Bérenger's Dubious Defense of Humanity in Rhinocéros
Author(s): G. Richard Danner
Source: The French Review, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Dec., 1979), pp. 207-214
Published by: American Association of Teachers of French
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THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. LIII, No. 2, December 1979 Printed in U.S.A.
Berenger's Dubious Defense of Humanity in
Rhinoceros *
by G. Richard Danner
RHINOCEROS IS NOT AN ALLEGORY. Few readers are likely to agree at the outset with
this assertion, because for most interpreters of the play, starting with its author,
Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoc6ros is indeed allegorical-or at least broadly symbolic.
The meaning of the drama must be explained in dualistic terms, so the argument
goes: good versus evil, Berenger against the world, humanity refusing to succumb
to the grotesque epidemic of rhinoceritis, the individual-flawed but admirably
courageous-celebrating selfhood in defiance of conformism or totalitarianism,
language holding its own in the face of rampant noncommunication.
In the field of autoexegesis Eugene Ionesco has few peers for prolixity. Unless
he has been deliberately mystifying us, his assessment of the import of Rhinoceros
is clear. Having described Denis de Rougemont's 1938 encounter with Nazi mass
hysteria in Nuremberg, Ionesco claims that Rhinoceros, possibly having this
incident as its point of departure, is "sans doute une piece antinazie" but alsoespecially-a play "contre les hysteries collectives et les 6pidemies qui se cachent
sous le couvert de la raison et des idees...." The work is, he contends, the rather
objective description "d'un processus de fanatisation, de la naissance d'un totalitarisme qui grandit, se propage, conquiert, transforme un monde..." (NCN, p.
290). Interviewed in June 1977 during the fiftieth annual meeting of the American
Association of Teachers of French, Ionesco articulated an expanded view of the
play consistent with his earlier position; Rhinoceros now evidently signifies for
him "qu'il faut etre non seulement contre le nazisme ... et contre tous les
totalitarismes, mais aussi ... contre les ideologies qui mettent curieusement une
barriere entre l'homme et l'homme, et qui empechent l'entente."2
That numerous critics, as well as countless casual spectators and readers, have
discovered these and similar meanings in the play is not at all surprising. One can
easily be persuaded by the ostensible common-sense logic of the text itself (the
stark man-versus-beast dichotomy) to side with Berenger at the end. Furthermore,
though authorial commentary is to be sure no more definitive than any other
interpretation of a work, Ionesco's remarks on Rhinoceros may acquire prima
* This essay is an expanded version of a paper presented at the second annual meeting of the
Philological Association of the Carolinas, held in March 1978 at Winthrop College (Rock Hill, S.C.).
1 Notes et contre-notes (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), pp. 277-78.
2 Eugene Ionesco and Jean-Louis Barrault, "Dialogue sur le theatre," French Review, 51, 4 (March
1978), 520.
207
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208
FRENCH REVIEW
facie credibility because they are extensive and quite specific. Bolstered by the
playwright's own detailed observation, Leonard Pronko, for example, can declare
that "the meaning of Rhinoc6ros is clear enough. Ionesco laments the lack of
independence, of free thought, and individuality that inevitably result in totalitar-
ianism of one kind or another."3 Since, as Pronko points out, Ionesco's "method
is indirect" (p. 106), interpreters have tended, like the author himself, to consider
the play as broader in scope than an attack on Nazism. Most criticism has had a
Manichean perspective, however: whatever may be suggested by rhinoceritis, it is
viewed as a menace; conversely, B6renger is treated as a sympathetic or even
heroic figure, undeniably blemished but finally admirable as the last defender of
humanity in a hostile world scarred by brutish crowd behavior.
The common denominator linking a wide range of dualistic interpretations of
Rhinoceros is their allegorical basis. The assumption that the play functions
chiefly as allegory implicitly informs judgments such as these: Rhinoc6ros as "a
commentary on political dictatorship" and also "on educational and religious
'truth' " (Pronko, p. 106); as a catchall treatise denouncing every form of fanaticism
(Jean-Herv6 Donnard, who confidently terms the drama "cette piece si claire"); as
a brief against conformism as well as totalitarianism (Genevieve Serreau, Martin
Esslin, George E. Wellwarth, Walter Sorell, Allan Lewis; on the other hand,
lonesco claims not to have been attacking conformism in the play-NCN, p.
