Well, I´ve finally found someone online who could tell me what is the task 5!
Actually, it is kind of difficult to identify the major theme of this book. I was thinking what is Ionesco trying to say by this play as soon as I´ve finished it. I´ve described the strange ending in the article for task 3. Actually, I´ve partially completed task 5 in article that was published 15 February. However, for those who did not read it I´ll repeat the strange climax of this book.
At the beginning of the book both families agreed that it is crucial to preserve the white race by breeding. There was a whole scene where family of Jacques was convincing Jacques about the importance of reproducing as well as did family of Roberta. Both Jacques and Roberta agreed to begin the reproducing process. I don´t know what I was actually expecting but for sure I have not expected that they will reproduce like hens.
In this play Roberta takes a role of a rooster and Jacques is a hen. To make it more clear Roberta is making sounds like a rooster, nothing else, there is no intercourse in this scenario. What I enjoy in this part is that MEN take the roles of females. How? Easy to guess. If Roberta is the rooster then it is up to Jacques to lay EGGS.
When the labour is done than the whole family starts to argue what will come out from these eggs. There is about two pages of no dialogue; characters are just shouting random professions and social classes. As far as I can remember it started with the sentence that they need some of those eggs for omelets and they followed words like bankers, proletarians, etc. According to me this is supposed to be the climax.
I don´t see any deep thoughts in this part but I think that Ionesco is trying to say that we never know what will come out of our descendants. However, there can be seen a metaphor. Maybe this whole egg-thing is not concerning only descendants but it may implicate to all our feats. Starting with cooking a stupid omelet that can be infected by some salmonella disease and we will suffer after eating it. To more intricate decision-making like what university are we going to apply or what job we are going to take. It is like a lottery--You eat the omelet to appease your hunger even though you know about the possibility to get sick, or you stay hungry and incur different type of digestive problems. 
When I read Future is in the Eggs, I interpreted it differently (which doesn't mean your interpretation isn't correct ;))... The way they reproduce was extremely bizarre... It seems to be that humans stop being humans but act and think as machines. You know, like when Roberta's and Jacques's parents were encouraging them and offering them to show them how to reproduce. Then when Jacques was laying the eggs, everyone wanted the eggs to become something else. In real life, when somebody gives birth, it is kind of emotional and not at all like mass production. In this play, people act more like machines without feelings... They just try to "feel" when it seems that they are supposed to (Grand-Father's death).
ReplyDeleteLike the way you´ve interpreted this play :) I haven´t thought about it in this direction.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we have to admit that the author just wanted to be absurd -- although perhaps it is through that absurdity that we personalize it -- or maybe we HAVE to personalize it. Last night I saw two plays at Aréna theater, and one was a grotesque (pointing out the absurdity of an already absurd situation) and the other seemed just to be some sort of extremely bizarre dream. Although I enjoyed both plays immensely, both my girlfriend and I agree that we really have no idea what either of them were really about. But that didn't take away from our enjoyment!
ReplyDelete