The Bald Soprano Philosophical Viewpoints: The Absurd Quotes

Mrs. Smith opens the play by babbling about a whole lot of nothing. She basically lists all the things she and her husband have eaten that evening and then rambles on about of lot of other stuff that doesn't really matter. Her monologue reminds us a lot of another famous Absurdist play, Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. In this piece, a woman prattles on about lots of trivial things, even though she is half buried in a mound of dirt. She refuses to recognize her unusual situation and chooses instead to focus on seemingly unimportant day-to-day matters. Both Happy Days and The Bald Soprano seem to be getting at the Absurdist idea that our day-to-day lives are essentially meaningless. This is one of the main reasons that both Ionesco and Beckett were grouped together under the umbrella of the Theatre of the Absurd.

This kind of identity confusion is pretty common in Absurdist plays. You see it in Beckett's Waiting for Godot, where Vladimir and Estragon become totally confused about which one of them is which. It's also found in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, where the title characters go through the same sort of confusion. All this uncertainty about who is who seems to call into question identity itself. How do we ever know who we really are? For that matter, how do we know who anybody else is either?

The Martins don't remember each other even though they live in the same house and sleep in the same bed. We talk about this more in "Memory and the Past," but we'd just like to point out that this kind of memory loss is pretty common in Absurdist plays. The characters in Beckett's Waiting for Godot suffer from the same sort of thing. You also see it in Ionesco's The Chairs. Could it be that so many Absurdist playwrights chose to include memory impaired characters, because it makes us question reality as a whole? How do we know if anything in the past was real? How do we know for sure that it wasn't all a dream?

Everybody is totally amazed that Mrs. Martin saw someone tying their shoe. Their astonishment seems to make even this seemingly commonplace activity sound absurd. You see this kind of thing throughout The Bald Soprano. Everything from having guests over to eating dinner is somehow made to seem totally weird in Ionesco's bizarre world.

Here again the characters marvel at a totally normal everyday activity. What's so amazing about a dude reading a paper on the subway? Well, Absurdists believed that our lives are essentially meaningless; therefore everything we do to fill our days is somehow absurd. If there's no point to anything, then reading a paper is really just as strange as dressing like a chicken and singing the national anthem. Everything is relative if there are no absolutes.

Mrs. Smith isn't totally crazy. She just heard the doorbell ring several times, and each time she opened the door there was no one there. She "logically" concluded then that when the doorbell rings no one is ever there. When her husband answered, however, the Fire Chief was there, which blew a hole in her tidy little theory. Throughout the play characters attempt to use logic to explain the absurdity of the events going on around them. Are we really so different? People often use logic and reasoning to try and explain the universe. If you're like the Absurdists, however, and you believe the universe and its greater meaning is ultimately unknowable, then all this use of logic can seem pretty ridiculous. People used to think the Sun revolved around the Earth for example. It seemed logical; it certainly looks that way from our vantage point here on Earth. Eventually, though, this theory was proven untrue. How do we know if things we now take for fact are actually true? Will our feeble human minds ever be able to truly grasp the great big everything?

This little story in many ways explains the play as a whole and actually the Theatre of the Absurd itself. As we discuss in "Versions of Reality," it's nearly impossible to tell whether the animals in the story are cows, dogs, or elephants. It's even harder to figure out why anyone would want to tell such a weird and seemingly pointless story. The nonsensical nature of the fable is reminiscent of The Bald Soprano and many other Absurdist plays. Many audiences have probably wondered what the ultimate point of watching such crazy plays is. In the Absurdist view, however, the "real" world is just as nonsensical and pointless. It's up to each one of us to make sense of it for ourselves.

Does this story make your head hurt? Even this little chunk we've included above makes us feel a little dizzy, and the whole version is three times as long. The Fire Chief goes on and on merely recounting lots of people and the ways in which they are connected. Most of these people don't even seem particularly remarkable, like the "unknown fourth-class petty officer" mentioned above. Why is the Fire Chief wasting our time with this? Especially since the point of the whole story is nothing more than the fact that all these people once "caught a cold" (405). That seems like a pretty pointless point to make. Of course, to an Absurdist most every point is pointless. In some ways, this seemingly meaningless story could be seen as highlighting the idea that all our lives are meaningless. We're all running around doing lots of things that don't ultimately add up to much in the end.

It looks like the Fire Chief is an Absurdist. The idea that everything is "subjective" is at the heart of the philosophy. Absurdists believe that the universe is ultimately unknowable and that reality itself is uncertain. It's up to each individual to decide what is meaningful and indeed what is real for themselves. In a way, this is the light at the end of the tunnel for what is often accused as being a pretty depressing philosophy. It doesn't have to be a bad thing that nothing matters. In a way, the idea can be seen as liberating. We're all totally free to make our own choices, as long as we're willing to live with their consequences.

We talk about this moment in "What's Up With the Ending?", but we just had to mention it here. There are lots of examples of Absurdist plays that end where they begin, or where you at least get the idea that the characters may be stuck in an endless repetitive cycle. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame are both examples of this. You also see it in Amiri Baraka's Dutchman, and there are intimations of it in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming. There are also hints of it in Ionesco's The Chairs. The list goes on an on. Basically, the Absurdists were all about this repetitious theatrical device. This could be because it highlights the Absurdist idea that our lives are often a series of meaningless repetitive actions.