The Identity Dilemma In The Emperor Jones

Eugene O’Neill is one of the American most famous playwrights, and therepresentative writer of expressionism, as well the founder of American nationaldrama. He had experimentally integrated realism, naturalism, symbolism,expressionism, modern psychoanalysis, inner monologue, narration, and otherdramatic art techniques in his drama, formed his own unique artistic style. His everyexperiment reflects the mainstream ideology of that period in America, making greatoriginality on American dramatic techniques.The Emperor Jones published in1920is Eugene O’Neill’s first full-length playwhich uses expressionist techniques in drama writing for the first time. It establishedO’Neill’s status in American playdom or even in the world literature circles. Thispaper tries to analyze Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones through the perspective ofpost-colonialism. Focus on post-colonial theory of identity,“self”,“the other”, andFanon’s anti-colonial strategy to discuss the identity construction of the colonists andthe colonialized.The construction of Jones’s identity is based on “self” and “the other”. Jonesbrings the culture value from the white society into the island, thinks that theindigenous inhabitants of the island are ignorant, thus this “inferior” shows thesuperiority of Jones as “self”. In the process of the islanders’ resistance, the “myth”made up by him is deeply embedded in the heart of the islanders, which essentiallyshows the identities of them are still “the other” rather than the owner. In the processof rule and fight, the two sides of cultural identity have been lost.This paper mainly analyzes black Jones’s identity construction of the emperorand god, as well the revelation of his true identity and regression process, reveals theroot of the tragedy caused by the cultural hegemony through analyzing the identitydilemma of Jones. This paper believes that through the application of identity,“self”and “the other” in The Emperor Jones, it can be found that the identity construction ofJones is built on the basis of the white cultural hegemony, but is always tangled by thenature of his identity, inevitably lead to the sad ending. This also provides a newperspective for us from post-colonialism to research the problem of identity construction.This paper is divided into five parts. The first part is an introduction of EugeneO’Neill and his achievements, the literature review of research on The Emperor Jonesand the significance of this study; The second part introduces post-colonial theoryfrom the theoretical basis, representatives and several key concepts; The third partanalyzes multiple identity construction of Jones; The fourth part explains the identitydilemma of Jones by analyzing the phantoms in the jungle; The fifth part uses Fanon’santi-colonial strategy to interpret that violent revolution is the only way of “the other”for national liberation, and the only path to find self-identity through the perspectiveof the islanders. And the last part is conclusion.