Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape as Mirror Plays

Abstract

The Emperor Jones (1920) and The Hairy Ape (1921-22), are Eugene O'Neill's most successful experiments in expressionism. Considering the similarities in their cyclical structures, mock-heroic protagonists and archetypal symbolism, they are mirror plays whose aspects parallel or complement one another's correspondences. In Emperor, Jones is forced to flee his erstwhile subjects in quest through nightmarish, menacing dark night of the soul (Walpurgisnacht). Once he has exhausted the mana or vital force attached to his silver bullet, he is forced to return to the sun-lit world of death. The Hairy Ape duplicates this order of events while inverting the symbolic content. Yank Smith, the protagonist, is almost immediately deprived of his persona through female duplicity. Emerging from his ship's womblike stokehold, he searches for rebirth through the labyrinthine bowels of the City. Repeatedly eluded by his lost identity, he finally enters the deathly embrace of his alter ego, the gorilla in the zoo. Both plays demonically parody the tragic ritual pattern which has been defined as transition by which through the processes of separation, regeneration, and the return on higher level both the individual and the community are assured their victory over the forces of chaos which are thereby kept under control.! Although Yank Smith has some claims to tragic stature, being described by O'Neill as a symbol in sort of modern Morality play,2 and both protagonists engage in conflicts which probe the mysteries of the corrupted human will, the of neither play is changed. Yank refuses to return at all, and the victory over chaos which society achieves through Jones's assassination re-establishes cabal of Calibans, mindless gang of Yahoos. Nor do Jones and Smith achieve significant recognitions. Moreover, the expressionistic devices take effect less through the access to the unconscious supposedly provided by allegorical characters, anti-realistic staging, and unexpected transformations than through esthetic distancing. As in tragicomedy, which both plays closely resemble, the audience remains at distance, yet within immediate call impersonal, yet strangely involved.3