This is it. It’s the end of the play, and in the play, perhaps the end of the world. This is the moment in Independence Day when Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum mess with the alien spacecraft just in the nick of time to save humanity. This is William Wallace yelling “Freedom!” in Braveheart and inspiring others to fight even as he gets swallowed into the battle.
Can Rhinoceros possibly be as massively epic? Let’s take a look:
BERENGER: I’m the last man left, and I’m staying that way until the end. I’m not capitulating! (3.1.1293-1294)
Hey, come to think of it, that’s got a bit of a Braveheart feel to it. After all, “not capitulate” is sort of another way to say you’re dead set on maintaining your freedom. Basically, Berenger gives his rousing speech as the last man left to stand against the rhinoceroses. It’s bold and it’s angry, and it’s pretty dramatic.
But is it also pointless? Well shucks, that’s a tough question.
Ionesco ends his play with his protagonist howling against the rhinoceroses. No one in the play hears him. Or maybe they do, but rhinos don’t understand English so much. So it’s real: no one other than him is left.
It’s pretty clear that Berenger cannot stem the rhinoceros tide and turn things back to the way they were on his own. His mission will most likely fail, and it will most likely fail pretty quickly. But we don’t ever see that. It’s not how Ionesco ends his play. He ends his play with a man proclaiming that he will stand up and fight against impossible odds. Who cares if he doesn’t win? It’s the intent that counts. A for Effort, Mr. B!
So here’s another question: who is Berenger really talking to? Isn’t he, like, proclaiming his refusal to give up to a horde of rhinos? Well, yup. In the play, Berenger is calling out to the beasts he’s about to fight, but here’s a doozy—maybe it’s just possible that Ionesco is calling out to the audience.
For Berenger, there isn’t much hope, and let’s be honest, this play isn’t necessarily the most hopeful thing ever written. But Ionesco still chooses to make Berenger’s war cry the end of the show. Is it just one more demonstration of the utter futility of life? Or is it a sign that the writer believes that man must stand up in the face of hysteria and tyranny?
Here’s what one reviewer had to say about it: “As the piece slyly explores the mass hysteria that can allow a totalitarian regime to come to power, it also examines the reasons individuals find themselves resisting change, not for any logical or intellectual reason but simply because their intuition tells them that what they see happening is wrong.”
As this reviewer points out, Berenger cannot necessarily reason why he refuses to go along with the others, but, sure as a rhino’s got two toes, he refuses. He knows, somehow, that it's wrong. Wrong as the horn on their faces.
So his speech might fall on deaf on rhino ears, but his message doesn’t fall deaf on the ears of the audience. At least, not when it’s done well.