Eugene Ionesco - play - 1959 - p. 170    

Among the plays frequently included under the label “theater of the absurd,” Eugene Ionesco’s avant-garde Rhinoceros sees the residents of a rural French town turn into rhinoceroses. The lone exception is the main character, Bérenger, a kind but distinctly unheroic alcoholic. A rhinoceros appears in the village, trampling a cat, and dissent grows within the village over debates as to whether the rhinoceros should be permitted in France--and whether the story is even true. Many of the townspeople turn into rhinoceroses, causing destruction all over, yet some townspeople still refuse to believe that the rhinoceritis is a real and pressing threat.

The play farcically presents some of the behaviors and attitudes that contributed to the rise of fascism throughout Europe in the twentieth century leading up to World War II and the Holocaust. Ionesco himself was a Romanian-French Jew.

Key elements: alcoholism, Europe, fascism