Stereotypes in O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape

Introduction: Stereotypes and the Cultural Imagination

When I was a child, my uncle brought home a silent film, The Birth of a Nation, and showed it to my parents, grandparents, and me. The story was set during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War and depicted 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 members of that group were exactly the same. It does not allow for individuals to be different. Stereotypes enter the collective consciousness through discourse and the media; they are, in this sense, rhetorically constructed. Once embedded in consciousness, they are difficult to dislodge.

Racial Stereotyping in The Emperor Jones

In The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill, written in 1922, this same racist stereotype of Black Americans is portrayed. Jones embodies nearly all the stereotypical characteristics associated with Black people at that time. He speaks in Black dialect — "Who dar? Who dat?" (p. 282) — and is physically powerful. He is portrayed as sly, having convinced the African natives that he is a kind of god while extracting considerable wealth from his role as their Emperor. He refers to other Black people using a racial slur. Like the stereotypical senators depicted in The Birth of a Nation, Jones reaps rewards he is not seen as deserving and has become intoxicated by his sudden empowerment. His ego has grown inflated — the stereotypical image of the "uppity" Black man — which reflects what many white Americans believed would happen if Black people were ever accepted socially and politically.

The stereotype also portrays Black men as violent, and this is borne out in the play when we learn that Jones killed a man during a crap game and murdered a prison guard with a shovel. Jones' central downfall, however, is his superstition. Although he was a Baptist and knows intellectually that there are no devils or "ha'nts," he cannot shake the superstitious fear that O'Neill implies is an intrinsic part of his racial identity. The white character Smithers sums up this dismissive view at the end of the play: "Stupid as 'ogs, the lot of 'em! Blarsted niggers" (p. 292).

The Stereotype of the 'Low-Life': Smithers

The character of Smithers is also stereotypical. The figure of the "low-life" survives even today. The poor — more recently associated with drug dealers — are stereotyped as low-class, uneducated, and cowardly: not especially bright but conniving, malicious, and dishonest. Law enforcement personnel have historically referred to such figures with derogatory slang. Always male, the low-life is often suspected of being a borderline criminal. Like Smithers, he may or may not have served time in prison. Frequently he holds deeply racist beliefs because, much like Pap Finn in Huckleberry Finn, racism gives him someone to look down upon. When Smithers learns the Emperor is in trouble, he is openly pleased: "Serve 'im right! Puttin' on airs, the stinkin' nigger" (p. 268). This particular stereotype — the ignorant, poor white man who is envious of Black success — exists in Black cultural consciousness as well, where the entire group is sometimes labeled "white trash."

Conclusion: The Cost of Stereotyping

The problem is that they are one-dimensional characters. We can see them struggling against the unnatural industrial surroundings in which they must live. But we learn nothing about them beyond where they fit in the hierarchy of the American workforce — just as we learn only that Jones was primitive, aspiring to be civilized, and ultimately confronted by his so-called "native" origins. That is the trouble with accepting stereotypes.

Except for what she had read and seen in films, my grandmother never actually knew a Black person. A whole dimension of experience that might have added richness and meaning to her life was closed off by her prejudices. Stereotypes prevent us from seeing people as human beings we can appreciate or dislike on an individual basis. They deny us the richness of diversity. In The Hairy Ape and The Emperor Jones, the use of stereotypes is not empowering — there is no hope. The characters cannot escape their social positions or their stereotypical images, and we never truly discover who they are in relation to anything beyond those positions. The plays are diminished as a result, and so, by extension, is our understanding of the human beings they purport to represent.