Rhino Notes

Reading back on my notes, I'm not even sure I understand all of them. Absurdism confused me to no end, especially with the meaning of life and trying to find it. Ask if you have quesitons on my notes...


RHINOSORAUS

Theatre of the Absurd
- developed in the 1920’s and 1930’s between WWI and WWII
- prohibition showed the hypocrisy of law (trying to raise civil, moral, ethical values) compared to standards)
- outlook that world has no real hope or meaning. We might as well drink and be marry because we don’t know what will happen next
- loss of values and focus
- sense that God is dead
- no longer having applicable values
- absurd to audiences different to absurd from writer (writers saw the world as illogical and this as the best way to express it)
- Logic not holding up in the real world
- “entrope” idea
o Everything moves from order to disorder
o Order cannot be maintained
o Society and individuals meant to move to more disorder
- ideas in play
o first one rhino comes soon, everything goes back to order. Next time, things don’t go back to order as equally, etc.
o Berdatte fits into the “Lost Generation” because he drowns himself in booze
o Conventionalized speech in play had no hidden meaning. It just showed the ridiculousness of every day conversation.

Traditional Theatre
- being able to relate to character
- process of movement (starts with normal situation, then conflict, then return to a (new) norm)
- plots have a beginning, middle, and end
- world obeys certain logic (even if it is not our logical, we can get into someone else’s world and find some logic in it).
- Consistency

Absurdist Theatre
- no norm for common understanding
- no connection between the characters and readers
- devoid of all sense of relation (no way to tell where you specifically- all landmarks are gone)
- nothing fully established, and characters do not have consistent personalities.
- Unreliable
- No sense of time, sense, or memory
o No narrative history
o Cant look back definitely and see what was known before.
o Without a memory, no identity.
- Protagonists find themselves in a world which they don’t understand. Audience can only relate to this lack of understanding
- Absence of factors allowing for meaning (Who am I? What am I doing here? )
- Identity becomes unclear
- Attempts by characters to deal with the world are futile

Absurdism idea
- you may want meaning in your life, but you are incapable and completely incapable of finding it.
- We must still look for meaning because if compels to find something of meaning

Hero in Absurdism -
· lacks confidence to change the world themselves
· lacks purpose, sense, or direction
· looks for others for meaning (looking for reassurance that life will be okay) , but this won’t happen
· temptation to become whatever everyone else is (e.g. Rhino’s destroy everything. Humans have a temptation to do this too, in their ID. If everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t I?)

Focus of Absurdism
· How characters try to cope
· Wait for someone to tell them what to do, and this never comes
· Even if it does, meaning can never be made

Games in Absurdist Theatre
· not fun games, but something to do why they wait
· If there are no games, there would be silence. Silence leads to fear of the unknown
· Not genuine humor
· Laughs are an attempt to find meaning (?)
· Laughing because of our condition because we cannot solve problems (in absurdist theatre)
· No way to win game

Random notes about absurdist ideas
· absurdism focuses on the exaggeration of our own lives
· absurdism looks at any imposing order as laughable
· forces people to try to find true sense since right now we don’t have real meaning in our lives
· absurdist’s believe there is no way to find ultimate answer , but we may be able to glimpse into it
· universe is a big joke which we take too seriously
· Nothing in life really ends like a fairy tale
· We live our lives day by day waiting and looking for what it all means, and may/wont ever really find it
· Idea of being last one against the tide (Berenger) scares us
· Eventually, we will all be forced under

Nazi Parallelism
· Botard at first believes so strongly and then says we want to “change with times”
· Manipulation begins at one person, then small group, then many people do
· Collective phycosis - if you do things you don’t want to do normally, but everyone else is doing it, it becomes part of your values and system
· No memory as to a time before this
· Collective conscience occurred b/c people afraid to go against the tide
o We hate being alone
o Surround ourselves in identity as one of a group
· find a powerful person and latch on
o someone else will take care of us/the meaning of life
o we create artificial packs (like animals)
· Totalitarian governments don’t tolerate differences
o Every rhino (minus horns) looks exactly the same
o Will one-horn two-horn eventually be the main problem? People are so alike that this small of a difference makes them fight?

Marxism Ideas
· Everyone becomes a rhino (everyone equal). Iunesko doesn’t like this because it lowers people to become equally brutish and unintelligent.
· Yielding of power kept everyone else in line
· Toppling of power (rhino’s topple people) so that isn’t support of Marxism (authority should always have power)
· Marxists would agree that its inevitable that everyone become a rhino. Capitalists (Berenger) resist this change
· E.g.
o Daisy says love is her weakness. This is a Marxist belief. She changes into a rhino showing that the needs of the group are greater than that of the individual
o Jean says he never dreams. Shows control of all thought (Marxist) while Berenger doesn’t have this regiment in his head.

What is the point?
· Writer puts down his anger and frustration in people’s willingness to go along with fascism and allowing themselves to be brought under heal
· We don’t necessarily need WWII reference to agree with this.