MovieChat Forums > The Emperor Jones (1933) Discussion > President Jean Villbrun Sam vs. King Hen...

President Jean Villbrun Sam vs. King Henri Christophe?


Jeffrey Stewart, in the audio commentary, goes to pretty good lengths to prove his argument that President Sam is the inspiration for Brutus Jones, and I don't doubt it, considering that he had been removed from office and killed a mere five years prior to O'Neill's penning the play, and that correspondences exist with O'Neill mentioning Sam as the basis for the play. But, I see quite a lot of King Henri Christophe of Haiti in Jones, as well, especially considering Christophe's reliance on the silver bullet, as well as his implausible rise from slave to monarch. Christoph would commit suicide with the silver bullet; further emphasis on Jones' symbolic talk of how it "takes a silver bullet to kill Brutus Jones." So although Sam was the pretty obvious prototype for the character of Brutus, I doubt that he was the only basis for Jones, but Stewart makes it sound like it

The legend of King Christophe would seem to have inevitably trickled into the character of Brutus, if only because of its legendary fame in both American and Haitian historical discourse. Orson Welles would be inspired by the story of King Christophe for his 1935 "Voodoo Macbeth," although Welles was politically conscious enough to have been aware of President Sam's violent deposition, as well (which was remarkably similar to the decapitation of Macbeth).

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