RESEARCH ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION 3

International Referred Research Journal, November, 2011,ISSN- 0975-3486.RNI : RAJBIL 2009/30097,VOL-III * ISSUE 26

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953), recipient of Nobel Prizefor literature, is the creator of serious American drama.His tragedies strike at the very root of the sickness oftoday. His understanding of tragedy stemmed from hisreading of Nietzsche. The cause of suffering of mod-ern man is his loss of faith in God.

In O'Neill's plays, the Greek concept of thefall through the pride is endorsed by the psychologicaltheory of Freud and Jung. His protagonists considerthemselves the sole arbiters of their own destiny.

They pass through the agonizing conflictbetween the conscious and the unconscious. All phi-losophers from Socrates to modern psycho-analystshave understood that the failure to know oneself re-sults in the tragedy of self- destruction.

O'Neill appears to touch every aspect ofAmerican life. The life he knew best was his own. Hestates that: "To me, the tragic alone has left that sig-nificant beauty which is truth. It is the meaning of life-- and the hope. The tragedy of man is perhaps the onlysignificant thing about him."(Raymond 116).

Modern tragedy has to be redefined in thelight of existentialism, humanism, nihilism, absurd,naturalism, pessimism, Freudian Psycho-analyticaltheories, surrealism, etc. Modern man's tragic strugglebegins in his mind when he realizes his inability toperceive what lies beyond him.

Therefore, the modern tragedy is primarilypsychic and experimental. The modern tragic protago-nist is fully aware of the war of contradictory forcesinside his own self. The study seeks to analyze O'Neill'sexpressionistic play, The Emperor Jones from the per-spective of tragic vision.

The Emperor Jones conforms to the Aristote-lian conception of the unity of time, place and action.The time of action is just one night and it takes placein the forest. Jones is pursued by his past misdeeds,which creates a tragic atmosphere.

To escape his punishment, he has to cross theforest in twelve hours' time. According to Raleigh(1965), O'Neill's characters, standing proxy for man-kind itself, are haunted by their sins, mistakes, linkthat binds them for ever to the terrible things they havedone.The Emperor Jones was O'Neill's first expres-sionistic play which expresses the psychological ter-

Research Paper—English

November, 2011

O'Neill's The Emperor JonesTragedy of the "Silver Bullet"

rors and obsessions of Brutus Jones. The expression-ists present the internal actions, dreams, visions, aspi-rations and desires like the technique of interior mono-logue. They give words to unseen voices to express thesecret thoughts of a man's mind.

Jones, the protagonist, is the victim of hisinner sense of guilt. He knows that he is accountablefor the cruelty with which he ruled the islanders. Therevenge by the natives is therefore inevitable. Thisarouses Jones' fear. The natives have already plottedagainst him and Jones must now flee for life. Jones hasconvinced the natives by creating the silver bullet myththat only a silver bullet can kill him.

The silver bullet is the symbol of his pride,and it also stands for worldly wealth and greed formoney. He is under the impression that the nativeswould hardly find a silver bullet. He is lost in the darkand dense forest which symbolizes the inner darknessand confusion of Jones.

According to Doris V. Falk(1958), Jones'shopeless flight through the forest is not from the na-tives at all, but from himself. The flight represents thesoul's attempt to seek salvation and freedom frombondage. The visions of his past stem from Jones per-sonal unconscious and collective consciousness. Thenatives have shot Jones with the silver bullet whichthey made from money.

In the course of his run through the forest,Jones is visited by phantoms and formless fears. Hefires six shots to dispel the fear of darkness. He refusesto surrender to his racial past which is symbolized bythe crocodile god. He fires his silver bullet; his racialgod disappears but Jones, his last resource of emperor-hood exhausted, lies whimpering on the ground. Tragicflaw in his character may be traced to his inordinateambition and greed for money.

According to Winther (1963) O'Neill hasmade his characters the victims of the circumstancesover which they have no control. They fight againstadverse circumstances and though they are defeated,their spirits are never crushed.

Jones is brought to a very complex realiza-tion of himself. The tragic struggle ultimately makeshim aware of the truth of life and the meaning of deathwhich paves the way to accept his tragic destiny. He

* N. Veena* Ph.D. Scholar , Kakatiya University, Warangal. A.P.

RESEARCH ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION4

International Referred Research Journal, November, 2011,ISSN- 0975-3486.RNI : RAJBIL 2009/30097,VOL-III * ISSUE 26realizes that death does not annihilate: it sanctifieslife. Thus the death of the tragic hero reveals the dig-nity and nobility of his struggle against fate.

According to Bentley (273), "tragedy shoulddeal with death", and O'Neill has used death in histragedies. O'Neill's does not believe that death is thenegation of life or that the fear of death destroys thevalue and meaning of life. Out of the tragic predica-ment of man, he strove to create a sense of dignity of

Bently, Eric. The Life of the Drama. University Paperback London: Methuen & Co., 1969:273. Print. Falk, Doris Virginia. Eugene O'Neill andthe Tragic Tension: An Interpretative Study of the Plays. New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1958.Print. Quoted in Raymond Williams' Modern Tragedy.London: Chatto & Windus. 1966:116.Print. Nathan, G. J., The Intimate Notebooks of George Jean Nathan. New York: Knopf. 1932. Print.Raleigh, John H., The Plays of Eugene O'Neill. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 1965.Print. Winther, S.K. Eugene O'Neill - ACritical Study. University of Washington. Seatle NewYork Russell and Russell.1961. 186-312. Print.

R E F E R E N C E

the human being and an awareness of the meaning oflife (Nathan, 180).

O'Neill's protagonists in many cases are notdefeated in their search for their real self. But it is notthe defeat or the success that matters for O'Neill. Thestrength of the man in this world is limited and theodds against which he pitched are mostly insuperable.The tragedy of Jones perhaps enacts the tragic plightof modern man who is the victim of greed and power.