290). 4 Etienne Frois, while acknowledging the play's presumed antitotalitarian
dimension, relates Rhinoc6ros to the earlier plays La Cantatrice chauve and La
Lefon, in which lonesco "s'est moque de ceux qui font un mauvais usage des
mots...."5,, According to Frois, in fact, Rhinoc6ros, like all of lonesco's other plays,
is principally the "satire du langage stereotyp6," combined-and thus removed
from the typical lonesco category of "jeu gratuit"-with social criticism and
defense of man (p. 37).
While these critics may not openly classify Rhinoceros as an allegory, their
judgments appear to be founded on a presupposition of allegorical structure-in
the sense that allegory may be considered to exist when "the events of a narrative
obviously and continuously refer to another simultaneous structure of events or
ideas, whether historical events, moral or philosophical ideas, or natural phenomena."6 What undermines such approaches to Rhinoc6ros is that in this play the
hypothetical parallel of overt and covert layers is neither obvious nor continuous.
It is difficult to understand how the play can be considered "one of the purest
3 Avant-Garde: The Experimental Theater in France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963),
p. 105.
4 Jean-Herv6 Donnard, Ionesco dramaturge ou l'artisan et le d6mon (Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1966),
p. 138; Genevieve Serreau, Histoire du "nouveau theatre" (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), p. 56; Martin Esslin,
The Theatre of the Absurd, rev. updated ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 1969), p. 151; George E.
Wellwarth, The Theater of Protest and Paradox, rev. ed. (New York: New York University Press,
1971), pp. 71-74; Walter Sorell, Facets of Comedy (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1972), p. 281; Allan
Lewis, Ionesco (New York: Twayne, 1972), pp. 14, 68.
5"Rhinoceros," in Ionesco: Analyse critique (Paris: Hatier, 1970), p. 6.
6 Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, enlarged ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1974), p. 12.
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BERENGER'S DUBIOUS DEFENSE OF HUMANITY
209
examples of a didactic and ideological play" (Sorell, p. 281) if it fails to p
basic test for allegory, which requires that the work's "materials be so em
in a logical organization or pattern that they represent meanings indepen
the action described in the surface story."7 The structural patterns of Rhinoc
do not in themselves constitute self-contained signs of political or social alleg
To construct an allegorical overlay (either stable or polyvalent) one must
beyond the text. To do so, however, is to participate in a game without rules.
the anomaly of the critic as free-wheeling tennis player: frustrated beca
exegetical net smashes persist in falling long, he paints a new base line cl
the fence.
If we disregard external evidence (the author's views except insofar as they
impinge upon text-based issues, meanings imposed by various stage productions,
imagined analogies between the drama and historical events), we discover that the
thematic import of Rhinoceros is less transparent than has often been contended.
Having stripped away all elements foreign to the text, one must attempt to answer
some fundamental questions about the nature of literature in general and about
this dramatic work in particular. (1) What relationships, if any, exist between a
concept in literature and its empirical applications? (2) What does it mean to be
human-in the implied internal definition of the term found in the play? (3) How
effectively does Berenger defend the human condition? (4) Is rhinoceritis necessarily bad, in light of the play's dynamics, or is it an understandable response to
the condition it replaces-human form essentially devoid of humanness?
In the first place, it must be made clear that Berenger is not a spokesman for
any real-life notion of humanity, nor is Ionesco's version of rhinoceritis a
pragmatic phenomenon suitable for the research projects of social scientists.
Rhinoceros, like any significant literary work, does offer its audience an implied
analogy with human experience. But analogy is never identity. B6renger exists
only in the text. He has no knowledge of the struggles of the individual in our
society; he is unaware of our martyred minorities, the tyranny of technology and
bureaucratization, brainwashing, and governmental policy formulated in defiance
of accountability to the public. Those who insist on treating Berenger as an
advocate of a historical concept of humanity must decide at the outset which
concept they will have him defend and which collective threat they will have him
attack. Since the play does not answer these important questions, partisans of this
approach to literature find themselves free to mold Berenger like a lump of soft
modeling clay: Berenger the anti-fascist today; Berenger the anti-Communist
tomorrow. Who knows? We may soon be asked to consider Berenger as the
Lillian Hellman of French theater, however great the ontological distance between
the events described in Scoundrel Time and the action of Rhinoceros. Playing the
parlor game of pin-the-parable-on-the-personage may be intellectual fun, but as
a substitute for critical method it is a pastime too undisciplined to be illuminating.
