expressionistic quality.
In making Jones an emperor, O’Neill accessorizes the character’s costume with garish and colorful items. In this way, the wardrobe has the obvious capacity to identify Jones as emperor and more specifically as a corrupt emperor. The uniform is consistent with the throne room set in that it perverts the norms of what an emperor should look like and challenges an audience to decipher the costume’s symbolism. Its garish quality, particu-
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larly the red pants which may be more suited to a clown’s costume than an emperor’s, suggest that Jones is a buffoon and a pretender. In addition, the uniform, and particularly the pistol, convey a sense of Jones’s physical power. O’Neill’s thesis, that fate’s relentless forces overwhelm our frantic physical efforts, is developed as it becomes apparent that Jones’s power, as represented by the uniform, is ephemeral and illusionary.
Conclusion
The Emperor Jones’ dramaturgy is a combination of varied experimental scenic units. The sum of the parts, result in an effect that is charged with thematic significance. The influence of expressionistic technique resulted in a play that was revolutionary in American theatre. It transcended the parameters of melodrama and rewarded O’Neill’s desire to create drama dependent on experimental scenic elements. The play’s critical and popular success inspired him towards further experimentation.
Literature
1. Bigsby, C.W. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Vol. 1:1900-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
2. Bogard, Travis Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O’Neill. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
3. Bogard T, Bryer J. Selected Letters of Eugene O’Neill, 1988
4. Cramer, J.J. Expressionism in Eugene O’Neill and Elmer Rice, National Library of Canada, 2000.
5. Gelb, Arthur and Barbara. O’Neill: Life with Monte Cristo. New York: Applause, 2000.
6. Miller, Y. Jordan, Eugene O’Neill and the American Critic, Hamden Archon Books London, 1962.
7. O’Neill Eugene, Anna Christie, The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, Vintage Books Edition, November 1972;
8. Perrault, Paul Expressionism in Eugene O’Neill. Quebec: Laval University Press, 1966.
9. Sherf, Mark A Study of the Development of Eugene O’Neill’s Dramaturgy Through a Reconstruction of Significant Productions, 19161964, Drew University, October 2003.
10. Styan, J.L. Modern Drama in Theory and Practice, Volume IV: Expressionism and Epic Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
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