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Running with

Rhinoceroses
Let me begin with a word in defense
of a splendid animal― the rhinoceros.
Rhinoceroses don't run in herds; they
are either solitary or move in small
groups. Typical herd animals are
buffalo; you've seen old photos of
them running on the American plains.
The German novelist Heinrich Böll, in
his Billiards at Half-past Nine,
describing roughly the same social
phenomenon, characterizes it as
"partaking of the buffalo sacrament."
Better. But I'm being silly: Ionesco
wasn't writing for the Discovery
Channel, he was engaging in theater, in
literature, in metaphor. And what
spectacular theater is achieved
through transforming humans into
rhinoceroses! I just wanted you to
know that real rhinos don't act that
way.

Eugene Ionesco (1909―1994) is associated


with the birth of the Theater of the Absurd,
of which his play Rhinoceros is a prime
example. The story you've read, "Rhinoceros,"
was written by Ionesco in order that the play
might be read as well as seen. Like the play,
the story version is designed to elicit
laughter― it is Monty Python territory.

And sure enough, audiences and readers over


the decades have laughed (did you?). Yet the
subject of the story is one of the most
potentially deadly issues of our time. And this
deadly issue centers on an intimate question:
Who are you? The question of identity is a
complex one, one with many layers, many
degrees of commitment. It would be naive to
pursue the question of identity through
exclusions, we are in the last analysis "all of
the above." That is, we have gender,
ethnicity, culture, religious background,
sexual preferences― and all this within a
unique and highly individual psychological
morass of interconnected likes and dislikes,
prejudices and distempers. But the story
focuses on priorities: are you first an
individual?― or are you first a group
member?

This question priorities can seem relatively


trivial, a matter of fashion. But history has
shown us that the priorities at issue can be
momentous and devastating. One of the
things reported in places like the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda are claims about how
fast the horrors that engulfed those cultures
came about. "Why, only last year, we ate
together, played sports together, our sub-
cultures even intermarried." The point here is
that, however else it happens, it happens
fast.

"It?" What is the "it" that happens so fast?


This "it" is the subject of Ionesco's 1959
play, which he also presented as the short-
story you've read. Born in Romania in 1906,
Ionesco emigrated to France and witnessed
first hand the social transformations wrought
by the Nazi occupation.

What happens so fast is a psychological


transformation of the individual. And this is
something different from what we
encountered in Shirley Jackson's story "The
Lottery," where the townsfolk remained
faithful, however irrationally, to their
established tradition. Where in that story,
people abdicated themselves to tradition, in
"Rhinoceros" people abdicate themselves
from individuality. Where in "The Lottery"
people seek psychological refuge in tradition,
in "Rhinoceros" they seek psychological
refuge in a group― in any group.

Of course, to be human is to be a social


animal, to be a member of a group. But how
that group is established― the relation
between the group and the people who belong
to the group― this is of decisive importance.
Here's one way to think about it. Healthy
societies are comprised by members that are
in the last analysis "I"; unhealthy societies
are comprised by members that are in the
last analysis nothing more that "one of We."

Unhealthy? How so? Groups comprised of


"We" inoculate themselves from criticism and
course-correction. Dissent is treated as
disloyalty; personal uniqueness and individual
diversity are branded as inauthentic. "We" is
never wrong (the grammar here is
intentional); "We" is typically the injured
party; "We" is never driven by base motives.

But we're pretty familiar with this critique of


the totalitarian identity, right? Such things
happen in police states, in societies in which
conformity is enforced by thugs. Such things
happen in settings that are somewhat, well,
theatrical.
But nine months before the horrors began to
unfold in Bosnia, the people didn't see
themselves in a theatrical setting. Yes,
they'd been encouraged to reawaken a sense
of their tribal identities― as Muslims, Serbs,
and Croats. But that was nothing serious.
These were Europeans, after all.

Indeed, we're now all-too-aware of what


happened. But rather than catalog ghastly
tales, let's catalog something else. We turn
now to Ionesco's story, a story that may be
read as a catalog of psychological strategies―
strategies for evading individuality,
strategies for taking dishonorable comfort in
"We" rather than making one's priority a
commitment to sustaining an "I" identity in
the midst of frightening change.

Ionesco had watched otherwise ordinary


people become Nazis or Nazi collaborators.
He had watched the world in which he lived,
the world he loved, go mad. How had it
happened? How had group-think emerged?
How had the transition from individual to
rhinoceros― the transition from an "I" to the
brutal herd mentality of "We"― taken place?
His interest in the story "Rhinoceros" centers
not so much on the fact that such transitions
did happen. He is more interested in
detailing the psychological antecedents,
antecedents in the minds of individuals, to
the emergence of the rhinoceros phenomenon.

We can proceed by considering some of the


more interesting characters we meet in the
story, and noting what Ionesco shows us of
them.

Jean: After a loud public quarrel about the


nature of the rhinoceros they'd just seen,
Jean storms off. And our Narrator
apologizes for the man he calls his friend:
"The slightest objection made him
foam at the mouth. This was his only
fault, for he had a heart of gold and
had done me a thousand good turns."
Yes: a real prince― so long as you don't
disagree with him. An intolerance of rival
points of view is typical of the totalitarian
mind set, certainly. But there is something
more at work here. It is through rage that
we see Jean, later in the story, transform
into a rhinoceros.

