Although, as a play, there is technically no narrator in The Emperor Jones, the character of Brutus Jones may be considered an unreliable narrator. As the central character of the play and the only person who speaks for six of the eight scenes, Jones’s words are the only verbal information the audience can rely on to make sense and give context to what they see happen on stage. However, at the very beginning of the play in Scene 1, Jones and Smithers have a conversation which reveals Jones’s unreliability as the narrator of his own life story:
Jones [Suspiciously] : Why don’t I? [Then with an easy laugh.] You mean ’count of dat story ’bout me breakin’ from jail back dere? Dat’s all talk.
Smithers [Skeptically]: Ho, yes!
Jones [Sharply] : You ain’t ’sinuatin’ I’se a liar, is you?
Smithers [Hastily]: No, Gawd strike me! I was only thinkin’ o’ the bloody lies you told the blacks ’ere about killin’ white men in the States.
Jones [Angered] : How come dey’re lies?
With these few lines, Jones and Smithers establish that Jones has a history of untrustworthiness. Stories of his allegedly sordid background follow him everywhere on the island—so many that at first Jones cannot even keep straight which tale Smithers is referring to. These rumors benefit Jones by building up his fearsome status on the island and allowing him to monopolize power. But, at the same time, Jones chafes at the idea that he may be thought of as a liar.
Jones further plays into this ambiguity when he boastfully lists a series of crimes he may or may not have done prior to arriving on the island, telling Smithers, “maybe I does all dat An’ maybe I don’t. Its a story I tells you.” Thus, this conversation places the entirety of Jones’s character background and justification for leadership on the island under suspicion. These crimes reappear later in the play through the hallucinatory flashbacks Jones experiences as he runs through the forest. Because Jones establishes his unreliability in Scene 1, the narrative is sufficiently destabilized so that neither Jones nor the audience can tell truth from falsehood, thereby reflecting his own internal fracturing.
