The Analysis of Greek Tragic Elements in The Emperor Jones

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Critics have often placed the work of Eugene O'Neill in the tradition of Greek tragedy : John Mason Brown finds in O'Neill's best plays a demonstration of "Greek-Revival"(126) ; Doris Falk remarks, "The greatest heroes and heroines of O’Neill's plays belong to … the tradition of Prometheus, Oedipus…"(5). O'Neill's own remark that "the Greek dream in tragedy is the noblest ever" (Peery 281) even more convinces us of his devotion to the Greek tradition in tragedy.
The Emperor Jones is one of O'Neill's plays which reflect the Greek tragic tradition to a great extent. This play shows a number of parallels to the Greek tragic elements demonstrated in Aristotle's Poetics which, according to F. L. Lucas, is the best starting point for the study of tragedy to this day(13) : the play evokes the emotions of fear and pity (catharsis) ; the hero is a formidable character who has harmatia (tragic flaw) ; the plot shows peripeteia(reversal) and anagnorisis (recognition) ; the play observes the unities of time, place, and action ; the music evokes fear and pity ; the scenes are spectacular ; and the play has chorus - characters, though not the actual chorus.
Alexander Woollcott calls this play "an extraordinarily striking and dramatic study of panic fear." "To invoke this pity and fear," he further says, is "part of the secret of The Emperor Jones"(5). In fact, this play produces in the protagonist and in the audience a high pitch of emotions of fear and pity, the excitation and purgation of which is the function of tragedy according to Aristotle (11). The protagonist, Brutes Jones, the Negro "emperor" of a West Indian island, experiences terrible fear as he flees(from the native negroes rebelling against his tyranny) through a forest at night. He encounters a number of ghostly figures : "the little Formless Fears" which represent his own fears(Frenz 32), the ghosts of two men he murdered in the past, the ghosts of his ancestors, a monstrous witch - doctor, and a huge crocodile. The dark forest and eerie glow of moonlight provide a ghastly setting for these dreadful encounters. Furthermore, the natives' insistent drumming("tom-tom"), enhances Jones' panic. Through this long night's ordeal, the Jones rapidly degenerates, step by step regressing to a state of abject terror ; his clothes are discarded to leave him almost naked like the natives. He is exhausted both physically and mentally : he feels hot, tired, hungry, and increasingly terrified. This reversed fortune of the protagonist, however striking it may appear, would hardly arouse pity in the audience if his role in the play simply ends with being a tyrant punished for his past sins. According to Aristotle, a very bad man coming to a bad end does not arouse pity(24).
However, the major role of Jones in the play seems to be a representative of all American black people whose history, revived in scenes V and VI(the episodes of a slave auction and a slaveship), is sad enough to stimulated universal sympathy. Doris Falk remarks that the idea "which excited O'Neill in The Emperor Jones was Jung's fundamental premise -- the existence and power of the collective unconscious." She explains Jung's theory: "The mind of a given man contains ideas from the collective unconscious which come to him simply by virtue of his membership in the human race, as well as ideas inherited from his own specific race, tribe, and family" (66). We indeed see the revelation of the "collective unconscious"in Jones when he echoes his ancestors desperate wail and rowing motion on board the slave-ship in scene VI :
A shudder of terror shakes his whole body as the wail rises up about him again. But the next time, his voice, as if under some uncanny compulsion, starts with the others. As their chorus lifts he rises to a sitting posture similar to the others, swaying back and forth. (30)
In this scene, Jones is portrayed as a miserable American black son, who has long suffered the injustice and humiliation perpetrated by the white people against him, and consequently arouses the audience's sympathy both for his person and for his present ordeal. In sum, as Woollcott observes, the emotions of pity and fear are presented as predominating forces in this play.