Absurdity, Logic, and Intellectualism Theme Analysis

Rhinoceros takes place in a provincial French town where, over the course of the play’s three acts, the entire population—save the play’s protagonist, Berenger—turns into rhinoceroses. The play is absurd in a variety of ways, not least because of its premise: in addition to the absurd “rhinoceritis” illness that grips the town, characters also make ridiculously illogical arguments that, to anyone watching or reading, don’t hold up to scrutiny at all. Through these strange events that take place and the characters’ attempts to make sense of them, the play makes the case that life in general is absurd and inexplicable rather than something that can be clearly analyzed. Additionally, the features of human thought that are supposed to make sense of the world’s mysteries, such as logic, intellectualism, and language, are just as nonsensical as what they attempt to illuminate.

Long before a rhinoceros even arrives on the scene, the play makes it clear that its characters, though they make a show of being rational, educated, and logical, are actually anything but. In the first act, a Logician gives a lesson in logic to an Old Gentleman on syllogisms, a type of logical argument that sets two propositions against each other in order to reach a conclusion. The Logician declares that if all cats have four paws, and if the beings Fricot and Isidore both have four paws, then Fricot and Isidore are both cats. There’s no way for the play’s audience to confirm whether or not this is true—there’s no indication of who or what Fricot or Isidore are, or if they exist at all. The Logician thus shows how easy it is to warp and abuse logic by replying, when the Old Gentleman points out that his dog also has four paws, that the gentleman’s dog is actually a cat. To the audience, this is patently absurd—dogs are clearly a separate species from cats.

The math problem that follows, in which the Logician asks the Old Gentleman to deduce what happens if they take away two legs from Isidore and Fricot, is similarly nonsensical. Per the Logician’s own proposition, an animal with any more or any fewer than four paws and the corresponding four legs isn’t a cat, but this doesn’t stop the Old Gentleman from deducing that they could have cats with as many as six and as few as zero legs—showing clearly that these attempts to rationalize and make sense of the world aren’t just ineffective and ridiculous, but that logic can also be used to come to all manner of incorrect conclusions. Tellingly, the Logician warns the Old Gentleman that logic is only good and useful until people abuse it, which he and the Old Gentleman are clearly doing with their thought exercises. This indicates not just that the world of Rhinoceros is fundamentally absurd—as is, more broadly, the audience’s—but that any attempts to try to make sense of that absurdity are, by default, illogical, inconclusive, and easily manipulated.

While all of this is humorous at first, the absurdity of this logic begins to take on a more sinister connotation when the second rhinoceros that rampages through the square tramples and kills a beloved cat. Everyone at the café—including Jean, the Logician, the Old Gentleman, and surrounding storeowners—are less concerned with the dead cat and the grieving Housewife than they are with arguing about whether the rhinoceroses had one or two horns, and how many horns Asian versus African rhinoceroses have. This continues throughout the play, as several characters argue about whether or not there are actually rhinoceroses running wild through the town, and others attempt to rationalize why people might be turning into rhinoceroses in the first place. In all cases, these attempts at logic or rationality ignore the fact that there are indeed rhinoceroses running around, and none of these attempts to explain away anything actually lead to new information. All of this suggests that trying to make sense of the world in this way is ultimately futile—no matter how absurd an event might be, attempts to quantify, qualify, or otherwise rationalize the absurdity is equally as ridiculous as the event in question.

Alongside the ridiculousness of logic, the play also pokes fun at intellectualism more broadly through the character of Jean, Berenger’s best friend. Jean is affluent, well dressed, and cultured—and he sees Berenger’s sloppiness as offensive. However, even though Jean insists that he’s better than Berenger because he’s so intellectual and cultured, Jean still ultimately succumbs to rhinoceritis and even tries to run down his friend on his way to the streets to join the stampeding rhinoceroses. Not even Jean’s intellectualism could save him, while Berenger’s attempts to think critically about his situation and make sense of it are similarly fruitless. As the final human left in the play, Berenger comes to the conclusion that language itself is meaningless. He’s unsure if he’s even speaking French, and what the purpose of speaking even is if there’s no one to communicate with—communicating with the rhinoceroses would mean learning their language, something that he suggests entails seeing them as beings capable of rational thought and open communication. Berenger’s final failure to make sense of anything, even his own ability to join the rhinoceroses, suggests that while it may be natural to try to use logic or rationality to make sense of the world, this is ultimately futile since the world itself is fundamentally illogical and nonsensical.