full title ·  The Chairs (in French, Les Chaises)author ·  Eugène Ionescotype of work ·  Dramagenre ·  Absurdist drama/comedylanguage ·  Frenchtime and place written ·  Paris, 1952date of first production ·  Paris, April 22, 1952publisher ·  Grove Pressnarrator ·  No narrator; dramaclimax ·  The climax occurs when the Old Man and Old Woman commit suicide, and the Orator

unintelligibly attempts to deliver the messageprotagonist ·  Old Manantagonist ·  There is no direct antagonist, though the Old Man's inability to deliver his own

message is his primary obstaclesetting (time) ·  Unclear and unimportantsetting (place) ·  A house on an islandpoint of view ·  As it is a play, there is no distinct point of view, but the audience empathizes with

the Old Manfalling action ·  The invisible crowd makes noise after the Orator leavestense ·  Play; present tenseforeshadowing · The Old Woman warns the Old Man not to fall out of the window at the

beginning of the playtone ·  Absurdly comic, philosophicalthemes ·  The repetitive present and inaccessible past; Responsibility and a meaningful lifemotifs ·  Self-conscious theatricalitysymbols · Semicircular stage

ContextEugène Ionesco was one of the major figures in the Theatre of the Absurd, the French dramatic

movement of the 1940s and 50s that emphasized the absurdity of the modern condition as defined by existential thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre. The existentialists followed Soren Kierkegaard's dictum that "existence precedes essence" - that is, man is born into the world without a purpose, and he must commit himself to a cause for his life to have meaning.

Born in Romania in 1912, Ionesco spent his childhood in Paris until the family returned to its homeland. Ionesco developed a hatred for Romanian's conservatism and anti-Semitism and, after winning an academic scholarship, returned to France in 1938 to write a thesis. There, he met anti-establishment writers such as Raymond Queneau. He lived in Marseille during World War II. His first play, The Bald Soprano (1950), a one-act piece that borrowed its phrasing from English language-instruction books, garnered little public attention but earned Ionesco respect among the Parisian avant-garde and helped inspire the Theatre of the Absurd.

Spearheaded by Samuel Beckett and other dramatists living in Paris, the Theatre of the Absurd emphasized the absurdity of a world that could not be explained by logic. The Absurdists' other major themes focused on alienation, the specter of death, and the bourgeois mores that have displaced the significance of love and humanity onto work. In the character of Berenger, a semi-autobiographical persona who figures in several of his plays, Ionesco portrays the modern man trapped in an office, engaged in shallow relationships, and escaping with alcohol from a world he does not understand. Yet

this is all presented in the Theatre of the Absurd's characteristic morbid wit, an often self-conscious, comic sensibility that makes us laugh at the most horrific ideas - death, alienation, evil - in an effort to understand them. The Chairs premiered in 1952 but was overshadowed that year by Beckett's Waiting for Godot, which infused its similar themes - repetition, boredom, loss of memory - with a greater sense of comedy and empathy.

Ionesco wrote more plays in the 50s, but it was not until Rhinoceros, first produced in 1960, that he received global attention. Absurdity and purposelessness frames the play, a study in a single man's transformation from apathy to responsibility as the world around him descends into violence and greater levels of absurdity. He called it an anti-Nazi work, and it was performed just long enough after WWII for tensions to settle down, but not so long that fascism was forgotten; its debut had a reported fifty curtain calls in Germany. This is understandable, as the play demonstrates how anyone can fall victim to collective, unconscious thought by letting their wills be manipulated by others. Walter Benjamin stated that one could not write poetry after the Holocaust, and though others have since refuted this as hyperbole, the world was indisputably damaged beyond repair and left searching for answers. Ionesco skirted the problem of trying to represent realistically the Holocaust by dressing his play in heavy but apparent symbolism. Through this indirect path, achievable only through the untamed techniques of the Theatre of the Absurd, he comes closer to answering the unanswerable questions left in the wake of fascist brutality.

Ionesco remained a prolific writer until the early 1980s, although none of his works, dramatic or critical, ever reached the same heights of tragedy and comprehension as Rhinoceros or The Chairs. His work has influenced playwrights as diverse as Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. He died in 1994, but his plays are still performed across the world, testaments to the timelessness of Absurdism's questions and techniques.

Plot OverviewAn Old Man and an Old Woman in their 90s, hereafter referred to as "man" and "woman", are on a semicircular stage

in dim light. The man looks out the window, up on a stool. The woman tells him to close the window. She says she gets dizzy from being on their island house. She drags him over to the chairs and he sits down on her lap. She praises his intellect, and said he could have had a powerful occupation, if he had any ambition. He scoffs at this and complains of boredom.

The woman asks the man to tell the story that begins "Then at last we arrived", but he has told it to her and performed imitations every night of the seventy-five years they have been married. She says she takes a dose of salt each night to erase her memory of the story. He tells the story and they repeat phrases from the story until their laughter dies down.

The man cannot recall what came after Paris. Though he admits he has difficulty expressing himself, he feels he must "tell it all". He says he has hired a professional Orator who will speak in his name. Hidden from view, they introduce themselves to the guest and help her put away her coat, then re-enter, leaving space for an invisible Lady. They carry on a casual conversation with her and the woman tells the Lady to sit on one of the chairs present, and she sits at the other one.

The doorbell rings. The man tells the woman to get another chair, and he opens one door while she hobbles toward a concealed door. He formally and nervously greets an invisible Colonel. The doorbell rings and the man goes to answer it. The woman leaves to find a chair while the man greets Belle, an elderly friend of his who was once beautiful, and her husband, a Photo-engraver. The woman gets another chair. He introduces the new guests to the others. The light brightens, and it continues to do so as more guests arrive. The woman flirts and makes sexual gestures to the photo-engraver. The man reminisces with Belle about their romantic youth, and how they could have been happy together.

The man and woman sit on opposite ends of the chairs and listen to the conversations. The woman discusses their one son who left them when he was seven. The man says they never had a child. The doorbell rings and the man lets in a handful of newspapermen while his wife gets more chairs. He introduces the other guests to the newspapermen, there to hear the Orator. He says the Orator will soon speak on his behalf about a system he's perfected.