Literary criticism and sociology are both respectable avenues for coming to terms
7 William Flint Thrall and Addison Hibbard, A Handbook to Literature, rev. and enlarged by C.
Hugh Holman (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1960), p. 8.
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210
FRENCH REVIEW
with certain kinds of reality, but they are governed by different rules and they are
further distinguished by separate definitions of what is real. Since Berenger's
reality is contained by the play, it is the play alone that we must consult in order
to determine what the notion of humanity might mean to Berenger and to those
around him.8
From the outset we find little in Berenger's life that would appear to be worth
defending. Early in act I he confesses to his friend Jean that he is bored and tired
and unsuited to the office job that he nonetheless performs dutifully eight hours
every day-minus vacations (p. 12). Alcohol is his vehicle for escaping the
monotony of this daily routine. Drinking helps him not to be afraid. It relaxes
him and allows him to forget. Jean, betraying the mental vacuity that will be one
of the play's constants, poses as amateur psychologist by advancing a ready
diagnosis: "C'est de la neurasthenie alcoolique, la melancolie du buveur de vin"
(p. 23). But B6renger seems to ignore this interruption. His dilemma, like those of
other Ionesco characters, finds expression in images of heaviness: "Je sens a
chaque instant mon corps, comme s'il 6tait de plomb, ou comme si je portais un
autre homme sur le dos" (p. 23). This feeling prompts him to doubt that he is who
he thinks he is. But the bottle enables him, so he claims, to shed the sensation of
added weight and to reclaim his lost selfhood: "Des que je bois un peu, le fardeau
disparait, et je me reconnais, je deviens moi" (p. 23). Yet for him the process of
becoming himself involves no real choice, commitment or even self-acceptance.
Latter-day Chatterton as bureaucrat, Berenger laments, "Moi, j'ai a peine la force
de vivre. Je n'en ai plus envie peut-etre" (p. 24). Berenger, as hopelessly maladjusted as Lord Byron's Childe Harold but lacking the solace of the Romantic
hero's communication with nature, exclaims, "La solitude me pise. La societe
aussi" (p. 24). He seems to harbor a death-wish-"C'est une chose anormale de
vivre" (p. 24)-but the author has chosen not to provide him with that standard
stage prop of the age of Victor Hugo: a vial of poison. Since Berenger has failed
in his own life to achieve a full and rewarding sense of humanness, we should not
be surprised to discover that he does not manage to plead the cause of humanity
persuasively or even coherently when pachyderms replace human beings as the
norm in his world.
The other characters in the play are no more successful than Berenger in
creating, through their lives, a form of humanity that would appear worth
struggling to preserve. Consider Jean, for instance. Why does he, as B6renger
believes, have strength of character? "D'abord, j'ai de la force parce que j'ai de la
force," Jean reasons weakly, adding, "Ensuite j'ai de la force parce que j'ai de la
force morale." He claims, finally, "J'ai aussi de la force parce que je ne suis pas
alcoolise" (p. 24), yet he will turn down an invitation to accompany Berenger to
the theatre that evening precisely on the ground that he must meet some friends
at a saloon. This is of course no proof of a serious drinking problem, but it at least
suggests, in the context of his earlier remarks, that Jean has a confused and
8 The source of all references to Rhinoceros in this essay is Eugene Ionesco, Th&itre, III (Paris:
Gallimard, 1963). Page indications are parenthesized in the text.
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BERENGER'S DUBIOUS DEFENSE OF HUMANITY
211
contradictory mind. Such a lack of coherent reasoning may suffice, in Je
opinion, to deny the nonthinker's very existence, for as he says to
comically paraphrasing Descartes, "Vous n'existez pas, mon cher, parc
ne pensez pas! Pensez, et vous serez" (p. 25).
