Ionesco's 'Rhinoceros' predicts the coronavirus quarantine

One of the ways I've kept myself busy during quarantine is by reading. So I ordered a giant book of modern plays off of Amazon and the first play that caught my eye was 'Rhinoceros' by Eugéne Ionesco. It's 3 acts and 4 different settings and completely wild.

The play follows Berenger, a less than put together man who meets up with his friend Jean in town one Sunday morning. They talk as different characters come and go. A noise slowly rises from the conversation and all the characters are pointing offstage saying there's a rhinoceros running around town.

The play was written in 1960, which shocked me because, by the third act, I was convinced this was some drama inspired by the pandemic surrounding the world.

I'm going to stop here and say this is as far as I think I can go without spoiling the whole play. I really enjoyed this one and I highly recommend. I got a kick out of the parts that so eerily echoed today's times. If you haven't read it yet, this is your warning.

Berenger and Jean argue about the origin of the rhinoceroses they saw in town, the supposedly second one killing the housewife's cat. Jean and Berenger go their separate ways, with the latter showing up late to work the next day in the beginning of act 2. His boss and coworkers discuss and argue about the rhinoceroses when Mrs. Boeuf, the wife of another employee, rushes in saying her husband is sick. The next second, a rhinoceros barges through the workplace. Mrs. Boeuf becomes convinced that it's her husband and she rushes to embrace him.

Escaping the workplace, Berenger goes to Jean's house, only to discover he's feeling unwell. Jean begins to act less and less human-like until he's completed his transformation into a rhinoceros.

The third act sees Berenger locked away in his room, ignoring the chaos of the rhinoceroses outside. His work friend Dudard and his work crush Daisy are with him and slowly, Dudard caves to conformity and joins the rhinoceroses below. Soon, Daisy follows after an argument with Berenger. The last remaining human muses about his wish to join the rest as rhinoceroses, but the final words see him determined to remain a human.

Ionesco brings up a wonderful work about conformity and the loss of humanity, but that's not what stuck to me about this play. As the rhinoceros pandemic grows and grows, the more similarities it shares with the coronavirus. The final act shows three characters locking themselves away in a room to avoid catching becoming a rhinoceros. Each character that leaves the room supposedly turns into a rhinoceros, spreading the chaos to anyone like Berenger that refuses to conform.

This got me thinking. How can a play written 60 years ago be so similar to what's happening right now? But, these two ideas are not that different. Berenger refuses to conform, so he hides himself from society. Likewise, we are hiding from society because we don't want to spread the coronavirus to ourselves and our more vulnerable members of our community. Berenger hides to protect himself and humanity, which is what we are all doing right now. Otherwise, we'd be no better than the rhinoceroses running chaos across the world. Don't be a rhinoceros. Be a human. Be smart. Stay home.