Postcoloniality Reflected in Eugene O’neill’s the Emperor Jones

Abstract

Post-colonial Studies is a wide discipline with many theories and elements. In this paper, I have tried to investigate some key elements of the post-colonialism and applied them to the Scene I, of theplay, The Emperor Jones. The elements of post-colonialism had to be digged out from the above text. The attempt here was to see the text from the different perspective, to construe it from the post-colonial perspective, although it was staged in early twentieth century and not a post colonial play. The dramatis was very dexterous in writing this play, the relationship between the native of the island, the Emperor and Smithers put forth scrupulously and how they deal with each other, especially what they think about each other has been the basis of this paper, how Europeans are prejudiced towards non-whites, consider non-white inferior to them and how colour-minded they are would be the sole focus of this study. Elements of post-colonialism for the analysis would be imperialism, ambivalence, race and alterity or otherness.