Rhinoceros (
French original title
Rhinocéros) is a
play by
Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play was included in
Martin Esslin's study of post-war avant garde drama, "
The Theatre of the Absurd", although scholars have also rejected this label as too interpretatively narrow. Over the course of three acts, the inhabitants of a small, provincial French town turn into
rhinoceroses; ultimately the only human who does not succumb to this mass metamorphosis is the central character, Bérenger, a flustered
everyman figure who is initially criticized in the play for his drinking, tardiness, and slovenly lifestyle and then, later, for his increasing paranoia and obsession with the rhinoceroses. The play is often read as a response and criticism to the sudden upsurge of
Communism,
Fascism, and
Nazism during the events preceding
World War II, and explores the themes of conformity, culture, mass movements, mob mentality, philosophy and morality.