There's a loud noise and the main door opens. A powerful light floods in, and the invisible Emperor stands there. The man and woman show their respects, introduce the Emperor to the crowd, and stand up on the stools to get a better look at him. The Orator, a real person, enters through the main door. He glides along the wall to the center door, bows to the Emperor, and mounts the dais. He signs invisible autographs.

The man introduces himself and thanks the crowd for coming, and thanks the Orator and everyone else involved with the evening. He says he and his wife can die happily now that his message will be communicated and he can make his philosophy known to the universe. He says he and his wife must die after years of aiding humanity. The man and woman throw themselves out the window. The Orator addresses the crowd, and makes it clear that he is deaf and dumb. He mumbles some unintelligible sounds, then gives up and writes several nonsense words on the blackboard. When he does not get the reaction he was hoping for, he leaves through the main door.

Character ListOld Man -  The protagonist of the play. The Old Man has been married to the Old Woman for

seventy-five years, and entertains her nightly with the same story and imitations he has always done. Living on the island, he spends his time with a few hobbies, but mostly devotes himself to his "message" with which he will save humanity.

Old Woman -  Has been married to the Old Man for seventy-five years. On the island, her only entertainment is listening to her husband's stories and imitations, which she keeps fresh by erasing her memory nightly. She often reminds her husband of what jobs he could have had, and frequently plays the role of the Old Man's surrogate mother.

Orator -  Since the Old Man cannot express himself well, the Orator - who looks like a pompous 19th-century artist - is scheduled to deliver the Old Man's message. He has an actor's regal bearing and hands out autographs.

Emperor -  The most esteemed invisible guest the Old Man welcomes. The Emperor is bathed in light, and the Old Man and Old Woman defer to him at all times.

Belle -  The invisible former lover of the Old Man, and the current wife of the Photo-engraver. The OldMan reminisces with Belle about their romantic past and appears to hold on to what could have been.

Photo-engraver -  The husband of Belle. He gives the Old Woman a painting when they arrive, and she is much taken with him, flirting with overt sexuality.

Lady -  The invisible first guest of the Old Man and Old Woman. They engage in casual conversation with Lady.

Colonel -  The second invisible guest, a famous soldier. The OldWoman rebukes him for spilling his cigarettes on the floor, though she is also taken with his grandness, as is the OldMan with his prestige.

Newspapermen and other guests -  The newspapermen and other guests arrive at the end. They are all eager to hear the Orator deliver the Old Man's message.

Analysis of Major CharactersOld ManThe Old Man believes his life of suffering will translate into a "message" that will save humanity.

But his message fails - the deaf and dumb Orator can only mumble the words and spell out nonsensical ones. The failure for this lies less with the Orator, than with the Old Man himself. The existential philosophers argued that man's condition was absurd and meaningless unless he committed himself responsibly to a greater good. The man believes his life will become meaningful with his message, but he has lived an irresponsible life. He relieves himself of the blame for his fights with his brother and friends, and his double suicide with the Old Woman is a retreat from death, not a confrontation with it. He also indulges in the fantastic illusions he and his wife create to escape from reality, and though he claims his life has been well lived, he clearly regrets not having taken up with Belle. Moreover, he has been a neglectful parent and son, abandoning his dying mother and failing his son, who called his parents responsible for his departure. His final touch of irresponsibility is his inability to deliver the message himself as he relies on the Orator.

The Old Man is also bored of his repetitive existence. He has told the same story to his wife every night for their seventy-five married years, and his day is filled with routine. Life is so cyclical for him, in fact, that he seems to be confused about his age. Though he is ninety-five years old, he defers tremendously to his superiors and, moreover, is infantile. He sobs on his wife's lap - whom in fickle fits he calls his "Mamma" and then decides she is not the Mamma. He calls himself an orphan, though he is the one who abandoned his mother. This confusion over beginnings and endings is understandable, since he cannot even recall the details of when he and his wife were cast out of a garden years ago - an allusion to the Garden of Eden, another prominent ending of one godly world and initiation into a human world.

Ultimately, we can view the Old Man as Ionesco's projection of his own literary frustrations. Ionesco has similarly toiled on his message, built from his life and philosophy, and the actors - or the Orator - do not understand his work, rendering it meaningless. On the other hand, the Old Man is an irresponsible coward, afraid and unable to deliver his message himself, and Ionesco may be launching a self-critique.

Old WomanThe Old Woman is a comforting presence to the Old Man. She plays the role of his surrogate

parent, rocking him on her knees while he sobs about his orphanhood. She pulls him back from the window when he leans over too far. She praises him for his stories, imitations, and mental faculties. She is his workhorse, getting chairs and selling programs. But underneath this calming exterior is a woman who is deeply unhappy with what her life has become. She asks him to tell stories so she can forget the repetitive nature of their existence. She doses herself with salt each night so she loses the memory of the story, which is more extreme evidence of her need to escape, as is her participation in their fantasy world of imaginary characters. Her loss of memory is much like the characters in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot lose their memory of the previous day. For every time she praises her husband, she reminds him that he could have been more in life had he tried harder. Her sexual frustrations emerge, as well, when she is taken by the Colonel's kissing her hand and, more explicitly, when she flirts with the Photo-engraver and makes obscene gestures. In her conversation with the Photo-engraver, she is really talking to her husband and defending her age and beauty against his flirtations with the invisible Belle.

The Old Woman also harbors much pain over their son's departure. While the story does not make much sense, as the boy accused them of killing birds, his final words - "It's you who are responsible" - summarize the woman's and man's irresponsible life, in which they take little accountability for the past and try to escape the present. While she chastises her husband for not owning up to his fights with family and friends, she is also implicitly guilty, and her suicide with her husband is a retreat from death, from a direct and responsible confrontation with it.

