Berenger, Protagonist of an Anti-Playwright

BERENGER, PROTAGONIST OF AN ANTI-PLAYWRIGHT IONESCO HAS WRITTEN FOUR PLAYS about a protagonist named Berenger: The Killer, Rhinoceros, Le Pitton de [,air, and Le Roi se meurt (the latter two have not yet been translated).l In French the name Berenger is not uncommon, and Ionesco probably intended it to suggest two things: Berenger as the name of kings in the first millennium of French history, and Beranger (pronounced Berenger) as the name of a democratic nineteenth-century song-writer. All four Berengers of Ionesco combine the common man and the king, the trivial and the towering. Ionesco's Berengers are and are not the same character, and to the extent that they are not the same, it is illuminating to consider them in pairs. The Killer and Rhinoceros were written within a few months of each other (in 1957-1958) after Ionesco had attained success with his "anti-plays." In these two plays, he turns to the conventional threeact structure, and to more conventional methods of staging, as well as to a sympathetic protagonist. The Berenger of both plays is a nondescript , naive man of good will: in The Killer he has no profession; in Rhinoceros he is a clerk. In both plays he lives in a simple room of a building guarded by a concierge. In The Killer this building is part of a large city, in Rhinoceros of a small provincial town; in both plays the action takes place in the vague present. Both plays are named, not for their "average, middle-class citizen" protagonist, but for the antagonists, the Killer and Rhinoceros. Both plays are agons in the classical sense, and perhaps this is what Ionesco had in mind when he said that he had "never wanted to do anything but write classically since [he] began writing for the theater." In spite of the unprepossessing appearance of the protagonists, both Berengers emerge as heroic figures battling powerful forces, the deadly killer and the more ambiguously menacing rhinoceritis. In each play Act I contains the exposition and rising action that reveal protagonist and antagonist-Berenger vs. totalitarianism. Berenger of The Killer is more innocent than Berenger of Rhinoceros, for he is blinded by the radiant city, incapable of realizing that artificially planned cities are the inevitable prey of killers. But although Berenger himself may be hoodwinked by the seemingly benevolent , bureaucratic dictatorship of the Architect, Ionesco carefully links the Architect to Berenger's friend Edward to a nameless old (127) 128 MODERN DRAMA September man to the demogogic Mother Peep to the Killer, by means of the identical kind of brief case they all carry-the brief case that contains the incipient deadliness of the Killer's knife. Moreover, the Killer does not strike at those who are protected by the Administration; Dany is killed when and because she leaves the Administration in protest against its tacit acceptance of murder. As distressed as Berenger is by the Killer's activities, it is only after Dany's death that he resolves to act, to apprehend the Killer. In Act I of Rhinoceros, a cat is the only victim, and Berenger (even less imposing, with hangover, dishevelled clothing, shy modesty) is more concerned about his quarrel with his friend Jean than by rhinoceroses· in the street, which are not his business. In contrast to Berenger of The Killer, who leaves his familiar world for the radiant city where the Killer lurks, Berenger of Rhinoceros tries to live only his personal life, ignoring the epidemic of rhinoceritis that gradually attacks his world. In both plays the closest emotional ties of the two Berengers are with the women they love (Dany and Daisy) and friends to whom they are devoted (Edward and Jean). There is a parallel, too, in the peripheral characters of Architect and Logician, both efficient cogs in a well-ordered inhuman machine. But the impact of the machine itself differs in the two plays: in The Killer, it is diffused into Architect , Concierge, demagogues, geese, nameless people in the streets, policemen, whose ties with the Killer are oblique; in Rhinoceros, the epidemic progressively attacks the whole town, and it is the rhinoceros metaphor itself that is oblique...