What is it about?

Rhinoceros, written in 1959, is a play about one man watching all the people around him changing into rhinos without any reason or purpose. Finally, the man ends up as the only human being against the army of rhinoceroses. It takes place in a small nameless French town. The main character is an everyman figure (yep, I have just learnt a new word!!). 

This signifies that the situation that arises in the play can happen to everyone and everywhere in the world. Well, deep in my mind, I don’t really think that anywhere in the world people may go through a metamorphosis and change into rhinos... But of course, that’s just an allegory. I need to read the book and look up some extra information to find out what the author meant by this story...

Ionesco: I just can't get used to life

When I hear the name Eugene Ionesco, I associate it with absurdity, bizarre situations and plays that seem to lack sense; but actually have a hidden meaning. I don’t know why but Ionesco amazes me. He was one of the main authors of the Theater of the Absurd; one of the guys who thought that life had no sense and who tried to express that idea through drama plays by creating grotesque and illogical situations. Eugene Ionesco was partly French and partly Romanian and spent his life in Paris and Bucharest. He lived in the twentieth century which was full of major historical events as well as many acts against humanity. He’s seen the society getting rotten, the destructive influence of ideologies on individuals, the meaningless conflicts among people. No wonder that the playwright was desperate from the world. He said:

“For me, it is as though at every moment the actual world had completely lost its actuality. As though there was nothing there; as though there were no foundations for anything or as though it escaped us. Only one thing, however, is vividly present: the constant tearing of the veil of appearances; the constant destruction of everything in construction. Nothing holds together, everything falls apart.”

In some of his plays (e.g. The Bald Soprano), he wants to emphasize the futility of communication among people.

-         

    Why do people talk just to say something, 

    even though it’s not worth saying?

         Why do they follow empty conversations?

-    We will die, anyway, so why the 

    heck do we talk about weather??

      The themes he develops in his other plays are various, but in all of them we  can feel the people’s vanity, the absurdity of human behavior, or the fear of power of society. The last mentioned topic is clearly visible in his play Rhinoceros. And more or less, this blog is about that play, so get excited and keep reading! 


SSources:  
"Rhinoceros." Themes, Motifs, and Symbols. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Feb 2012. <http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/rhinoceros/themes.html>.
 "EUGENE IONESCO QUOTES." Notable Quotes. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Feb 2012. <http://www.notable-quotes.com/i/ionesco_eugene.html>.
AND THE KNOWLEDGE FROM THE CZECH CLASSES...