OratorThe Orator is a virtual actor. He is dressed the part as an ostentatious artist, he signs autographs,

and he skims past the crowd as if only he exists. This is almost true, literally, since everyone else but the Old Man and Old Woman are invisible, but he believes they are all there. The Old Man has put all his hopes into the Orator's delivery of his "message", since the Old Man cannot express himself well. But the Orator turns out to be deaf and dumb, and the message, as both spoken and written words, is unintelligible. The reason for this is because the Old Man has not taken responsibility for his life and for the delivery of the message, and thus the message becomes irrationally absurd, but Ionesco probably intended another meaning. As an emerging playwright, Ionesco was most likely frustrated with actors and productions that failed to understand and convey his work. The Orator, then, is the actor who bumbles the work, mismatching his pleasant face and voice with the difficult words. But Ionesco could also be criticizing himself for allowing the Orator - or actors - to deliver his work in the first place. The Old Man is cowardly and worships the godly Orator, and Ionesco may find himself at fault for allowing incompetents to handle his plays.

Themes

The repetitive present and inaccessible pastThe Old Man and Old Woman are stuck in a repetitive existence, retelling the same story and

performing the same imitations day after day - even the water around their island is stagnant. The man can hardly even advance his story, rarely getting past "Then at last we arrived", which is itself a conflation of an ending and a beginning that circles around itself. In fact, they are not entirely sure what does come next. When the man resumes the story, after having remembered they were in Paris, he says "at the end of the end of the city of Paris, there was, there was, was what?" He keeps pushing to "the end

of the end", but the end of the road is shrouded in mystery. But perhaps a previous comment the man has made sheds some light. Giving an explanation for why the sky gets darker earlier now, he says "the further one goes, the deeper one sinks. It's because the earth keeps turning around, around, around, around…" The revolutions - of earth and of a repetitive existence - grind the couple into deathly routines, cyclical actions that inch them closer to death as they seek ways to create some excitement in their lives. The man, especially, is such a prisoner of this repetition that he is at times infantile, belying his ninety-five years, and calls his wife his mother, and father, at one point. His confusion over beginnings and endings - whether he is a child or old man - and finds some roots in his story, which is about being cast out of a garden. The reference is to the Garden of Eden, and since he cannot remember mankind's initiation into the real world and expulsion from a godly one, it helps explain his confusion over lesser beginnings and endings.

In this never-ending present-tense cycle, the man and woman both try to access a past that is now beyond reach. The woman even takes a dose of salt each night, she says, to erase her memory of her husband's story, while the man expresses his distaste for history. More than that, they both regret the course their lives have taken. She continually reminds her husband that he could have had a better occupation had he been more ambitious, a notion he derides, as he is already the "general factotum" of their house. While the woman flirts with the Photo-engraver, the man has a deeper attachment to Belle, waxing poetic about their lost chance at romance. When he says, "I loved you, I love you", it is clear he has not given up on her and wishes he could change his past. Much like the tramps in Beckett's Waiting for Godot and the old couple in Beckett's Happy Days, the couple in The Chairs is trapped in a repetitive prison with their best days either behind them or completely forgotten.

Responsibility and a meaningful lifeIonesco was one of the founders of Theatre of the Absurd, the French postwar theatrical

movement. The Absurdists shared many ideas with the existentialist philosophers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Above all, the existentialists believed man's condition in the universe was absurd - beyond human rationality - and therefore meaningless. Only by committing oneself responsibly to a greater good, they thought, could a life have meaning. The old man in The Chairs certainly aims for this; he feels his life of suffering will have meaning once he communicates his message and saves humanity. But when the Orator finally delivers the message, it comes out garbled, nonsensical, irrational - in other words, it is absurd.

The failure of the message can be attributed to the fact that the old man did not take responsibility through his life. Most notably, in the play we see him and his wife create an illusory world so they can escape from the real one. Escape marks the man's character for much of his life. He denies being in the wrong in his rifts with his brother and someone named Carel, and his double suicide with his wife is another form of escape. The existentialists believed that taking responsibility in life meant accepting death as inevitable, confronting it rather than shying away from it. But suicide, most of their literature suggests, is not a confrontation but a retreat. The only part of the Orator's message that makes any sense is something he writes on the blackboard that looks like "Adieu, Papa". Whether this is intentional is unclear - the blackboard sequence was not even in the original production, making the message all the more cryptic - it does recall what the couple's son said to them before he left: "It's you who are responsible". The parting shot has a double meaning; the parents are responsible for his departure, and it's also an ironic comment since they are not, in fact, responsible. The man denies they even had a son, another form of irresponsibility, but he does own up to his cruel abandonment of his dying mother, though his wife refutes this. Finally, a more immediate reason behind the message's irrationality is the man's irresponsibility in the actual delivery. He fears he cannot express himself well, so he doles out the responsibility of conveying the message to the Orator.

MotifsSelf-conscious theatricalityThe Theatre of the Absurd is known for its innovative use of self-conscious dramatic techniques.

In Ionesco's Rhinoceros, for example, a character recommends the plays of Ionesco. The Chairs is ripe for this, since the stage can be seen as another auditorium, filled with chairs for an audience. When the old man introduces himself before the message is to be delivered, and thanks everyone involved in the evening - the crowd, the Orator, the organizers, the construction workers, the technicians, and writers of the programs - it bears more than a passing resemblance to the way a playwright might thank everyone involved in a production of a play. The old man, especially, is much like a playwright; not only he has toiled over his "message", culled from his life and his philosophy, but he is a storyteller and an illusionist, crafting characters with his wife out of thin air. The Orator, then, would be an actor, someone who merely delivers the lines the man has written. "Merely" is an appropriate word, since The Chairs suggests that Ionesco does not think highly of actors. The failure of the garbled message may be Ionesco's charge that actors ruin his work, and that they do not understand it and render it unintelligible. On the other hand, the old man is a coward, not taking responsibility for many things, among them delivering his own message. The Orator's failure, then, may be a self-criticism of his inability to deliver the message on his own.

SymbolsSemicircular stageIonesco's semicircular stage design evokes one of the main themes of The Chairs, that the present

is circular and repetitive. But the semicircle is just that - a half-circle. While the complete half can be seen as the present that the couple must circle around endlessly, the missing half is the inaccessible past.

