The Emperor Jones

By Eugene O'Neill

Brutus Jones, a former Pullman car porter wanted in the United States on two murder charges, has established himself as the self-proclaimed ruler of a West Indian island. Warned that his subjects are about to rebel, he flees to the jungle — sick with fright — where he is plagued by ghosts of the men he has murdered and haunted by visions of injustices done to his race. Powerful scenes, punctuated by beating tom-toms, suggest Jones's panic as he flees his angry countrymen and his own personal demons.
First produced in 1920, The Emperor Jones helped establish O'Neill's reputation as one of America's most important dramatists. Bold and expressionistic, the play was an instant success on the stage and has remained one of the staples of the dramatic repertoire. It is now available to a wide audience in this attractive, inexpensive Dover Thrift Edition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Feb 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9780486159607

Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O’Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the US the drama techniques of realism, earlier associated with international playwrights Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg. The tragedy Long Day’s Journey into Night is often numbered on the short list of the finest US plays in the twentieth century, alongside Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

Book preview

SCENE ONE

SCENE—The audience chamber in the palace of the Emperor—a spacious, high-ceilinged room with bare, white-washed walls. The floor is of white tiles. In the rear, to the left of center, a wide archway giving out on a portico with white pillars. The palace is evidently situated on high ground for beyond the portico nothing can be seen but a vista of distant hills, their summits crowned with thick groves of palm trees. In the right wall, center, a smaller 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 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 from the foot of the throne to the two

Reviews for The Emperor Jones

[joririchardson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"The Emperor Jones" was the 2nd of two plays I read by Eugene O'Neill, both published in 1921.This play opens with the last of the many servants and subjects of a self-made "emperor" sneaking out from the palace and into the jungle. The setting is an unknown island in the West Indies, where Brutus Jones, a black convict who fled the United States, has set himself up as an emperor with absolute power and luxury. A man named Henry Smithers appears to be 2nd in command, a sort of false friend to the emperor, and he is the first to learn that all of the slaves have slipped away into the woods. We learn that Smithers is the only white man on the island, and while he sneeringly sees this as an advantage, the emperor and everyone else see him as an outsider and a minority. When the slaves begin a war dance and begin marching toward the palace, the emperor decides to do what is hinted as his specialty - run. And so, he runs through the dark jungle at night, though where he is going is unclear. After all, this is an island.He is eventually caught, and forced to face all of his worst fears - many of which seem to be about himself.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Another creepy story. I like the way he sets up his staging, but I would hate to design it. This book doesn't get to stay on my shelves.