There are folks― have you known any?― for


whom anger is a primal disposition. They will
be furious over one side or the other of the
abortion issue, enraged about this or that
ecological issue, incensed about animal rights
(or about those who promote animal rights).
One senses, after a time, that the specific
issue under consideration does little more
than serve as a hook on which such folks can
hang their anger― that anger itself, not the
issue of the moment, is their psychological
reality. They may seem to be individuals
because they are often so stridently
assertive. Yet in times of crisis and change,
their anger is easily directed against any who
serve as convenient targets; it is often their
visceral force, their anger, that sets in
motion mob action. To be an individual
requires thinking for oneself; it requires
thinking, reflection. And while anger is
typically perceptive, and thus is quick to find
justification for itself, it is at the same time
unreflective. Thus the Jeans of the world are
easy prey for the transition beyond
individuality, the transition to rhinoceroses.

The Logician: the intellectualism of the


academic is portrayed as a sophisticated
evasion of the crisis through a cleverly
reasoned distraction. Look at his capers in
discussing the fact that a rhinoceros has just
killed a cat, and that the Narrator and Jean
are disputing whether it was an Asian or an
African rhinoceros:
"You began by asking yourselves whether
today's rhinoceros is the same as last
Sunday's or whether it is a different one.
That is what must be decided. You may
have seen one and the same one-horned
rhinoceros on two occasions, or you may
have seen one and the same two-horned
rhinoceros on two occasions. Or again, you
may have seen first one one-horned
rhinoceros and then a second one horned
rhinoceros. Or else, first one two-horned
rhinoceros and then a second two-horned
rhinoceros. If on the first occasion you
had seen a two-horned rhinoceros, and on
the second a one-horned rhinoceros, that
would not be conclusive either. It might be
that since last week the rhinoceros had
lost one of his horns, and that the one you
saw today was the same. Or it might be
that two two-horned rhinoceroses had
each lost one of their horns. If you could
prove that on the first occasion you had
seen a one-horned rhinoceros, whether it
was Asian or African, and today a two-
horned rhinoceros, whether it was African
or Asian― that doesn't matter― then we
might conclude that two different
rhinoceroses were involved, for it is most
unlikely that a second horn could grow in a
few days, to any visible extent, on a
rhinoceros's nose; this would mean that all
Asian, or African, rhinoceros had become
an African, or Asian, rhinoceros, which is
logically impossible, since the same
creature cannot be born in two places at
once or even successively."
An effusion of blather and prattle. And it is
intended by Ionesco to be heard as such.
Another way to avoid becoming an individual,
then, is to take refuge in scholastic
intellectualism: the question is analyzed to
distraction, yet the issue is left
unaddressed.

Botard: for all his feigned disgust at the


vulgarity of being a rhinoceros, Botard is at
bottom a conformist: "One must keep up with
one's times! were his last words as a man." In
these words Botards's life is revealed for
what it is, a protracted fashion statement.
The point: most elitism is disguised
conformism― it is rooted in insecurity, based
on the suspicion that after all one is merely
vulgar. And when the chips are down, in times
of crisis, one must be what one knows oneself
to be, one of "We."

Daisy: Like Botard, Daisy is possessed by a


lack of self-esteem. This state of
psychological disparagement (it was evident in
Germany's Weimar period that led so directly
to the Nazi era) can drive people to seek
identity and authenticity in collective terms.
Speaking of the things that set her and the
Narrator off from those who'd becomes
rhinoceroses, Daisy says: "Perhaps after all
it's we who need saving. Perhaps we are the
abnormal ones. Do you see anyone else like
us?... It's the whole world that is right― not
you or me." The inclination to find
psychological well-being through belonging, no
matter at the expense of one's individuality,
is particularly attractive to those with low
self-esteem.

Confronted by the Narrator's declaration of


love, Daisy says: "I'm rather ashamed of what
you call love, that morbid thing...." This is
more than disaffection. Genuine love (we
speak now not of sport sex or suchlike)
enhances the sense of individuality on the
part of the people in love. Love emphasizes
uniqueness. Love subtly sets lovers off from
the group; love is private, it speaks in
whispers and says "I" and "you." And when
love whispers "we" it is the "we of two" far
more often than the "We" of the group.
Perceptive literary critics of totalitarianism
like Aldous Huxley and George Orwell have
based their dystopian fictions on the premise
that authentic human love is inherently
subversive of the totalitarian agenda.

The Narrator. A decent man, no doubt; a


man who tries to see the best in people and
situations. Another way of putting that is
that the Narrator is someone who has come
to an agreement with himself not to notice
things that are distasteful. One example of
this is his insistence that Jean is his friend―
all this as Jean treats him with contempt at
every turn. Not only does he not see
distasteful things in others, he is further
blind to anything unseemly in himself. His
unique susceptibility is expressed in his view
that only other people can become
rhinoceroses: "How can anybody be a
rhinoceros? It's unthinkable!"

And yet without his realizing it, the


transformation is already at work in him: "In
order for them to relearn my language (which
moreover I was beginning to forget) I should
first have to learn theirs." And from there he
moves to trying to have it both ways― all in
the name of reasonability and practicality: "It
is obvious that one must not always drift
blindly behind events and that it's a good
thing to maintain one's own individuality.
However, one must also make allowances for
things; asserting one's own difference to be
sure, but yet. . .remaining akin to one's
fellows."
Yes, the story is about the seductiveness of
totalitarian ideology. But it's also about the
everyday foibles of the human psyche which―
in times of crisis, in times that present
accepting group identity as a social
imperative― can facilitate the transition
beyond individual reflection and
responsibility. The story suggests that
individualism is a very difficult state to
attain, and equally difficult to maintain.

For Ionesco, it's not what the townspeople


became, it's what they didn't become: they
didn't become individuals. Why? Because it's
so much easier to run than to reflect; so much
easier to become what Orwell called a
"Goodthinker" than to define oneself as an
outsider.

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