When the people in a small French town start to turn into rhinoceroses, something must be up. Well, this is exactly what happens in Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. The Theatre of the Absurd, as the title suggests, has some absurd topics. Rhinoceros is no exception. Absurdist plays were very popular in the years following World War II and many playwrights were influenced by the changing times, as seen in Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. As I mentioned before, this play was written shortly after World War II ended. There were also many other events going on in the world at this time. For example, just six years before this play was written, the Korean and Vietnam Wars took place (“Literary”). In 1951, Carl Sandburg and Conrad Richter received the Pulitzer Prize for their work in poetry and fiction (“Literary”). Also in 1951 Paer Lagerkvist won received the Nobel Prize for Literature, color TV was released in the United States, and Libya became and independent nation (“Literary”). Just one year later in 1952, Elizabeth II rose to the throne in Britain and Dr. Jonas Stark discovered a vaccine...
This is a lesson that is still relevant today. Though the acting and dialogue seem to appeal to an older audience, young viewers can still enjoy and learn from this play. Prejudice, suspicion, and thoughtlessness are as prevalent as ever. For any problem, humans will look for a scapegoat. The War on Terror seems to bring similar feelings as those around during the Cold War.
compare to the cold war communist accusations during the period he lived in. The play is
Most of the characters in the play seemed to be fairly young, energetic people. Their problems were so much more manageable and yet handled in a way that did not affect society. Their idea of marriage was so simple. They all knew they would be marrying someone from their territory and raising a family without ever leaving to see what was outside of the territory. To me, that seems like such a sheltered way to live your live. But now day’s things are so much more complicated. Problems that could be manageable are blown out of proportion and marriages end in divorce and broken families. People are constantly moving and unsettled. Stabbings that occurred accidentally in that time are committed on purpose or for no reason today.
coming to an end in 1945. The play was based in the time just before
The play was set in 1912, which was just before World War I when there
The time this play took place in was in modern time, during the twenty-first century.
Initially going into reading this play, I thought it would just be a traditional telling of the environment, setting, and little information about our protagonist. However, I seemed a little odd that the setting was just describing the scenery of the play itself with curtains and we are introduced to the stage manager for the play. The Stage Manager explains significant parts within the play like, scenery, landmarks, and certain objects. Few pages in, we’re finally introduced to two actual character in the play itself. Joe Crowell Jr. and Dr. Gibbs are the characters we are introduced to. As explained by the Stage Manager, Crowell was a college graduate from Massachusetts Tech. However, there was “the war” came to France. This war being World
There are many examples where there have been disagreements in this play. To start off, the home lives have shown the siblings’ rivalry. The conflicts between adults, marriage problems, and “favoritism” between parents and children have proved that there have been problems at home for an immense part of history. This play also shows greediness for many adults today. There are many assumptions that the only problems of this depressing time period is where people only worried about Nazis. Falsely understood, there was much more to worry about; such as money, food, safe places, families, and health. The Diary of Anne Frank has shown many home lives relatively
To conclude, Oscar Wilde has successfully conformed to the model of the well-made play with stock characters and storylines because of how easy it is for the audience to stereotype characters within the play to people they know themselves or other plays/literature etc. Oscar Wilde may have done this in order to create a light hearted way of getting his opinions across to the public without being too serious – scandals and secrets within his own life. The play also leaves the audience thinking and questioning their own lives to what they’ve had to sacrifice to get where they are today.
As we know, the pretext of the play is the aftermath of a war, so I
Starting with the title itself, there’s quite a bit of wordplay in this play. List as many examples as you can find. How does this use of language contribute to the tone and spirit of the play?
...cting as it was being over dramatized. This acts as a contradiction as the playwright is a German playwright and he is acting out of the norms of society showing that nothing is what it seems.
...ith the lack of closure the author has paved many paths, making one unable to give a proper retelling of the play due to various interpretations. The play has also slyly inserted a philosophy on human life, the uncertainty and how it is a major part of human life is portrayed through this play. All these characteristic together make this play a very good play, it makes one want to live forever as to see what future generations would interpret the play as. In conclusion, this text is written to make the readers think and participate as active members in the reading of the play.
An absurd hero is developed by the six tenets of existentialism: anxiety, death, the void, existence precedes essence, absurdity, and alienation. These six tenets explain the overwhelming question, “Why do we exist?”. To understand why we exist, one must first question why the absurd happens. Camus did such. Camus develops the plot of his existential novel through a plethora of absurd events that boosts the overall theme of the novel. One example of this is how the town of Oran turns it back on the sea at random moments of time. This is very strange, why would a town that is isolated between the sea and a mountain range want to turn away from the one source of its salvation and one of the few ways it could connec...
In a more extreme version of the play, directed by Baz Lurhmann, some of the weapons such as swords were replaced by modern day guns, but despite this he still managed to keep it all in context by cleverly placing words, or using other satire. With this paper I hope to produce my own unique version of the play.