Literary Devices in Rhinoceros
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
On the Literal LevelSometimes, playwrights make it easy for you to figure out where you are. Other times not so much (we’re looking at you, Samuel Beckett). Ionesco spells out the setting of this...
Genre
What’s that again? Let’s start us off with a Theatre Database quote: “The ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ is a term coined by Hungarian-born critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of his 196...
Tone
Who knew the inevitable march to death could be so funny? Rhinoceros, like other plays that often get the “Theatre of the Absurd” label, can prove difficult for actors and directors. Usually pr...
Writing Style
Here’s another gem from Ionesco’s own lips: “I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragoon and a fountain of water....
What's Up With the Ending?
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 i...
Tough-o-Meter
On the surface, this thing might look pretty easy. After all, it’s about a bunch of people turning into rhinos, and the language isn’t in iambic pentameter. But this bad boy, like a lot of the...
Plot Analysis
The Calm Before the Storm (of Rhinoceroses)Ionesco tells us, “The scene is a square in a small provincial town.” Then he takes his sweet time stage-directing that small provincial time on the...
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
Don’t hold onto your seats waiting for a King Arthur or a Beowulf sort of a story—but do get set for a small-scale, comic revision of that whole idea of the “overcoming the monster” plotl...
Three-Act Plot Analysis
Ionesco, for all his straying from traditional realism, adheres to a pretty standard structure in Rhinoceros. The play takes place in three acts, and it moves forward like you’d expect a three-a...
Trivia
The first guy to direct a major production of this play in English was Orson Welles, and the production starred Laurence Olivier. That’s Citizen Kane directing Hamlet up there. Yes, it’s big ti...
Steaminess Rating
As far as sex goes, this play is a tame one. There is a fledgling love story between Berenger and Daisy, but it is brief. Couldn’t be much more when the lady up and turns into a rhinoceros right...
Allusions
Don Quixote (3.1.385)Logic (yep, philosophical reasoning via logic is a thing. There’s even a character called “The Logician.”)Galileo (3.1.467, 469, 476)