Part One: Beginning until end of storySummaryAn Old Man and an Old Woman both in their 90s, hereafter referred to as "man" and "woman", are on a semicircular

stage in dim light. Two empty chairs are downstage center and doors line the curved wall, including a large double door in the rear center, and two nearly hidden doors next to them. There are two windows with two nearby stools and a hanging gas lamp. The man looks out the window, up on a stool. The woman lights the lamp, and the light turns green. She walks over to the man and tells him to close the window to keep out the mosquitoes and the bad smell of stagnant water. He tells her to leave him alone, but she reminds him that François I fell into the water. He disdains French history and says he wants to watch the boats on the water, but she says that he cannot, as it is nighttime. He leans out further, but she pulls him in, and he relents. She says she gets dizzy from being on their island house with water all around them. She drags him over to the chairs and he sits down on her lap.

The man remembers when it would not get dark until late at night, but now it is dark at six o'clock. The woman asks why it has changed, and he answers that "the further one goes, the deeper one sinks. It is because the earth keeps turning around, around, around, around…" She praises his intellect, and says he could have had a powerful occupation, if he had any ambition. He scoffs at the notion of a "better" life, and says he has the "general factotum" of their house, or someone who serves a wide range of capacities. He complains of boredom, and she suggests they "making believe", as he did another night. They argue about whose "turn" it is to make believe, and he ends it by calling her "Semiramis" and telling her to drink her tea - of which there is none. She asks him to imitate the month of February, and he scratches his head like Stan Laurel, a popular comedian of the Laurel and Hardy team. She applauds and hugs him. She asks him to tell the story that begins "Then at last we arrived," but he is tired of it - he is told it to her and also imitated people and months every night of the seventy-five years they have been married. She says his life fascinates her, and even though she has heard the story so many times, she takes a dose of salt each night to erase her memory of the story.

She begs him to tell the story. He tells about how they arrived at a big fence to a garden eighty years ago, soaked and frozen from months in the rain. There was a path that led to a square and church in a village, but he can't remember which village it was. Neither can she, and when he thinks it was called Paris, she says that place never existed. He says it must have, since it collapsed 400,000 years ago. All that remains is a lullaby called "Paris will always be Paris". She praises him again, then after a pause he continues, and they both increasingly laugh in the telling. He speaks about a bare-bellied "idiot" who arrived with a trunk full of rice, and then the rice spilled and the idiot fell to the ground as they laughed. The woman remembers how they laughed, and she repeats phrases from the story, and they both laugh and repeat the phrases, until they calm down and alternate the words "arrived" and "aughed" (from "laughed").

AnalysisIonesco's semicircular stage design immediately evokes images that develop a main theme of The

Chairs: the present is circular and repetitive. The man and woman lead static lives, retelling the same ritualistic story every night, even the water around their island is "stagnant". The exact details of where they are and how they ended up there - apparently as the remaining survivors in some kind of post-apocalyptic world - are not as important as the comment Ionesco makes on old age. When one has lived for so long, one is cut off from the outside world, and each day melts into the next - until it doesn't seem like the "next" anymore. Consider the opening sentence of the man's story: "Then at last we arrived". First, he repeats the sentence each time he resumes the story, so in a sense he never advances but also returns in cyclical fashion - it even closes out the story. Second, the wording reveals its own circularity. The phrase starts off with a seeming progression in time ("Then"), but combines an ending ("at last") with a beginning ("arrived"). The end and beginning are fused, and the sentence is not an advancing "Then" but a repetitive "Then". The nonsensical story, too, is itself repetitive, but we do not know where these repetitions lead. The man's explanation as to why it now gets dark earlier provides a poignant answer: "…the further one goes, the deeper one sinks. It's because the earth keeps turning around, around, around, around…" These cycles, he implies, lead them down into the earth, into a deathly, dark burial.

Complicating the man and woman's view of the present is their relationship to the past. The woman willfully loses her memory each night, much like the tramps in Beckett's Waiting for Godot, lose their memory of the previous day, though not necessarily on purpose. Cut off from the past, life is even more circular, spinning around on its present-tense axis like the rotating earth. While the man does not voluntarily erase his memories, he does not heed history, as suggested by his shrugging off the story of François I). As in Waiting for Godot, and Beckett's 1958 play Happy Days, the two stranded characters are co-dependent, each having nothing but conversation with the other to keep himself from stultifying boredom. The man and woman, however, maintain a less rancorous relationship than the characters in the other plays. The man's name for his wife - "Semiramis" - is an allusion on his part to the legendarily beautiful 9th-century B.C. queen of Assyria, known as a fertility goddess, who was both wife and mother to Nimrod. However, it could also mean "half-branch". "Semi" is the prefix for "half," and "ramus" means a branch or an extension of bone, especially the lower jaw. Read this way, the woman completes the branch for him or, more saliently, together they form a complete jaw. In other words, together they have the capacity for speech, the ability to withstand loneliness through communication.

Part Two: From end of man's story until the second guestSummaryThe Old Woman praises the Old Man for his story and says he could have been more in life than a general factotum.

He says they should be content, and when she suggests he has "spoiled his career", he makes nonsense words, calls her "Mamma" and himself an "orphan". She tries to comfort him, but he says she is not his mamma. She rocks him on her knees as he sobs and says she is his wife and mamma, but he insists he is an orphan. After she chimes in with nonsense words of her own and tells him his mother is in heaven and can hear him - a claim he does not believe - he calms down when she reminds him that guests are coming, and he must deliver his message to them. He is energized by the anticipation of his message "to mankind". He considers himself unique in life, since he has an ideal and is gifted. She agrees, but says he would have done better had he gotten along with others, such as his brother. He defends himself, retelling an insult his brother made. She asks why he got angry with Carel and he warns her she will make him angry, and then retells Carel's insult. She lists a few occupations he could have had, and then there is a long, rigid silence.

