Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderella’s slipper.
Plot Type : Overcoming the Monster
Anticipation Stage
Don’t hold onto your seats waiting for a King Arthur or a Beowulf sort of a story—but do get set for a small-scale, comic revision of that whole idea of the “overcoming the monster” plotline we know so well from the fairytales. Anticipating yet?
So. After Berenger gets us on the edge of our seats by refusing to conform to society and stop drinking on weeknights, the rhinoceros storms in. At that point we pretty much know what our hero is dealing with. The hero himself, though, isn’t all that worried about it. He kind of gets bored even talking about the rhinoceros after a minute or so:
BERENGER: Well, it was a rhinoceros—all right, so it was a rhinoceros! It’s miles away now…miles away… (1.1.357-358)
That said, the monster has revealed itself, and our hero will figure that out pretty soon. Berenger may have his mind on the spirits, but things are about to get pretty spirited in this little zoo of a town. Should we call Alcoholics Anonymous or Rhinoceros Anonymous?
Dream Stage
In a classic “overcoming the monster” story this would be the part where our hero crafts silver bullets or tracks down some ancient talisman that can defeat the mythic beast in question. In Rhinoceros, this phase involves heading over to Jean’s apartment. Berenger has laid off the drink to try to get himself prepped for this whole rhinoceros thing, but that’s really about it. Still, he seems pretty chill with the fact that his coworkers are turning into rhinos at this point.
Frustration Stage
When Jean starts transforming into a rhinoceros we finally come face to face with what Berenger is dealing with. Heck, even Berenger starts to sober up. For one thing, Jean stampeding around the apartment, not to mention his newfound strength, are just a tad too much for Berenger to cope with:
JEAN: I’ll trample you, I’ll trample you down! (2.2.424)
Berenger can’t tell Jean to lay off the rhino the way Jean told him to lay off the wine. He’s got to just dodge and hope not to get hit. (Boxers will tell you, it’s all about footwork in cases like this.) More important, though, Berenger comes to understand that anyone—even his best friend—could turn into the monster:
BERENGER: I would never have thought it of him—never! (2.2.436)
Fingers crossed he can jump out of a rhino’s path as quick as Manny Pacquiao can box a ghost.
Nightmare Stage
Bilbo and the Dwarves battle Smaug. Beowulf fights Grendel’s Mother. Van Helsing chases down Dracula. Luke Skywalker goes toe-to-toe with Vader and the Emperor at the same time, blue lightning and all. These are classic “final ordeals.”
Berenger’s is a little less classic and a little less epic. He hides out in his apartment with Dudard and Daisy, trying to figure out a way to overcome the rhino epidemic. Once Dudard takes off to join the other side, Berenger’s solution for battle is to repopulate the world with humans along with his lady friend Daisy.
BERENGER: Daisy, there is something we can do. We’ll have children, and our children will have children—it’ll take time, but together we can regenerate the human race. (3.1.1110-1112)
Basically, he’s going for more of an Adam-and-Eve or post-flood Biblical vibe than a get-up-and-slay-the-beast kind of vibe.
The Thrilling Escape from Death and the Death of the Monster
This stage is that crazy battle scene at the end of the movie or book. It’s the hero almost getting killed but somehow triumphing in the end and avoiding death. Ask your daddy for help now, Luke!
Like most of the Absurdists, Ionesco knows full well that death is inevitable, so the idea of escaping death isn’t really his idea of a happy ending. It’s more about the absurdity of living while knowing that death will always come in the end. (In case you’re about to curl up in fetal position, we promise Theatre of the Absurd can be way funnier than that makes it sound.)
With that in mind, though, we must view the end of the play as a twist on the classic “thrilling escape” plotline. Berenger’s escape is to simply stay in his apartment. Everyone else has run off together and turned into rhinoceroses. Berenger refuses to join the group and swears to keep fighting those angry ungulates.
So in his own, absurdist sort of a way, Berenger escapes “death” in that he remains human. However, Ionesco does not give us much hope that Berenger has much of a chance to overcome the horde of monsters that now looms just outside his apartment.
But wait! That doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting. Berenger “lives” on at the end of the play. If you think the loss of humanity is a kind of death, Berenger is the only one still truly living as the curtain falls. Feeling absurd now? Yup, the absurdity’s a monster that’ll never be defeated.