Eugene O’Neill is considered to be the quintessential modernist American playwright, and this play reflects the immense skill and craftsmanship he possessed even at the start of his professional writing career. The Emperor Jones helped establish O’Neill’s status as a major figure in American theater. The play is delicately structured: Scenes 1 and 8 frame the narrative— only in these two scenes do characters speak other than Jones—while Scenes 2 through 7 consist almost entirely of a single-character interior monologue. All of O’Neill’s character dialogue is written in various forms of dialect, reflecting each character's background, current status, and inner psychology.
Much of Jones’s language in particular is thematically concerned with status and hierarchy. For example, while on the run, he repeatedly derides his rebellious subjects and asserts to himself that he is the Emperor, as though he will somehow escape his fate by virtue of making this statement alone. Additionally, O’Neill’s stage directions are extremely detailed, providing the cast and crew (as well as the reader) with character and costume descriptions as well as prop, movement, and lighting instructions. These directions reveal the playwright’s specific vision for the staging of his play rather than leaving wide room for an actor's or director's interpretation.
