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    Rhinoceros-Geetika-3rd Year

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    Geetika Sharma
    1) Eugène Ionesco's 1959 play Rhinoceros examines the spread of "Rhinoceritis", a disease that causes people to transform into rhinoceroses, in a small French town as an allegory for conformity and blind acceptance of popular ideologies. 2) The play criticizes how ideas presented for reasonable discussion can become monstrous when widely accepted, exemplified through the character Botard's support of communism. 3) While often viewed as an anti-Nazi work, Ionesco intended to condemn all forms of totalitarianism. The lone holdout against transforming, Berenger, preserves his individuality more through indifference than conscious choice.

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    Rhinoceros-Geetika-3rd Year

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    Geetika Sharma
    359 views3 pages
    1) Eugène Ionesco's 1959 play Rhinoceros examines the spread of "Rhinoceritis", a disease that causes people to transform into rhinoceroses, in a small French town as an allegory for conformity and blind acceptance of popular ideologies. 2) The play criticizes how ideas presented for reasonable discussion can become monstrous when widely accepted, exemplified through the character Botard's support of communism. 3) While often viewed as an anti-Nazi work, Ionesco intended to condemn all forms of totalitarianism. The lone holdout against transforming, Berenger, preserves his individuality more through indifference than conscious choice.

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    Essay on Eugene Inoesco's play Rhinoceros

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    rhinoceros-geetika-3rd year

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    1) Eugène Ionesco's 1959 play Rhinoceros examines the spread of "Rhinoceritis", a disease that causes people to transform into rhinoceroses, in a small French town as an allegory for conformity and blind acceptance of popular ideologies. 2) The play criticizes how ideas presented for reasonable discussion can become monstrous when widely accepted, exemplified through the character Botard's support of communism. 3) While often viewed as an anti-Nazi work, Ionesco intended to condemn all forms of totalitarianism. The lone holdout against transforming, Berenger, preserves his individuality more through indifference than conscious choice.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    359 views3 pages

    Rhinoceros-Geetika-3rd Year

    Uploaded by

    Geetika Sharma
    1) Eugène Ionesco's 1959 play Rhinoceros examines the spread of "Rhinoceritis", a disease that causes people to transform into rhinoceroses, in a small French town as an allegory for conformity and blind acceptance of popular ideologies. 2) The play criticizes how ideas presented for reasonable discussion can become monstrous when widely accepted, exemplified through the character Botard's support of communism. 3) While often viewed as an anti-Nazi work, Ionesco intended to condemn all forms of totalitarianism. The lone holdout against transforming, Berenger, preserves his individuality more through indifference than conscious choice.

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    Name- Geetika Sharma

    Course- B.A (Honours) English


    Year- 3rd
    Roll number- 160213

    Question- Critically examine Rhinoceritis as depicted by Ionesco.


    Eugène Ionesco's ​Rhinoceros​ is a post-war avant-garde play, written in ​1959​. The play
    structured in three acts is about the epidemic of Rhinoceritis which spreads rampantly in a
    provincial town in France. As the play progresses, more and more people transform into
    rhinoceroses. The play was also included in Martin Esslin's ​The Theatre of the Absurd​.
    The play is a critique on conformism and general tendency of people to unquestioningly accept
    a popular ideology. It is the ideology becoming idolatry that Ionesco loathes the most.
    Rhinoceritis becomes an allegory for people blindly following new schools of thought and trends.
    In his preface to the American school edition of Rhinoceros, Ionesco talks about this mental
    mutation: ​"I don't know whether you have noticed, but when people no longer share your
    opinion, when you can no longer reach an understanding with them, you have the impression
    you are trying to get through to monsters… To rhinoceroses¿ For example. They have the same
    mixture of ingenuousness and ferocity. They would kill you without a qualm if you did not think
    as they do. And in the last quarter of this century history has given us clear proof that people
    transformed in this way are not just like, but truly become rhinoceroses".

