Existential Alienation and Psychological Descent in The Emperor Jones: An Analysis of Man’s Predicament
Author : Geeta Gupta
Abstract :
O'Neill's major theme was man's disorientation and bedevilment from within and without. Society could not provide him comfort and political systems proved to be a means for self-aggrandizement. Freud and Jung turned inwards to find out various unconscious mechanisms that guide the actions of man. They found that if the external world was understandably, cruel and selfish, the internal world of man was also dark and devilish. O'Neill was not concerned about the temporal, problems, he sought to explore the internal and the external realities. This was his sole concern during the period 1916-1922, when he wrote his realistic and expressionistic plays. The burning issues of the day no doubt interested him but what arrested his attention most was the loneliness of man among men. His plays deal with existential dilemma- man's incapacity to cope with a world that is absurd and senseless, where primeval fears haunt man beneath smooth surface of man's superficial life. The Emperor Jones portrays man’s existential dilemma in face of irrational and unpredictable universe. The paper attempts to examine the existential alienation and psychological regression in the play The Emperor Jones.
Keywords :
Alienation, fear, inheritance, unconscious, primeval.
