Eugene O'Neill's Quest for Racial Equity in
Three Decades (1913-1939) of American Drama

Dissertation Title Page

Table of Contents

Declaration

Supervisor’s Certificate

Acknowledgements

Abstract

Preface

Chapter One
Racial Encounters and Concerns in Eugene O’Neill’s Plays

Chapter Two
Staging Ethnic Taxonomies: The Politics of Exclusion in Thirst and The Dreamy Kid

“Melting-Pot” Issue: O’Neill in Stage-Center
Clustered Experience Reenacted as Ideas
Racism in Politics, National Psyche
Thirst as Lens: Racism in Public Domains
Regression for Accursed Humankind
Racial Division as Symbolic of “Failed” Humanity
Promoting “Darker Brother”: Black-Irish Synthesis
“Nigger” on the Run: The Dream Differed
Militant Intent: “If We Must Die”
The Birth of “Authentic Negro” Tragedy

Chapter Three
Internalizing Racist Ideology: The Emperor Jones

Ethnic Budge in The Emperor Jones: “Money is Life”
Genesis of Jones and Kleptocracy
The Trajectory of African and Irish American Diaspora
Shifted Perspective: White Imprints on Jones
White Jockey Jockey-Strapped
Jones and the American Sin of Desire
O’Neill’s Kaleidoscopic View of Racism

Chapter Four
Racialized Demarcation of Desire and Traumatized Humanity: All God’s Chillun Got Wings

Anathema of Miscegenation and the American Backdrop
Autobiographical and Historical Implications
Innocence Marred by Experience: Color-Struck Ghetto and Church
Cultures at War: Buying “the Whitest,” Checking the “Nigger”
Whiteness Eroding Black Identity: “Nigger, is you a nigger?”
The Return to Innocence
Love in the Time of KKK
O’Neill’s Clarion Call for Racial Equity

Chapter Five
Identity, Recognition, and the Paradigm of Inclusion: The Iceman Cometh

Life Changed into Landscape
Hickey: The Cultural Archetype of American Salesman
Joe Mott: Answer to O’Neill’s Personal and Political Equations
Life of Pipedream, Living in Equality
“Always Be Closing”: Bigotry’s Stepping In
Evolved and Equated “Darker Brother” in Stage-Center
Continued Quest for Racial Equity and Brotherhood

Chapter Six
(Post)Colonial Scars: The Unfinished Cycle

The Unknown O’Neill: Ideas for Black Plays
“Honest Honey Boy”: Homage to Black Memory
“Bantu Boy”: The Projection of “Original Sin”
“Runaway Slave”: Getting Further to the Bottom
Saying What Happened: Intended Slave-Narratives
O’Neill—A Campaigner of Racial Equity

Afterword

Works Cited

About the Author