Journal #2

After reading O'Neill's Emperor Jones I found myself pretty lost and confused. At first I thought my confusion stemmed from reading the selected scenes from the middle of the play, but the language was also a huge distraction for me. I was focusing so much on trying to decipher what they were saying I was not paying enough attention to the actual plot. Truthfully, the black dialect always seemed like the language of ignorance to me because it's basically slaughtering proper English. Now that I see it prominently in published literature I think that there are other ways of looking at it. The dialect has a purpose, to establish linguistic identity to the culture, to set them apart from others and enables them to recognize "their own." On another note I think that there is a lot to be said about language through Helga's identity search in Quicksand (but I will save discussion of that for a later post). Back to the O'Neill work, I think that once again the theme is fear. Jones is runnning from the soldiers, gets lost in the woods and encounters a witch doctor and a crocodile. Both seem to terrify him, but he meets his end when he is shot and killed by the silver bullet. I struggled to understand the significance of the silver bullet, I know it's supposed to represent something important because it is mentioned several times. There is definitely a connection to the supernatural in this play, as displayed by the witchdoctor's presence as well as the fact that Jones has a "strong charm." I would be interesting to read the entire play to find out what is really going on here.

T.S. Stribling's "Birthright" depicts the story told by a white men about a black men, a rare occurrence for a white writer to feature a black protagonist. The main character, Peter Siner lays out the scene describing the train and the Jim Crow car in comparison to the rest of the train. The was not shabby, but unkept, as opposed to the rest of the train that was nicer for the white passengers. The purpose of this story however is not to point out the injustice of the segregation on the train, but he does consider other similar instances of injustice such as when his mother worked for Miss Molly Brownell and was never given a biscuit when they were served for dinner. When Peter's thoughts are interrupted by a big brute that obviously recognizes him Peter is startled to find that he was acquainted with the man. As Pack tells Peter of his time in the army and the medal that he had been given for killing four white men, a strange sense of irony unfolds. A black man was REWARDED for killing white men. This is an instance completely unheard of at this time when blacks were severely punished if they were even accused of violence towards anyone who was white. Pack even exclaims, "Yas-suh, I never wuz mo' surprised in all my life dan when I got dis medal fuh stoppin' fo' white men" (Stribling 338) The two reflect on this tremendous turning of the tables and Peter reassures his childhood friend that he was fighting for his country. So why is this piece called Birthright? Possibly because everyone should have the same rights as everyone else. If a white man has the right to take a black man's life, than the black man should also have the right to kill a white man.

Works Cited

O'Neill, Eugene. "The Emperor Jones." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Lewis. New York: 1995. 311-317.

Stribling, T.S. "Birthright." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Lewis. New York: 1995. 333-338.