Where It All Goes Down
A Provincial Town in France
On the Literal Level
Sometimes, playwrights make it easy for you to figure out where you are. Other times not so much (we’re looking at you, Samuel Beckett). Ionesco spells out the setting of this play from the get-go:
The scene is a square in a small provincial town. (1.1.1)
Thanks, buddy. But wait: Why the small town? Why not throw us in the middle of Paris or London or New York?
We’re glad you asked. Setting the play in a small town gives Ionesco the chance to paint a picture of the entire town without having to cover a lot of ground. We get a sense from the opening scene what this place is all about, and we see that people are generally polite and relaxed and not too caught up in the hustle and bustle of things.
If these people, who live a relatively quiet, decent life can get caught up in the wave of rhinocerosteria (quick, add that word to the dictionary), then anyone can. It’s like setting a horror movie in a small town.
Everyone expects crazy stuff to happen in huge cities, but we don’t necessarily think a small, country town will serve as the setting for end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it type events. Spooky!
On the Grand Scale
One of the most interesting things about this play is that it works on multiple levels. Not like Inception dream-within a dream-within dream type stuff, but, you know, on a symbolic and allegorical level.
So back to the allegories. During WWII, the Nazis occupied France, a number of French folk followed along, and the government capitulated. (There’s a reason that word plays such a major part in Berenger’s final monologue.)
We can look at the setting of the play as France on the brink of occupation. Now, not all of the French were on board with what was happening to their country. In fact, the French Resistance fought throughout the war to help bring down the Nazis. They did not have an easy time of it, but fight for their country they did.
In a way, Berenger fills that role—the role of those who saw how their country was being taken over and refused to accept it. In that way, the play can be seen as a reaction against fascism. If fascism is one government marching in and saying it owns another one, and the people of the other one saying, “heck to the no,” then we can see the rhinos as the fascists (come on, those horns are sharp) and Berenger as the last man standing.
Again, there’s more to it than the allegory, but the context of France’s fall to the Nazis was a pretty big deal, and the trauma lasted way later than the end of the war. Hey, if you’d had to live through that, you’d be seeing rhinoceroses too.