Our Common Nature #8 : Rhinocéros

Our Common Nature #8 : Rhinocéros

Hi everybody, Mary here.

So, here's the eight post in my Our Common Nature series, with the analysis of a play by Eugène Ionesco in 1959, Rhinocéros.

Basically, this is "the theatre of the absurd" ; represented by other authors like Samuel Beckett, it shows the absurdity of our own existences and the meaning of our lives.

In this play, a rhinoceros appears and frightens the inhabitants. The only problem is, slowly across the play, other people will turn into rhinoceroses and follow the group.

It has been analysed as a parody of dictatorships : in the beginning, everyone is afraid of this, because rhinoceroses aren't supposed to exist in this village, and people want to protect their pets against what they look at as the invador.

After a while, people get sadly used to this feature and become more and more acceptant towards the rhinoceroses. In the end, they realise that all these animals have one trait, which is wilderness. Since people, no matter their background or education, is unsatisfied if their general existence, they all turn into rhinoceroses.

No matter the reason, people choose to follow the group that becomes bigger and bigger everyday no matter what ; the Logician, full of knowledge and education, follows because it seems "natural" ; Jean does it because of conformism, Daisy because she finds them "handsome", the Director because "he can't abandon the ship with his employees", his wife follows because she can't leave him like that, and so on and so on.

In the end, Bérenger, the guy that was a socially deviant person and who was mocked by the rest of the village for thinking about "how werid it is to see humans turn into beasts like that" and for seeing things as they are, ends up being the only remaining human on stage, refusing to surrender to the beasts, and when you think about it, it's what we would have known in their shoes, right ?

But think about it this way : the characters don't have as much information as us audience. Just like people who lived under a dictatorship didn't know how harmful their dictators were. People.p, when they see a dictatorship, first see it as a horrible thing, and then get used to it, until the little minority of people following the dictatorship becomes the majority, crushing the resistants under the weight of the majority.

It's the same for trends, really ; and people don't seem to see it... until it's too late.

 

Alright, this is it for now ! As usual, please tell me if there are any mistakes or inaccuracies and I'll see you very soon with the next (and last !) episode of this series.

And as usual, our last word : KIDNEYS !!!