The man dreamily recalls that at the end of the garden "there was…" She declares "Paris!" He says that "at the end of the end of the city of Paris, there was, there was, was what?" He cannot recall it, and though he admits he has difficulty expressing himself, he feels he must "tell it all". She agrees, since he has a message he must reveal to mankind, and that all it takes is to have one's mind made up, since ideas come in speech. He says he will not speak, as he has hired a professional Orator who will speak in his name. He has invited all the property owners and intellectuals - and anyone who is at all intellectual or proprietary, which means everyone - for the oration tonight. He feels that, thanks to her and the Orator, he can relieve his lifelong suffocation by communicating the message to everyone. She suggests putting off the meeting, as it might be fatiguing. He turns around her with clipped, hesitant steps, then asks if she really thinks it will be tiring, and how he could call it off. She tells him to call and invite them all for another evening, but he says it is too late - they have already embarked.

They hear a boat approaching, and the doorbell rings. As they walk to the concealed door, the woman frets about her appearance. Hidden from view, they open the door and close it after having shown someone in. We hear them introduce themselves to the guest and help her put away her coat. They re-enter, and leave space for the Lady - who is invisible. They carry on a casual conversation with her - the audience hears only their words - and the man exits through a door to get her a chair. The woman tells the Lady to sit on one of the chairs present, and she sits at the other one and compliments the Lady's fan. The man returns with another chair and sits on it opposite the woman, with the Lady between them. They listen to her speak, and the woman responds by saying her husband might be able to alleviate her concerns with something he will tell her. He tells her it is not time yet. They smile and laugh at a story the Lady tells, then agree and disagree with what she has said until they both laugh again at her charm. He picks up an invisible object the Lady has dropped but, being younger, she gets to it first. He laments his age, and the woman comments on his sincerity. They smile, listen to the Lady, and reply to her inquiries about their lives: he is not misanthropic, but merely likes solitude; he fills his time with the radio, fishing and, on clear nights, the moon; there is regular boat service; until ten years ago they received visits from their remaining family; and the man devotes two hours per day to working on his message.

AnalysisThe man and woman's "conversation" with the invisible Lady hints that all their guests will

similarly arrive in their minds. While the man's story he always retells is a ritual that, in making life bearable, also drives the couple closer to death, their imaginary conversation is more than that: it is an illusion they have created that tries to make their lives meaningful. Ionesco was a prominent playwright of the Theatre of the Absurd, the French postwar theatrical movement that was closely allied with existentialist philosophy. The existentialists believed man's condition in the universe was absurd - beyond human rationality - and meaningless. The only way for a life to have meaning was to commit responsibly to something beyond the self. In Ionesco's play Rhinoceros, a man overturns his apathetic, irresponsible life by committing himself to saving humanity. It appears that the old man's "message" is an attempt to do the same thing, and the play's tension is over what the message will be. The woman seems to uphold this existentialist argument when she tells the man that needs only to have his mind made up, and the ideas will come through his words. She believes that with a mental commitment, he will attain some kind of meaning. However, her argument is circular, and she wonders how we can make up our mind before the ideas have entered into it.

The man's anxiety over his actual communication and whether he will even be able to communicate, then, is an additional tension in the play. His reliance on the Orator to deliver the message can be viewed as a self-conscious move by Ionesco, as he, too, relies on actors to speak his words. The Lady, as a fiction of the man and woman's minds, is also a character whose dialogue and actions they "write". Self-conscious techniques were used frequently in the Theatre of the Absurd, generally as ways to keep the audience honest; they were reminded that what they were watching was not an escape, but an artificial representation of life. In Rhinoceros, for instance, one character recommends the plays of Ionesco. In The Chairs, Ionesco uses self-consciousness more subtly and for a more personal effect, as a comment on himself as a frustrated playwright. This theme will grow more important as the play continues.

The man's continuation of the story that repeats words and dangles into nothingness - "at the end of the end there was, there was, was what?" - picks up on the theme of a repetitive present that slowly approaches death. He keeps inching closer to the end, but never reaches it, just as they keep inching closer and closer to death with each passing moment but never reach it. His faulty memory again means that the past is inaccessible and all he knows is the cyclical present. That they were cast out of a garden is also an explicit Biblical reference to Eden, the event that began mankind's life in the real world. But the old man cannot remember this well, so even the most momentous beginning is blurry. A further fusion of beginnings and endings comes out in the old man's character. At times he is senile, as his spotty memory indicates, but at other times he is child-like, sitting on his wife's lap and sobbing for his mother. The woman's status as his wife and confirms her name of Semiramis, the wife and mother of Nimrod in 9th-century B.C. Assyria.

Part Three: From after second guest arrives until the room is filledSummaryThe doorbell rings. The Old Man tells the Old Woman to get another chair, and he opens the second door on the wall

while she hobbles toward one of the concealed doors. He formally greets an invisible Colonel, stumbling over his words. While the man recounts a war story to the Colonel, the woman reprimands the Colonel for dropping cigarette butts on their floor. She enlists her husband in her argument against the Colonel. The doorbell rings and the man goes to answer it, but knocks over the invisible chair of the Lady. The woman leaves to find a chair, exiting and entering through different doors, while the man greets Belle, an elderly friend of his who was once beautiful, d her husband, a Photo-engraver. He tells the woman to find another chair; she does and sets them both down. He introduces the new guests to the others. The woman receives a gift of a painting from the photo-engraver. She calls him "Doctor" and complains of several ailments until the man reminds her he is a photo-engraver. She says it doesn't matter, as he's so charming. The man and the woman sit back to back and talk to Belle and the photo-engraver, respectively. He says he is flattered, and that he loved her years ago, but there has been a change. The woman repeats "Oh! Sir" to the photo-engraver.