If meaningful thought is the necessary criterion for being, the Log
has a minor but memorable role as the master of the false syllogism)
less alive than anyone on stage. Confidently ignoring the logical lim
premises, he concludes that four-pawed creatures are necessarily cats
has a dog with four paws. "Alors," the Logician intones peremptorily
chat" (p. 24). By toying with his terms the Logician can even cast Socr
feline farce: "Tous les chats sont mortels. Socrate est mortel. Donc, Socrate
chat" (p. 25). To be human here is to be free to use faulty rhetoric as an in
of intellectual anarchy. One can imagine Voltaire, whose literary armie
slaughter each other in attempts to control a pile of mud, laughing
anyone who would lift a finger to protect the humanoid quagmire pretend
Rhinoceros, to be the human race.
It is a mark of Berenger's lack of discernment that he is favorably impr
the Logician, calling him "une personnalit6 distinguee" (p. 96). Ironically, B
slips into a syllogism of his own when the visual evidence strongly sug
the Logician has been transformed into a rhinoceros. B6renger's syllog
reconstructed as follows. The Logician wore a straw hat when last see
appears wearing a straw hat pierced by its horn. Therefore the beas
Logician. Though the play does not destroy this hypothesis, the argument
a fallacy based on the possible existence of a second straw hat or the t
the Logician's hat to someone else (by loan, sale or theft); but these p
are never explored.
As a final example of the intellectual atrophy with which the supposedly
characters of Rhinoceros are afflicted, consider the mental activity of the
schoolteacher Botard. Like the fanatics who refused a few years ago
that men had actually walked on the moon, Botard adamantly rejects t
ness and newspaper accounts of the presence of rhinoceroses in the
journalists, in his opinion, are liars. He requires incontrovertible proof: "J
chose precise, scientifiquement prouvee, je suis un esprit m6thodique,
46-47). At first it appears that he is indeed a patient, methodical seeke
He probes the published report of a cat crushed by a pachyderm in an
gain more information and to eliminate ambiguities: "Est-ce d'un chat,
d'une chatte qu'il s'agit? Et de quelle couleur? De quelle race?" (p. 47).
seems to be a logical inquiry is merely a facade that will develop as
propelled association of ideas. The question concerning the dead cat's
Botard to the gratuitous comment, "Je ne suis pas raciste, je suis meme an
(p. 47). He persists, muttering that "le racisme est une des grandes e
siecle" (p. 47), even when someone suggests that his remarks are irrele
When the matter of the crushed cat is again introduced into the di
Botard theorizes without a shred of proof that the animal in question
been a flea crushed by a mouse, belying the distinction he previousl
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FRENCH REVIEW
212
between himself and people from the Midi ("Je ne suis pas du Midi, moi. Les
Meridionaux ont trop d'imagination," p. 47). When Botard later denounces
academe he is in effect rendering an accurate self-assessment: "Ce qui manque
aux universitaires, ce sont les idees claires, l'esprit d'observation, le sens pratique"
(p. 50). Without examining the issue at all, Botard maintains that the reported
sighting of a rhinoceros is just a myth-"Un mythe, tout comme les soucoupes
volantes!" (p. 52). Informed again about the incident of the crushed cat, Botard
explodes, alleging that the growing body of eyewitness testimony is merely a
manifestation of collective psychosis. This idea incites Botard to add superfluously,
"C'est comme la religion qui est l'opium des peuples!" (p. 52). When Botard
finally admits "l'Tvidence rhinocerique" (p. 62), he claims-incredibly-never to
have denied it. But this admission does not signify a profound change in Botard's
personality. He is no more rational than before. This would-be Cartesian fantasizes
that he fully comprehends the sinister plot and he even outlines a plan of action:
"Et je connais aussi les noms de tous les responsables. Les noms des traitres....
Je vous ferai connaitre le but et la signification de cette provocation! Je d6masquerai
les instigateurs" (p. 62). Even the most skilled defense counsel would be hard
pressed to build a solid case to save the bankrupt humanity typified by Botard
and the Logician, by Jean and Berenger.
