O'Neill's Stereotypes When I Was

O'Neill's Stereotypes When I was a child my uncle brought home a silent movie, The Birth of a Nation, and showed it to my parents, grandparents, and me. The story was about the reconstruction era after the Civil War and showed black members of the Senate with their feet up on their desks (bare toes sticking out of their shoes), chewing hayseed, drinking whiskey, and laughing uproariously.

My grandmother turned to me and said, "You see? That's just what it would be like if they ever got power." She was responding to a common racist stereotype that prevailed during the first half of the twentieth century. A stereotype is a repeated image of a whole group of people as though all the people were exactly the same. It does not allow for individuals to be different. Stereotypes get into the collective consciousness through discourse and the media; thus, they are rhetorically constructed.

Once embedded in consciousness, it is difficult to get rid of them. In The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill, written in 1922, this same racist stereotype of blacks is portrayed. Jones has all the stereotypical characteristics associated with blacks at that time. He speaks black dialect, for one thing: "Who dar? Who dat?" (p. 282) and is physically powerful. He is sly in that he has fooled the African natives into thinking he is some kind of god and is getting much money from being their Emperor.

He calls other black people "niggers." Like the stereotypical senators in The Birth of a Nation, Jones reaps rewards he doesn't deserve and has gone hog wild on his sudden empowerment. His ego has become inflated (the stereotypical uppity). This is what whites believed would happen if blacks were ever accepted socially and politically. The stereotype also portrays blacks as violent, and this is shown in the play when we find out Jones killed a man during a crap game and killed a guard with a shovel.

Jones' big downfall, however, is that he is superstitious, for although he was a Baptist and knows there are no devils or "ha'nts," he cannot shake the superstitiousness that O'Neill implies is part of being black. Smithers, the white scoundrel in the story, says at the end, "Stupid as 'ogs, the lot of 'em! Blarsted niggers" (p. 292). The character of Smithers is also stereotypical. The stereotype of the "low-life" survives even today.

The poor (lately they are drug-dealers) are seen as low-class, uneducated, and cowardly, not really bright but conniving, malicious, two-faced liars. The police refer to them as "dirt bags" and "scum buckets." Always male, a low-life often is suspected to be a borderline criminal. Like Smithers, he may or may not have been in prison. Often he's very racist in his beliefs because, like Pa in Huckleberry Finn, it gives him somebody to look down on.

For example, when Smithers finds out the King is in trouble, he's glad and says, "Serve 'im right! Puttin' on airs, the stinkin' nigger" (p. 268). The stereotype of the ignorant, poor white, envious of black success, exists among blacks as well, who label the whole group "white trash." Since Smithers' role is rather minor, it doesn't matter to the story's development that he is based on a stereotype. But because Jones is the main character in the play, the story is considerably weakened by his being a stereotype.

We see some repentance on his part ("Lawd Jesus, heah my prayer! I'se a po' sinner, a po' sinner! I knows I done wrong, I knows it!" p. 285), but not much else in the way of growth or progress in his character. We know from the stereotype that if Jones escaped, he would go back to being the same old Jones. We know from the beginning how the play has to end because we know how the character is going to react to everything that happens.

The play would be considerably more interesting if Jones were a real flesh-and-blood person whose unique character could develop during the action. We see his past come back to haunt him, but the events which we are allowed to see are only the violent events.

One wonders, who was his mother? Did he have a wife? When he was a member of the church, did he truly love God? Did he try to be good? Did he have children? We see the slave block which could help us to feel sympathetic, but it is an experience common to all slaves. The fact that slavery happened fifty or more years before Jones' life began, implies that his anger toward whites is something he's born with like an instinct and reinforces the stereotype.

We don't see anything that would help us to understand Jones as an individual human being with a unique identity. Similar problems occur in The Hairy Ape, which explores the effects of industrialization and the evils of capitalism. The alienated characters are not much more than spokespersons for their social positions. Hank, for example, portrays the worker who is so incapable of thinking that he doesn't know he is being exploited. Paddy speaks for the "good old days," when there was beauty and harmony in seafaring.

Long offers a socialist perspective and sees problems as the fault of government. Mildred is the stereotype of the rich man's offspring, who has grown up surrounded by so much wealth she.