The light brightens, and it continues to do so as more guests arrive. The man and woman carry on their conversations. The woman defies the photo-engraver's expectations about her age and sexuality and makes increasingly sexual gestures. The man reminisces with Belle about their romantic youth, and how they could have been happy together. The woman says the photo-engraver flatters her for calling her youthful-looking. The man speaks poetically of their cowardice in not partaking of their love, while the woman gets tickled by the photo-engraver and continues flirting with him. The man tells Belle that Semiramis has taken the place of his mother, and the woman expresses amazement at the photo- engraver's belief that one can have children at any age. The man tells Belle that his message has sustained him through the years, and the woman tells the photo-engraver that she has never betrayed her husband. She says she is "only his poor mamma," then sobs, and tells him to find someone else.

The man and woman seat Belle and her husband next to the other two guests, and then sit down on the opposite ends and listen to the conversations. The woman discusses their one son who left them when he was seven. The man says they never had a child. The woman recalls how their son accused them of killing birds, though they refuted this, then left them as he said, "It's you who are responsible". The man remembers how he let his mother die alone in a ditch. The woman says for them not to speak to her husband about their son, as he himself was a perfect son and his parents died in his arms. They speak clipped sentences to their guests, then the doorbell rings and the man lets in a handful of newspapermen while his wife gets more chairs. He introduces the other guests to the newspapermen, there to hear the Orator. In the chaotic atmosphere, they try to accommodate the guests. The doorbell rings again and the man lets in more guests, including a small child he leads by the hand. He thinks the child will be bored by the lecture, and then introduces the new guests and their children to his wife. While they get acquainted, the doorbell rings several more times, and the man scrambles to let them in through all doors but the center one while the woman fills up the room with chairs.

The woman starts hawking invisible programs in the packed room as the man seats the standing guests. From the dais he announces that there are no chairs left, but is jostled by the milling crowd. He and the women are pushed to the stools, which are by the windows at the opposite sides of the room. Unable to see each other, they call over and verify their positions. The woman makes chit-chat with the guests while the man discusses exploitation of man, dignity, and more abstract topics, such "I am the one in the other". He says the Orator will soon speak on his behalf about a system he's perfected. The woman echoes or nearly echoes other statements of his - he has suffered and learned much, and only if his instructions are carried out can they save they the world.

AnalysisThe man and woman's regrets over the path their lives have taken dominate this section, and

cement the idea that the past is inaccessible. While the man stands up for his wife against the Colonel, it is obvious that the man and woman both love Belle and the photo-engraver, respectively, and are hung up on the past - the man even says "I loved you, I love you". But the past is more difficult to change than his quick verb-tense change suggests. While the semicircular stage design is necessary to integrate the audience into the action, it also serves as a symbolically incomplete circle. The complete half can be seen as the present that the couple must circle around endlessly, while the missing half is the inaccessible past.

Note how the man and woman are truly talking to each other though they go through two intermediaries - Belle and the photo-engraver. Both project their regrets and insecurities to the other and respond accordingly. While the man reminisces about his youth with Belle, points out parts of her face that are no longer as attractive, and says they will not be able to recapture their lost romance, the woman pretends the photo-engraver has called her youthful-looking. Likewise, when the man says his wife has taken the place of his mother, she comments on the photo-engraver's remark about extended childbearing years. Most important, their discrepancy over the son, combined with the man's

corresponding story about leaving his mother alone, while they sit with four empty chairs between them, exposes their true divide. What, exactly, has happened is not as crucial as the mutual feelings of abandonment - the woman has been abandoned and the man has abandoned. It makes sense, then, that the woman has also become her husband's surrogate mother, as she replaces the son who left them, while he gains a new mother.

Both examples, the unrequited loves and the familial problems, pertain to responsibility, which the son mentions as he leaves. While his example about the birds is odd, he may as well be referring to their lifelong irresponsibility, especially the man's, which we still witness. They regret the past, not taking responsibility for the path they have chosen, and they have to craft a fantasy-present in order to escape their real lives, another irresponsible gesture. As stated previously, the existentialist believe that only a responsible, committed life could be meaningful, and it looks more likely that the man's message will be his last-ditch effort to gain such meaning.

It is a remarkable achievement that Ionesco can create a palpable sense of excitement for the man's message as the rooms fills - with invisible people. Obviously, the chairs help set the mood, but the incessant action creates the sense of chaos and mass in the room. Ionesco calls his play a "tragic farce," and this section, above all, lives up to that billing. While the characters' scrambling to seat invisible guests on chairs is comical, the illusion is nonetheless poignant, and even disturbing.

Part Four: From the Emperor's entrance until the endSummaryThere is an increasingly loud noise and the main door opens. A powerful light floods in, and the invisible Emperor

stands there, bathed in the light. The Old Man and Old Woman show their respects, introduce the Emperor to the crowd, and stand up on the stools to get a better look at him. He proclaims himself the Emperor's most faithful subject and tries to make his way over, but cannot move. The woman reassures him that the Emperor gave him a wink, and is being led over to the dais. The man is overjoyed that the Emperor has come and says he is his last recourse. His friends have all betrayed and hurt him, but he has never sought revenge. He maintains that he could have saved humanity, had he been able to communicate his message. The woman reminds him the Orator will soon be there, and all is well. The man pleads with the Emperor to be patient and stay until the Orator arrives. He tells him and the guests a story of how, when he was forty years old, he sat on his father's lap, and they married him off right then; fortunately, he says, his wife "has been both father and mother to me". The man and the woman keep saying "He will come", then "He is coming", then "He is here".

The room becomes still and silent. They stare at a door for a long time until the door slowly opens to reveal the Orator, a real person. He looks like a pompous 19th-century artist. He glides along the wall to the center door, passing by the woman without even noticing her touching his arm. The man and woman are astounded that he exists. The Orator bows to the Emperor and mounts the dais. The man gives permission for the crowd to get his autograph, and the Orator signs invisible autographs. The man introduces himself and thanks the crowd for coming, and thanks the Orator, the organizers of the event, the people who built the building and the chairs, the technicians, and those who made the programs. He thanks his wife, those who have supported him and, finally, the Emperor. The man addresses the Emperor. He says he and his wife can die happily now that his message will be communicated. He tells the crowd - all that is left of humanity - that he has been long unrecognized, but what matters now is he can make his philosophy and the details of his life known to the universe. He says he and his wife must die after years of aiding humanity, and she agrees. The crowd separates them, and he recites a poem about how he had hoped they would rot together. Though they will not be united in space, he says, they will be in time. He says he is counting on the Orator to convey his message, then bids farewell to everyone and the Emperor. He throws confetti on the Emperor, and the fireworks and fanfare increase as more confetti is thrown on the Orator.