    The play has been largely perceived as an Anti-Nazi play but it's not just Nazism that Ionesco
    attacks but all the forms of totalitarianism. B. Mangalam, in her essay ​'Who's Afraid of
    Rhinoceros?'​, reminds her readers of the anti-communist position that Ionesco held and the
    simple fact that play was written during the cold war. To quote her, ​""The aim of this play was to
    denounce, to express how an ideology gets transformed into idolatry...how an idea, which was
    reasonable enough for a discussion at the start, can become monstrous..." The reference
    obviously is to expansion of communist regimes. To be sure, no one would explain Nazism as
    an ideology that was reasonable enough for discussion at the start." ​In the play, Ionesco
    condemns French intellectuals associating with communism through the character of Botard.
    Botard is ridiculed and shown as this narrow minded stock character that is incapable of thinking
    for himself. His association with communism becomes apparent when he quotes Karl Marx.
    Ineffectiveness of communism is shown when Botard transforms into a rhinoceros as well.

    It is interesting that Ionesco chooses Rhinoceros for the metamorphosis. Rhinoceros is a


    solitary animal that steers away from crowded places and the fact that rhinoceroses move in a
    herd in the play indicates towards the mob mentality and human savagery. In fact, as per the
    stage directions, rhinoceroses are not shown in their full form but are heard or shown partially.
    This shows that process of transformation is more important than the transformation itself. It is
    also important to note that uniforms worn by Nazi occupiers and Iron Guard legionnaires are of
    the same color as rhinoceros' skin. B. Manglam in her essay shifts our attention how image of
    rhinoceros represents pride of Africa. No wonder, Rhinoceros is used to represent the political
    other and it's monstrosity.

    The collective consciousness of people is hinted at the beginning of the play itself. In the act 1,
    we see all the characters having similar reactions to the appearance of rhinoceros and speaking
    the same dialogues. Phrases such as "well, of all the things!" or "it's never too late", is spoken
    by different characters more than twenty times in the play. This shows that despite being
    different, thought processes of the masses are similar. Similarly, Botard's calling the entire thing
    'a collective psychosis' is another hint for collective consciousness.

    As observed by Dilip K. Basu in his ​Introduction to the Worldview edition of Rhinoceros​, there is
    no political reason for which characters choose the metamorphosis. Different characters choose
    the transformation for different reasons. Expansion and resistance is rather personal than
    political. Dudar and Jean succumb to Rhinoceritis for the simple reason that everyone else is
    doing it and they believe that personal welfare is ultimately in following the mass opinion.
    Ionesco exposes the hollow lives that men like Dudar and Jean live. From the outside, they look
    like men of purpose but from the inside they are lost and out of touch with their individuality.
    Similarly Daisy and Mrs. Boeuf's transformation is the result of lack of self-worth and placing
    one's happiness in others. Mrs. Boeuf's readily becomes rhinoceros when she discovers that
    her husband has become one. Similarly, Daisy fixates her attention to giving motherly care to
    Bérenger and losing touch with the rest of the world. This lack of thought is resultant of another
    kind of Rhinoceritis called patriarchy where women think of themselves in relation to their male
    counterparts. Ironically, Berenger who is thought to be a drunkard slacker by everyone else is
    able to preserve his individuality and save himself from the epidemic. However, his resistance is
    more from his initial indifference than a conscious well-thought decision.

    As noted by B. Mangalam and Dilip K. Basu, Ionesco's condemning all the collectivities as
    totalitarian in intention is problematic as one wonders what other ways are there to represent
    the interests of the marginalised? Similarly, Ionesco does not check or question his propagation
    of capitalism by glorifying the individual. He fails to question or even recognize the dominant
    ideology of the first world countries.

    Thus, the bigger questions about morality, society, culture and politics are tackled through the
    disease of Rhinoceritis.

    Bibliography

    ● Ionesco, Eugéne. Rhinoceros. Delhi: Worldview Publications, ​2015​.

    ● Basu, Dilip K. Introduction. Rhinoceros, by Eugene Ionesco, Worldview

    Edition, Delhi, ​2015​, pp. 9-38.

    ● "Preface to Rhinoceros". Rhinoceros, by Eugene Ionesco, Worldview

    Edition, Delhi, ​2015​, pp. ​149-160​.

    ● Mangalam, B. "Who's Afraid of Rhinoceros". Rhinoceros, by Eugene

    Ionesco, Worldview Edition, Delhi, ​2015​, pp. ​245- 257​.

    ● Kumar, Nitin N. "The Last Man Left: Questioning Absurdity in Rhinoceros".

    Rhinoceros, by Eugene Ionesco, Worldview Edition, Delhi, ​2015​, pp.


    233-244​.

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