The Chairs Isolation Quotes

The old couple is completely isolated. As the Old Man says, their house is totally surrounded by water, leaving them pretty much alone with each other. Some critics suggest that the play is set in a post-apocalyptic world. It could be that the Old Man and Woman are the only two people left on earth, and that's about as isolated as it gets.

The Old Man suddenly feels incredibly isolated as he remembers that his mother is dead. His wife tries to take the place of his mother, but he rejects her. Nothing can replace his mother, so now he'll forever be "an orphan." Of course, you could interpret the whole orphan thing as a metaphor for all of humanity. If human beings are alone in the universe, as the play seems to suggest, then we are all very much like poor little orphans cut off from the support and comfort that our metaphorical "parents" might give us.

The Old Woman seems to be saying that language is the key to escaping isolation. It kind of makes sense, right? We use words to articulate our thoughts and emotions. Without them, we would be unable to communicate most of what we think and feel.

This statement is a bit contradictory. A misanthrope is a person who doesn't like people, who prefers solitude. Of course, we suppose it's possible for someone to not necessarily be totally disgusted with other people and still just want to be left alone. You definitely couldn't call the Old Man a total misanthrope because his goal is to help the rest of humanity. And, if he is to be believed, he's been working in solitude his whole life to craft a message that will bring meaning to humanity. What do you think? Would a person with a true love of other people purposely cut himself off from the world?

Well, that's not very nice. However, an Existentialist might reply that it wouldn't have mattered if the Old Man had stayed or not. We all die alone anyway, so what's the difference?

What might this mean? Does the Old Man feel uncomfortable in his own skin? Is he unsure of his own identity? Is there even a such thing as a personal identity? You could interpret this statement as meaning that the Old Man feels isolated even from himself – and that's about as lonely as it gets.

Here the Old Man and Woman have been pushed apart by the growing crowd of invisible people. This is pretty ironic if you go with the interpretation that the invisible people are just in the old couple's heads. They've imagined all these people into existence to help alleviate their loneliness, only to be isolated from each other by them.

The image of someone waking up "in the midst of absolute silence" seems to scream isolation. But the Old Man almost seems to treasure this feeling. He warns us to "be careful" or it "might disappear."

The Old Man and Woman lament the fact that their bodies will drift far apart when they throw themselves into the water. They'd hoped they could be buried together. Of course, in the Existential view, we all die alone anyway, so it really doesn't matter where their bodies end up. In this light, the concern is absurd.

The Old Man hopes they will overcome the isolation of death in the afterlife. As we discuss elsewhere, most Existentialists didn't believe in an afterlife. This makes the old couple's dream of conquering the loneliness of death absurd – at least in the play's view.