Eugene O’Neill’s 1920 play The Emperor Jones falls under the genre of Expressionism. The term Expressionism refers to a subgenre within the larger literary movement known as Modernism, which became popular in the early 20th century. Expressionist plays are characterized by protagonists who undergo spiritual awakenings and suffering, as Brutus Jones does throughout the duration of The Emperor Jones.
O’Neill’s play is contemporary to the time in which he was writing. Therefore, the struggles that plague Jones, Lem and the other native characters, and Smithers invoke connections to ongoing political and social events that the audience would have been extremely familiar with—namely, the U.S. occupation of Haiti, as well as a more broad critique of racism, colonialism, and exploitation.
Other elements of The Emperor Jones that indicate its status as a modernist play include O’Neill’s experimentation with form through the use of a nonlinear narrative held together by a frame story and flashbacks, the incorporation of social realism in the hierarchical structure of the island, the detailed psychological exploration of Jones (who experiences a deeply subjective and distorted perception of reality), and the deliberate, creative staging and use of sound, set design, and costumes to symbolically represent the inner world of Jones’s mind.
