Eugene O'Neill Paper: O'Neill's View of Man's Situation
... he can from these people. "No, dey ain't all dry yet," he says to Smithers, "I'se still heah, ain't I?" To Jones, he will know when he has taken all he can when he is no longer in power over these people. As long as he is in charge if this empire, then the people are content with paying his taxes. He rules his people sternly, and this is evident in the fact that when he rings his bell, they are expected to come running to serve his needs. The life he has created in the West Indies for himself is a life which he sees as a far cry from his difficulties in the United States, which were numerous and altogether trying on him. He was a former prisoner, imprisoned after allegedly murdering a man over a game of dice. Following his arrest, he attacked a prison guard during work detail, and fled the United States by stowing away on a ship. Jones, however, never supports or denies these claims; rather, he uses them as a means to maintaining his power over the natives. Jones is so blinded by his success, and so absolutely content with his new life, that he repeatedly states the story of how he came to be in power. "From stowaway to Emperor in two years," he states in Act One. Success was not taken lightly by Brutus Jones. Jones lives under the impression that the path he has chosen was based on choices he made of his own accord. He is exploiting his subjects, who are of his own race, and he does so seemingly because he simply "can" do so. He has no feelings of guilt over taking from people who are in a position similar to that which he was in during his years living in America. Rather, he is more focused on his own gains, and Brutus is not aware that the life he has chosen is not of his own doing. He is jeopardizing his own future by continually abusing his own, and he is doing so because he seems to feel that he is deserving of power after years of living under the control of others. He was an outcast, as an African man, then a prisoner, and finally escaped and found his freedom. Once free, however, he did not choose to stay and fight a battle to clear his name in the United States. Instead, he fled, and further cemented the fact that he could never return to America and regain his former existence, whether he wanted to do so or not. Therefore, he took full advantage of his new life, and seized his opportunity to become the exploiter and not the exploited, for the first time in his life. Unfortunately, in the process of becoming free, he sacrificed what some view as the most important type of loyalty- loyalty to one's own people- for the sake of what would turn out to be a reasonably short-lived career as Emperor. When Jones seized this opportunity, he did so because he thought he was taking advantage of a golden opportunity to become a success, which was something he had never been before. In reality, however, he was not doing this because it was his own original idea and desire. He was merely reacting to a lifetime of personal exploitation, during which he had come to be brainwashed into believing that the only way to success was to exploit those less powerful than yourself. Although this is a legitimate way to reach one's goals in today's society, as it likely was during the time in which Jones ruled, it was not an original idea for Jones'. After living for years in the United States, as a black man during a time when equality was a non-factor, he was never subject to a life in which having equal opportunities was an option. All he knew, of those in power taking advantage of others, was applied to his new "empire." Brutus Jones desired to become a leader, which was a...