LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 17:12 December 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
         Dr. S. Chelliah, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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A Psychological Approach to Eugene O’Neill’s
The Emperor Jones

Dr. Poornima M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.


Abstract

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. This paper attempts to research the psychological elements in the play.

Keywords: Experimental theatre, The Emperor Jones, Psychological study, Hallucinations, Interior Monologue

A Psychological Study of Brutus Jone’s Mind

The play is a psychological study of Brutus Jone’s mind, his fears, visions and dream. “Tom-tom is part and parcel of the psychological action; at first it is the call to war; then it merges into the Emperor Jones’ vision of the slaves working to its beat; finally, it becomes is own throbbing, feverish temples, all the while it’s our heart beating more and more rapidly as we follow his fate.” Lastly the Tom-tom is a symbol of man’s last heart-beat, as well as his death. The consciousness of Jones has been presented through the cinematographic technique of the flashback, fusing the past and present. Here symbol and psychology merge and the whole play is a long drama. Emperor Jones represents the breakdown of a Negroid person mentally under the stress of fear and fatigue.

Brutus Jones was a bold and unscrupulous exploiter who could enter the forest alone, but gradually he became an object figure, as he was scared by the hallucinations. The hallucinations that appear to Brutus Jones during his wild flight in the forest, are at first personal memories, and then they become racial memories as he regresses deeper and deeper into his primitive past under the pressure of fear. The personal memories are of Jeff, the Pullman car porter, whom he killed in a crap game, the chain-gang from which he escaped, and the ‘little formless fears’. The racial memories are of a southern slave auction in which he is for sale, a slave ship in which the Negros are being brought from Africa, and finally of a Congo which-doctor who demands Jones’ sacrifice.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr. Poornima M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in English
Adhiyaman Arts and Science College for Women
Uthangarai 635306
Tamilnadu
India

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