Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros written in 1959 is one of his most famous works forming a part of the Post War Avant-Garde Drama of the Theatre of Absurd.
Rhinoceros demonstrates Ionesco’s anxiety about the spread of inhuman totalitarian tendencies in society. Inspired by his personal experiences with fascism during World War II, this absurdist drama depicts the struggle of one man to maintain his identity and integrity alone in a world where all others have succumbed to the beauty of brute force and violence. It is evident that there is a strong autobiographical element in the structure of the play. And for this purpose, it becomes necessary to analyse Ionesco’s history.
Eugène Ionesco was born in 1912 in Rumania, as the eldest child of a Rumanian lawyer and a French woman. His unsettled childhood was owed to the constant shuttling between Romania and Paris. At a young age, he was separated from his parents, leaving him with an indelible impression that happiness exists only in solitary solitude. Ionesco’s portrayal of Berenger serves as an apt expression of this solidarity. After all the chaos and self-evaluation, Berenger …show more content…
In the play, characters repeat ideas and theories they have heard others repeat. At first, everyone is horrified by the violent beasts, but once other people, especially authority figures, collapse in the play, those remaining find it easier and easier to justify the metamorphosis. But by the play’s end, even the violence and atrocity of the rhinos is being praised for its simplicity and beauty. He aimed to question what it was that allowed them to rationalize away their free thought and to subvert their own freewill, what traits in the individual allowed them to be swallowed by general opinion or why it was necessary to believe the same thing that everyone else
Rhinoceros demonstrates Ionesco’s anxiety about the spread of inhuman totalitarian tendencies in society. Inspired by his personal experiences with fascism during World War II, this absurdist drama depicts the struggle of one man to maintain his identity and integrity alone in a world where all others have succumbed to the beauty of brute force and violence. It is evident that there is a strong autobiographical element in the structure of the play. And for this purpose, it becomes necessary to analyse Ionesco’s history.
Eugène Ionesco was born in 1912 in Rumania, as the eldest child of a Rumanian lawyer and a French woman. His unsettled childhood was owed to the constant shuttling between Romania and Paris. At a young age, he was separated from his parents, leaving him with an indelible impression that happiness exists only in solitary solitude. Ionesco’s portrayal of Berenger serves as an apt expression of this solidarity. After all the chaos and self-evaluation, Berenger …show more content…
In the play, characters repeat ideas and theories they have heard others repeat. At first, everyone is horrified by the violent beasts, but once other people, especially authority figures, collapse in the play, those remaining find it easier and easier to justify the metamorphosis. But by the play’s end, even the violence and atrocity of the rhinos is being praised for its simplicity and beauty. He aimed to question what it was that allowed them to rationalize away their free thought and to subvert their own freewill, what traits in the individual allowed them to be swallowed by general opinion or why it was necessary to believe the same thing that everyone else