“In the flying underbelly of the city. Steaming hot, and summer on top, outside. Underground. The subway heaped in modern myth.” (Jones, 1964, prologue).
The above-provided metaphor represents Le Roi Jones’ view on the setting for the short play called “Dutchman”. This expression is indeed significant as it helps the common view of the play to understand the main concerns of the author, which led him to the writing of it. One should notice that the title of the play itself implies provocative hints and allusions that may appear because of the people’s associations of the title of this particular play with the legend which tells the story of “The Flying Dutchman”. Such author’s trick converts the “Dutchman” story into modern myth, which enables him to draw up and articulate the problem of double consciousness, and resolve this problem in the play.
In order to reveal the issue of the double consciousness in that time society, Le Roi Jones mixes the elements of realism, naturalism and non-realism. The main mediators which help in carrying out the author’s main idea are the play’s key characters Clay, a handsome Negro, who is twenty years old, and Lula, a white woman, who is thirty years old. Nevertheless, other characters of the play are also used by the author in order to recover the phenomenon of double consciousness in society.
The white and the black passengers of the subway train, the young black man and the conductor take a ride in the same train. However, the author of the play triggers viewers’ and readers’ imagination and intelligence by the fact that for those passengers this ride ends with the difference. The audience is instigated by Le Roi Jones to make their own conclusion tracing the course of the plot. This can be regarded as another attempt to reveal the author’s concern for the double consciousness to the viewers and readers of the play.
The double consciousness is also represented with the help of the non-realistic, realistic and naturalistic elements concerning the key theme of the play – racism, representing the own disillusioned style of Jones. The main features of the key characters of the play, which enable the author to share his concern regarding the issue of the double consciousness portrayal, are strongly affected by the theoretical conclusions and disillusionment in the issue under consideration of Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud.
With the view to resolve the problem of the double consciousness in the play “Dutchman”, the author addresses his views to the audience through the course of the play. Therefore the viewers and the readers of the play are enabled to draw up the conclusions independently and analyze and evaluate the issue of the double consciousness in accordance with their own moral values, views, and world outlook. This is a really skillful solution to the hard task intended to represent and explain to everybody the problem of the double consciousness, as each person makes his or her own conclusion on the play that he or she has read or seen, therefore, such opinion can not be criticized or considered the wrong or incorrect one.
The factors of realism and naturalism, which correspond to the social changes, involved in the play refer to the advancement of the technologies around the world: airplanes, railroads including subway, automobiles, and of the advancement of the communication devices, such as telephone and the telegraph, radio and television. The author uses the information about those technical and communication devices not by the chance; he considers it significant as the advancement in the speed and the amount of information which might be interchanged between the human beings affects the social aspects of the people’s lives, and thus defines the reasons of the double consciousness. can send. In accordance with the theatre critics’, Cameron Kenneth’s and Gillespie Patti’s opinion the factors of the realism and naturalism, “… arose in part as responses to those new social and philosophical conditions (Cameron and Gillespie, 1996, p. 335).”
One may suggest that striving to reveal and resolve the problem of the double consciousness in accordance with the contemporary social trends, Le Roi Jones follows a realistic style and uses the contemporary place, where, according to the plot of the play, the action takes place, – the subway. The first scene shows the audience a man sitting in a subway, reading a magazine and whistling by against the train’s glass window on the right side. The atmosphere created around him with the help of the darkness, the effects of the dim and flickering light, creates the aesthetic adornments. That is how the author creates the illusion of speed and rules of the social life in which it predominates, serving as a base for the double consciousness, associating these with subway travel.
In order to recover the problem of the double consciousness of contemporary society, Le Roi Jones relays on the main principle of art – he depicts contemporary life and its problems, including the problem under consideration, in realistic settings. I refer to Cameron and Gillespie it appears that: “Jones depicts racism and murder in a modern setting to remind us that racism and racially motivated murders are not issues only relegated to our nation’s past, nor is the issue of institutionalized racism” (Cameron and Gillespie, 1996, p. 304). And indeed, one can firmly state that in the example of racism, the author of the play shows that racism itself is only the tip of the iceberg, but the roots of the problem lay on the problem of the double consciousness in modern society.
The “Dutchman” is also full of the non-realistic elements, which Jones used under the influence of Bertolt Brecht. It might be mentioned that Brecht once wrote: “… to think, or write or produce a play also means to transform society, to transform the state, to subject ideologies to close scrutiny (Goosens, 1997, p. 4).” Therefore, it is seen that being affected by Brecht’s ideas, Jones implemented the revolutionary poetic style in his play which details regards ideologies of race, drawing up the conclusions concerning the social aspects of that ideology and their effect on the problem of the double consciousness.
In order to express the problem under consideration, Jones pays great attention to the circumstances in which the human beings, represented in the frameworks of the play’s characters, are placed. In this context, the murder of Clay can be explained by the social double consciousness and double vision of such socially and historically acceptable issues as segregation and perpetuated institutionalized racism. The play itself is not intended to resolve those issues and, and thus, the problem of the double consciousness in the society, but its plot and scenes should be addressed to the audience and serve as a jolt to provoke it into the idea of reforming social values and believes. Therefore, it is possible to state that this is the way of the double consciousness social problem’s resolution.
Le Roi Jones uses the dialogues between Lula and Clay to draw up the natural fury which follows from those dialogues and reveals the truth about the minds and inter feelings of black America in a sort of ‘nutshell’. The problem of the double consciousness reaches its apogee with the death of Clay, whom Lula violently and wildly kills, and other passengers of the subway train do not condemn her action. Lula tells those riding on the subway: “Get this man off me! … Open the door and throw his body out [she says this about Clay, whom she just killed] … and all of you get off at the next stop” (Jones, 1964, p. 37), and here it is possible to observe the vivid display of the social double consciousness, as this crowd of obeys Lula without any hesitancy or qualms.
After this terrible event, everyone gets off the subway train, acting such a way as if the murder has not just happened in their own eyes. At the end of the play “Dutchman” another black man, who happens to get on that disastrous subway train, sits near Lula. One may suggest that such way the author represents the phenomenon of cyclical pattern, which can not be overcome unless the double consciousness’ problem would be resolved. The play itself is not intended to resolve this problem, but it reveals and articulates the dry facts for the audience, which should be judged and evaluated by it. It may be proposed that the author expected that after such analysis is supposed to be made by the audience, the society would change its attitude to the crucial moral values and beliefs.
Works Cited
Cameron, Kenneth and Gillespie, Patti. Enjoyment of Theatre4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996.
Goosens, Shay. Bertolt Brecht: A Theatrical Genius. NY: Double Apple, 1997.
Jones, Le Roi. Dutchman. New York: William and Morrow, 1964.