In Scene 4 of The Emperor Jones, Eugene O’Neill uses controlled staging and props to enhance the visual imagery at play. The appearance of the uniformed, whip-wielding prison guard and small gang of Black convicts bearing picks and shovels is contrasted with Jones’s dishevelment and empty hands—an image all the more striking for Jones’s near zombie-like bodily imitation of his hallucination:
[The PRISON GUARD points sternly at JONES with his whip, motions him to take his place among the other shovelers. JONES gets to his feet in a hypnotized stupor. He mumbles subserviently.] Yes, suh! Yes, suh! I’se comin’. [As he shuffles, dragging one foot, over to his place, he curses under his breath with rage and hatred.]... [As if there were a shovel in his hands he goes through weary, mechanical gestures of digging up dirt, and throwing it to the roadside.]
Rather than merely believing he has come across another group of travelers through the forest (as he does in Scene 3 when he assumes he’s run into Jeff), in the above quote, Jones is transported by his hallucinations into a total hypnotized stupor—a clear escalation of his mental unraveling. As if in a dream, Jones attempts to join in the work of the other prisoners, but the image of his empty hands going through the mechanical motion of shoveling while the other actors on stage carry real tools only serves to highlight the unreality of this memory. The visual created by the following stage directions is even more arresting:
[Instantly JONES straightens up. With arms upraised as if his shovel were a club in his hands he springs murderously at the unsuspecting GUARD. In the act of crashing down his shovel on the white man’s skull, JONES suddenly becomes aware that his hands are empty. He cries despairingly.]
The image of Jones poised as if holding a shovel upraised, pulsating and ready to strike in anger and desperation—only to discover that his hands are actually, horrifyingly, empty—is visually and thematically powerful. This moment demonstrates how lost he is in the grip of his memories and psychological deterioration. Jones’s muscle-memory mimicry of shoveling in a hypnotized state represents a deep, lasting trauma that lends credence to some of the stories he and Smithers discuss in Scene 1 while also recalling the intergenerational trauma of slavery and colonialist systems of power.
