The Chairs Philosophical Viewpoints: The Absurd Quotes

As we point out in our section on "Isolation," the old couple is completely cut off. This kind of isolation is a common theme in the Theater of the Absurd. Many of the playwrights who wrote in this genre were interested in the idea that we're all totally alone, that all that we ultimately have is ourselves. The old couple's isolation could be symbolic of the isolation of all human beings.

The fact that the Old Man does a Stan Laurel impression here is pretty typical of the Theater of the Absurd. Stan Laurel was part of the comedy duo of Laurel and Hardy, who came from the same school of physical comedy as the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and the Three Stooges. Absurdist playwrights often used this kind of clowning to highlight the ultimate absurdity of all of humanity's endeavors. Check out Shmoop's guide to Beckett's Waiting for Godot for another famous example of this.

Characters in Absurdist plays often have trouble with memory; it's pretty typical for an Absurdist character to have no idea what happened the day before. They're all a bit like goldfish constantly surprised every time they see the little bubbly castle. Vladimir and Estragon of Beckett's Waiting for Godot are afflicted with this same sort of chronic amnesia. Perhaps, this is all meant to call our whole perception of time and reality into question. Do we really know if anything in the past was real? Memory is a pretty unreliable thing. Maybe, all we really have is the now.

The Old Man has never committed himself to a profession. As the play constantly reminds us, he's a "general factotum," a person who does a little bit of everything. (254) Perhaps his fear of dedicating himself to any one thing is the reason his life now seems so meaningless to him. Absurdist plays often suggest that many of us do the same thing – just kind of going through life doing whatever. And then we die.

Have you noticed how hardly any of the characters have an actual name in this play? The closest thing to a name in the list above is Mrs. Belle, but belle simply means beautiful in French. Like the Colonel and the Photo-engraver, her name is generic. These kinds of big, iconic characters are typical of the Theater of the Absurd. Absurdists often created characters that were more symbolic than realistic. Mrs. Belle represents all faded beauties, the Colonel all colonels, and the Old Man every old man everywhere.

The Old Woman sells programs and concessions, mimicking the experience that the audience watching the play has undoubtedly just gone through. In this moment, it becomes pretty obvious that The Chairs is a kind play within a play. (Have you ever gone to someone's house and the host tried to sell you something?)

As we discuss in our section, "Art and Culture," the play can be interpreted as a comment on theater itself. This kind of self-referential or meta-theater is typical of the Theater of Absurd. Very often in Absurdist plays the characters reference the fact that they are in a play. Another good example of a play that does this is Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author.

This quote brings to mind one of the big questions that philosophies and religions have tried to tackle for centuries: why must humans suffer? Many religions justify human suffering with the idea that God has an ultimate plan, that all our suffering has a purpose, which will one day be revealed to us. Some say we bring our suffering on ourselves, and if we would only follow certain rules of behavior it wouldn't happen. The Theater of the Absurd is often thought to have been influenced heavily by the philosophy of Existentialism, which is based in part on the idea that our suffering has no purpose at all. People feel pain – that's just how it is, and we'd all better just learn to deal with it.

This is one of the few places in the play where we get a hint at what the Old Man's message might actually be. Though Ionesco didn't like to be called an Existentialist, this statement definitely seems to get at the fundamental idea behind the philosophy. Existentialists believed that each person is an individual, and that reality is completely subjective. Basically, what you decide is real is real, what you think is important is important. Existentialists believed that the universe was ultimately meaningless, and that it was each person's individual responsibility to create meaning for him or herself.

The idea that there's any one thing that is true for everybody goes against the fundamental beliefs of Existentialism. As we discussed earlier in this section, Existentialism is based on the idea that truth is inherently subjective, meaning that we all must decide what's true for ourselves. Many Existentialists thought the idea of one single truth to be total crap. Perhaps this is why the Orator is unable to articulate the Old Man's great truth at the end of the play: in the play's view, no such thing exists. Though you can't necessarily say that all Absurdist plays are Existentialist, almost all of them seem to share this fundamental belief.

This moment when the invisible Emperor makes his entrance reminds us a lot of another of Ionesco's plays, The Leader. In that play, characters go on and on about how great an unseen leader is. When the Leader finally appears, he has no head and seems completely useless. This theme of incompetent rulers could very well have been inspired by the devastation of World War II. Many felt that the leaders of the world had dragged their people into horrible, massive violence for no good reason. The Theater of the Absurd took shape in the wake of the war and is often interpreted as expressing frustration with the apparent meaninglessness of it all.