The man and woman chant, "Long live the Emperor!" and throw themselves out the window. There is silence and the fireworks cease, and there is a sound of their yelling and bodies falling into water. The light dims to its original strength. The Orator addresses the crowd, and makes it clear that he is deaf and dumb. He mumbles some unintelligible sounds, then gives up and writes with some chalk on the blackboard the word "ANGELFOOD" and then some nonsense words with a lot of "N"s. He points to the board and makes more unintelligible sounds, then erases the board and writes "AADIEU ADIEU APA" (only the second "A" is an actual "A"; the others are missing the horizontal line). He smiles and is satisfied, but when he does not get the reaction he was hoping for, he loses the smile and trudges away, bowing to the Emperor before he leaves through the main door. Suddenly, sounds issue from the invisible crowd - laughter, murmurs, hushes, coughs, which increase, and then subside.

AnalysisAfter all the build-up, the message turns out to be incomprehensible. In the original production of

the play, the blackboard was not even used, but the curtain fell as the Orator mumbled. Whatever

message the man had, it is beyond human comprehension. The central tenet of existentialism is that man's condition in the universe is absurd, beyond human rationality, and the message certainly encompasses this. The only way to make meaning out of life was to dedicate oneself to a greater good. The man has seemingly done this, as he believes his life of suffering will translate into good once he shares his message with humanity. But this is not enough, as the Orator's garbled speech proves. So is Ionesco's brand of existentialism against any notion of redemption and we wonder whether we should read The Chairs as an overwhelmingly pessimistic play. In Ionesco's Rhinoceros, the main character, apathetic at the beginning, finally makes his life - and all of humanity's - significant when he decides to save humanity by fighting the overwhelming rhinoceros hordes. We question why the main character of the Rhinoceros succeed while the old man fails.

Though the Orator's message is cryptic, there is one clue we can cull from it: the words "Adieu papa" seem to emerge from the Orator's last scribbles. In other words, "Goodbye, Father". When the couple's son left them, he did not say this, but rather "It's you who are responsible". Even if this is not the link Ionesco intended, the man's lifelong irresponsibility is what has made him fail. He has never taking any blame for his failed relationships with friends or family. He has acted like a child and he did not even heed his wife's warning at the beginning of the play about falling into the water. In fact, even the double suicide is a form of irresponsibility. While the existentialists believed that the major way to combat meaninglessness was to accept that one would die, to commit oneself to this unpleasant notion, suicide is not the answer for them. Suicide is not a direct confrontation with death, as most of their literature attests to, but a way around death. Regardless of this view, the illusory world the couple has created around them is a deeper form of irresponsibility, a false attempt to make life meaningful that, in its escapism, actually makes life even more meaningless, since nothing they dream up really exists.

There is one final piece of irresponsibility in the play. For his final message, the man has bestowed the responsibility of communication on someone else - the Orator. He does not accept responsibility for conveying it himself, and his message becomes worthless. Ionesco could be attacking the oratorical actors who destroy his work and render it meaningless, as well as everyone else in the real theater whom the old man thanks. The crowd of invisible guests is the audience; the organizers are the producers and director; those who built the building and chairs are the crew; the newspapermen are the critics; and those who made the programs could even be considered the publishing house for Ionesco's play. On the other hand, Ionesco may be criticizing himself for ducking out of the theater like the old man and not directly delivering the message himself. This is a less likely answer, but it makes Ionesco a more sympathetic figure and gives the play an interesting slant.

Important Quotations Explained

"The further one goes, the deeper one sinks. It's because the earth keeps turning around, around, around, around"

The Old Man provides an answer for why it gets darker earlier in Part One. He and the Old Woman lead lives of repetition, of routines that never advance but cycle continuously around themselves, and his image of the earth's revolutions captures this revolving stasis. He also alludes to the death such repetition comes before. Their lives are devoid of novelty and, while their routines, such as storytelling and fantasy conversations, aim to stave off boredom and make life bearable. However, the repetitions actually grind them into a routine that approaches death, "the deeper one sinks", as into the ground, just as the earth's revolutions, in the Old Man's mind, increase the darkness.

"At the end, at the end of the end of the city of Paris, there was, there was, was what?"

The Old Man asks the Old Woman this while trying to resume his story in Part Two. His repetitive phrasing itself leads to no finite end but continues delaying the destination at the "end of the end of the city of Paris". The three "of" prepositions that keep prolonging the sentence's conclusion, in addition to his stuttering "At the end" and "there was". While the Old Man's wife has a worse short-term memory, as she doses herself with salt each night so she will not remember his story, the Old Man's long-term memory blank means he has a similar problem accessing the past. This inaccessibility to the past means that his present life will be even more repetitive than its schedule suggests, since his mind can cycle around only events in the present. The Old Man's memory is not linear, stretching from his youth to his current age, but cyclical, blurring beginnings and endings. Hence, he does not know what lay at the end of Paris, just as he is unsure sometimes whether he is an old man, at the end of his own life, or an infantile orphan.

"'It's you who are responsible.'"

The Old Woman recounts that these are the couple's son's final words to them as he left, which occurs in Part Three. The son's story beforehand - about his parents' killing birds - makes little sense, so his labeling them responsible seems, at first reading, to be a throwaway line. But it can also be read as an ironic comment, in that the parents are not, in fact, responsible. The Old Man and Old Woman create fantasy lives to escape their real ones, they regret the past but do not take accountability for it, and the Old Man is not able to deliver his own message but relies on the Orator. The existentialist philosophers believed that only by taking responsibility for one's life could man's absurd condition acquire meaning. Everything we see of them suggests that the couple is not, in fact, responsible, and their meaningless life, one of illusion and grinding routine, is their own fault - just as their son's departure is most likely their fault, despite whatever we make of the bird story.

