The Chairs Philosophical Viewpoints: The Absurd Quotes

This quote brings to mind one of the big questions that philosophies and religions have tried to tackle for centuries: why must humans suffer? Many religions justify human suffering with the idea that God has an ultimate plan, that all our suffering has a purpose, which will one day be revealed to us. Some say we bring our suffering on ourselves, and if we would only follow certain rules of behavior it wouldn't happen. The Theater of the Absurd is often thought to have been influenced heavily by the philosophy of Existentialism, which is based in part on the idea that our suffering has no purpose at all. People feel pain – that's just how it is, and we'd all better just learn to deal with it.

This is one of the few places in the play where we get a hint at what the Old Man's message might actually be. Though Ionesco didn't like to be called an Existentialist, this statement definitely seems to get at the fundamental idea behind the philosophy. Existentialists believed that each person is an individual, and that reality is completely subjective. Basically, what you decide is real is real, what you think is important is important. Existentialists believed that the universe was ultimately meaningless, and that it was each person's individual responsibility to create meaning for him or herself.

The idea that there's any one thing that is true for everybody goes against the fundamental beliefs of Existentialism. As we discussed earlier in this section, Existentialism is based on the idea that truth is inherently subjective, meaning that we all must decide what's true for ourselves. Many Existentialists thought the idea of one single truth to be total crap. Perhaps this is why the Orator is unable to articulate the Old Man's great truth at the end of the play: in the play's view, no such thing exists. Though you can't necessarily say that all Absurdist plays are Existentialist, almost all of them seem to share this fundamental belief.