Berenger does try to argue the cause of the human race. But he is an ineffectual
debater. An important scene in this regard is the second tableau of act II, in which
Berenger witnesses Jean's metamorphosis from man into rhino. Jean is fully
prepared to make this transition. He looks forward to living in the jungle. His
new life will permit him to rediscover what he calls "l'integrite primordiale" of
existence. Those who would join Georges Versini in asserting that Rhinoceros is
a "violente satire de l'instinct gregaire"9 must rely largely on a set of expectations
drawn from the socio-physical world that we inhabit. From Jean's perspective,
given the apparent inevitability of the physiological and emotional changes he is
experiencing (and given especially how little he has to lose), this attitude is rooted
in terre-a-terre pragmatism. Berenger is incapable, however, of considering these
new circumstances from Jean's point of view. He chooses instead to counter with
a platitude about human values: "Nous avons une philosophie que ces animaux
n'ont pas, un systeme de valeurs irremplacable" (p. 76). This is at best Edenic
nostalgia. In truth, no such value system operates in Rhinoceros. All that remains
of human civilization in the play is an almost unintelligible human-like verbal
debris, unconnected fragments of logic, hollow figures posing as human beings.
If, as Etienne Frois maintains, Rhinoceros above all satirizes stereotyped human
speech, the play provides no viable human solution to the problem of noncommunication.
Understandably, then, Berenger is in an awkward position when he work
way gradually, in the famous long speech that concludes the play, into a p
of resistance, on one hand, and defense of mankind on the other (pp. 115-1
critics have noted, Berenger reveals here an ambivalent attitude toward
condition. How will he communicate with the rhinos? Even if they agree to
9 Le Thaitre franfais depuis 1900 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970), p. 117.
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BERENGER'S DUBIOUS DEFENSE OF HUMANITY
213
his language, Berenger is not certain what language that is-nor
understands what he is saying. And he wonders whether the rhinos m
after all. Right or wrong, they are in his view attractive. And he
ugly in contrast. Ugly-without a horn or two; ugly-with a flat
moist, smooth hands. And his body is white and hairy. How nice
have the skin of a pachyderm, hard and dark green and hairless.
admires the noises that rhinos make. He tries in vain to imitate
trumpeting sounds. "Je n'arrive pas a barrir," he laments. "Je hu
Almost to the end he regrets not having become a rhino like everybo
once again avowing his ugliness and bemoaning his plight ("Malhe
veut conserver son originalite!"), he announces, without elabora
intends to defend himself against all the others, presumably armed w
("Ma carabine, ma carabine!" he cries). In the full context of the p
final words are less heroic or courageous than silly in their mindless
"Contre tout le monde, je me defendrai, contre tout le monde, je me
suis le derier homme, je le resterai jusqu'au bout! Je ne capitule p
that the rhinos depicted by Ionesco are sometimes violent-killing
down a stairway, causing walls to collapse, shaking plaster from
their strange music is less ludicrous than the Logician's warped reasoning, and
their noisy stampeding is arguably at least as purposeful as B6renger's hesitant,
last-minute decision to stand up for an ersatz model of mankind. Faced (in this
imperfect world we all know) with the dilemma encountered by the characters in
Rhinoceros, the reader or spectator would probably, though not inevitably, opt
for humanity. If, however, we were magically transported into the universe of the
play, we would no doubt be tempted to follow the functionary Dudard, licenci6
en droit. In view of his presumably unsatisfactory experience with the human
condition, rhinoceritis, far from being an affliction or a menace, is an alternate
life-style well worth trying. "J'ai envie de manger sur l'herbe," says Dudard (p.
102), and who can blame him? When we stop to consider what Berenger proposes
in his clumsy way to defend, it seems obvious that he would be well advised to
throw away his gun and to picnic with the pachyderms. Why should B6renger be
applauded for refusing to join the crowd? As Jacques Scherer has written, "Une
condamnation absolue et non sp6cifiee du conformisme est... d6pourvue de sens.
Elle ne peut en acqu6rir un que si l'on dit a quoi on se conforme."10
Martin Esslin, who does contend that on one level the play reveals "the
absurdity of conformism," believes that to the same extent it "conveys ... the
absurdity of defiance." And Esslin's interpretation of the protagonist's final tirade
reflects an accurate reading of the internal evidence: "Far from being a heroic last
stand," Esslin states, "Berenger's defiance is farcical and tragicomic..."; similarly,
Jean-Paul Sartre has declared that nothing in the play proves it is better to be a
man than a rhino." The rebel who blindly denounces collectivism per se runs the
10 "L'Evolution de lonesco", in Les Critiques de notre temps et Ionesco (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1973),
p. 116.
11 Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, p. 151; Sartre, "Beyond Bourgeois Theatre," Tulane Drama
Review, 5 (March 1961), 6, quoted in Lewis, Ionesco, p. 73.
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FRENCH
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