"I'm an orphandworfan."

The Old Man wails these words to the Old Woman in a fit, which occurs in Part Two. His belief that he is an orphan - coupled with his infantile manner of expression - is evidence of his confusion over beginnings and endings. In his cyclical, repetitive world where the past is mostly inaccessible, beginnings and endings are conflated. Likewise, he is ninety-five years old, but he still believes he is a child. His regression and immaturity also speaks to his irresponsibility as he sloughs off adult commitments and becomes a crying infant. His nonsense word - "dworfan" - presages the Orator's nonsense words when delivering the Old Man's message. According to the existentialists, since the Old Man has taken no responsibility, his message will remain absurd and irrational, just as the word "dworfan" is similarly meaningless.

"ANGELFOOD"

This is one of the nonsense words the deaf and dumb Orator writes on the blackboard while delivering the Old Man's message, which occurs in Part Five. The message has no meaning because the Old Man's life has been irresponsible and, as the existentialists believed, only a life of responsibility can bear meaning. The Old Man's final touch of irresponsibility is putting the onus of conveying the message onto the Orator, since he feels he cannot express himself well. One can view the Orator's

butchering the message along these lines of irresponsibility, in which case Ionesco is criticizing his own irresponsibility in not transmitting the message himself. However, another possibility is that Ionesco criticizes the Orator for not understanding his message. The Orator is essentially an actor, as he looks the part, is self- absorbed, and signs autographs. At any rate, he is a frustrated playwright who feels either he or his actors have failed his work.

Study Questions

What are the implications of the Old Man's nickname of "Semiramis" for the Old Woman?

The first meaning is a direct allusion to Semiramis, the 9th-century B.C. queen of Assyria, renowned for her beauty. She was known as the fertility goddess, and was both the wife and mother of Nimrod, the great-grandson of the Bible's Noah. The Old Man often calls her his mother during his crying fits, and the Old Woman says she is wife and mother to him. The man's confusion over his identity and age - he is at times senile and at times infantile - reinforces the idea that his life is circular, revolving around only the present-tense routine. The line between beginnings and endings, such as birth and death, therefore, are blurred, and the Old Woman truly is Semiramis—his present wife and past mother.

The other possible meaning derives from Latin. "Semi" is the prefix for "half", and "ramus" means a branch or an extension of bone, especially the lower jaw. The Old Woman completes the half-branch for the Old Man or, more likely, together they form a complete jaw. Together they have the capacity for speech, the ability to withstand loneliness through communication, while alone they are helpless, like half a jaw.

How does the presence of Belle and the Photo-engraver affect the Old Man and Old Woman?

Belle and the Photo-engraver's attendance excites long-dormant yearnings in the Old Man and Old Woman that indicate their irresponsibility. The Old Man's conversation with Belle is filled with regret over the past. He speaks longingly of the life they could have led together, and even says, "I loved you, I love you", showing that he has not gotten over her. He is unwilling to accept responsibility for the choices he has made, but tries to evade them in his fantasy world. The Old Woman's interaction with the Photo-engraver is highly sexual, provoking her otherwise neglected and repressed sexual feelings. He gives her a painting, introducing "physical" art to her barren life. The painting, however, is not truly physical, as it still resides in her imagination. The painting evokes very different reactions than the stories and imitations the Old Man performs for her. The Photo-engraver's continuing flirtations with her evoke her silenced sexuality. She makes lewd gestures and comments, though at the end she "rejects" his advances.

Finally, the separate conversations also enable the Old Man and Old Woman to speak to each other through their imaginary intermediaries. While the Old Man comments on Belle's declining appearance and age, the Old Woman responds to the Photo-engraver's remarks on her beauty and youth. Still, this indirect conversation is an irresponsible means of communication. Were they responsible and committed, they would talk directly to each other, but their reliance on escapism makes this impossible.

Whatever the Old Man's message is before the Orator butchers it, most likely Ionesco did not plan for it to have a specific meaning. He purposely leaves it vague - as a compilation of the man's "life" and "philosophy". However, the man does say he has invited anyone who is proprietary and intellectual - which turns out to be anyone - to hear his message, which will save humanity, and we see that an Emperor rules over everyone. What does this say about the possible underpinnings of his message, especially in reference to the word "proprietary"?

The audience that the man and woman invite is very much the ruling class, as the keywords "intellectual" and "proprietary" suggest, although the Old Man claims that it means everyone, everyone we see is in the upper echelon of society. The Colonel is a renowned military figure; the Lady, Belle, and the Photo-engraver are all part of the upper-class; and the Orator is a celebrity, signing autographs in his posh outfit. The entire proceedings are tinged with a capitalist feel, as the Old Woman sells programs and the Old Man thanks all the specific people involved in the production of the night. He makes sure to thank the many manual laborers, as well, which may provide the best clue to his message. It may be a message of communism, an appeal to the bourgeois to change the system he's "perfected." The icing on the cake of the night is that the Emperor is a throwback to a feudal overlord. Karl Marx believed that feudalism was the last time there was a mutually beneficial employer-employee relationship. The self-consciousness of The Chairs as being a play - the implication is that what is happening on-stage is itself a theater, and that the chairs there are chairs for a virtual audience - suggests an implicit connection between its own message and its message to the real audience. Most likely, the educated and wealthy bourgeois would be the ones attending The Chairs. Perhaps the failure of the message, then, is Ionesco's belief that communism cannot work, that it will not be heard by the masses.

Suggested Essay TopicsCompare The Chairs with Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot or Happy Days, which also

prominently features a couple stranded in one place.Why is the stage of The Chairs a semicircle? What does this say about the concept of time in the

play?Why do the Old Man and Old Woman diverge over their accounts of whether they had a son and

over what happened to the Old Man's mother?Compare the Old Man to the character of Berenger in Ionesco's Rhinoceros. How are both similar,

and why does Berenger choose to fight the rhinoceroses while the Old Man commits suicide?