What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.--Adolf Hitler

Since this is my last article about the play The Future is in Eggs, or It Takes all Sorts to Make a World I can finally reveal the real "face" of it. I have read this play in one day but it took me several months to fully understand it. Until yesterday I did not know what exactly was Ionesco trying to say by it. However, on Friday I have read a review about the play The Future is in Eggs/Sicilian Limes which gave me a clue about the hidden meaning of Future Eggs . 

Eugene Ionesco hated fascism, Mussolini, and Hitler. No reason to be surprised. He was persuaded that our world is fulfilled by suffering and fanaticism. Nazi people and 2nd World War are hideous proves of his theory. He knew that those things destroy our humanity and he created a cure for those who understand it, and are continuously devastated--The Theatre of Absurd. "Only a humour can take away the darkness and bring the light to our lives", isn´t it a nice theory? He satirized fanaticism in all of his plays, in The Future is in Eggs especially the regime of Mussolini. 

I am not a historian, so I cannot specify which historical events is this play reflecting exactly. However, I may give you several quotes from the book that I find pretty bigoted, or even fascistically constrained. 

The first sentence that I have noticed is on the second page of the play. It is Father-Jacques who is saying it. What I've found interesting is that most of the fanatic phrases are said by Father-Jacques himself. There are a few that Jacqueline, his daughter, says but not that important. If other characters are participated, they are just repeating his words, or uses mass exclamations that support his thoughts. This fact reminds me of the masses that were infatuated by Hitler´s speeches and responded him with a group hailing. 

FATHER-JACQUES: ...We must get some results quickly!

This may seem like some regular sentence. However! Consider that he is talking about forcing his son and daughter-in-law to have offspring. It changes the situation a bit, doesn't it? Nowadays, our fathers do not care when we are having kids and it is not usual to hear them saying: 

"We must assure the continuity of our race." (Father-Jacques) 

Well, his racist insinuations are not over. 

"The continuity of our race...white race! Long live the white race!" After this comes a huge applaud from other characters followed by repeating exclamation of the last sentence. 

Still, not convinced that Ioncesco is reflecting Nazism? I'll give you the last and according to me the most convincing quote: 

FATHER-JACQUES [to his son]: The future of the white race is in your hands. It must go on, go on and extend its power more and more!

Those examples were the most meaningful phrases of all play and it would not be a real Ionesco if he did not satirized such an influential character. While is son was in the process of hatching eggs he showed the supportive side of his personality. Who would not be relieved from such a difficult work such as hatching after heating a cheer-up phrase from his father? 

"Hatch, hatch in the name of glory and for the greatness of nations, and for immortality."

If Czech farmers were saying similar sentence to their hens, maybe the production of eggs would increase and the prices would go down by one or two percent.  

Eggs and Limes

I´ve tried hard to find any on-line play or radio record of The Future is in Eggs but from some reasons it is a mission impossible. There is something like a play on youtube.com with puppets that look like eggs. I´ve watched it. The play was in original language--French. However, the quality of this video was so bad that I´ve realized that it is not good idea to base this article on it. 


After long time of searching and watching some video experiments I´ve started to think why there is no interpretation of "The Eggs" worth mentioning. Well, if we consider the length of this play the reason is quite obvious. No theater would create an performance that lasts for less than 30 minutes. 

I was a bit desperate realizing that nobody appreciate this absurd play as much as I do. With some coincidence I´ve opened some page that was offering tickets to some NY theatre to the play pictured here. They have combined two short modernist´s plays and created an excellent exhibition of Theater of Absurd (probably the only possibility how to perform a play of 20 small pages long). I could not go to NY to watch it but at least I´ve read a few reviews and according to those it´s worth watching. So, if you are planning to go to States and visit this city, take your time and buy tickets to this play and then write me how good or bad it was, thanks. 

"Be obscure clearly"--E. B. White

"Be obscure clearly." I would definitely recommend it to Mr. Eugene Ionesco while he was writing The Future is in Eggs, or It Takes All Sorts to Make a World. Who is the PROTAGONIST and ANTAGONIST of this play? To be honest, I was thinking about it at least last 15 minutes!

Firstly, I was thinking what are Ionesco's characters trying to achieve? Obviously, the purpose of their existence is to reproduce. In fact, Father-Jacques claims it himself, "We must assure the continuity of our race."(pg. 131) While evaluating this purpose, I´ve realised that if this piece has antagonists it cannot be any of the characters but it is their dialogues.

The book is overfilled by incomprehension and useless exclamations.The only thing they are fighting against is the COMMUNICATION.

Actually, this is one the key points that Ionesco tried to highlight in his works. Communication is  the crucial step how to achieve something in a group. And if it doesn´t work...just look at the nice example listed below. God punished us by confusing the languages at the tower of Babel because he knew that if we couldn´t communicate we would find it more difficult to unify on a huge tasks. He was/is the smart one!

"A major theatrician but a decidedly minor writer" = Eugene Ionesco

While “googling” some article that would be useful for task 6 I´ve found a long one on enotes.com that perfectly suits task 8 as well. So, I decided to combine those two together. It takes all information from some publication Contemporary Literary Criticism published in 1975. This article is composed of several reviews written by different critics. I have to say that sometimes it took me long time to understand what are they trying to say about Ionesco´s plays. I had to “google up" meanings of several words because I did not even know them in my native language (sometimes they are using more French than English). However, some of their opinions are really interesting and I hope it would give you a different perspective on Ionesco and his amazing plays as those critics gave to me.

For example, Harold Clurman nicely notices that in plays like Jack  (or in Future is in Eggs as well), Eugene Ionesco remodels the classical "bourgeois" drama with traditional scenes into grotesque by "stylized dialogue". Mr. Clurman gives examples of family members and their roles as "the mother entreats, the sister reasons, the father moralizes..." In Future is in Eggs as far as I can remember it is one of the mothers who claims that someone should stop Jacques and Roberta from kissing and Jacqueline tries to sustain their behavior. Ionesco is keeping those convectional bourgeois behavior in his special preposterous way. And finally, what else than a grotesque would be the way that Roberta and Jacques reproduce. 

Another reviewer called John Gassner wrote that Ionesco is "a formidable parodist". This argument is a simple paraphrase of the previous critic. Mr. Gassner also claims that Eugene Ionesco is "a major theatrician but a decidedly minor writer" and he completes his thought by a statement that Ionesco once said; " theatre is what cannot be expressed by writing literature.'" I can do nothing else than confirm this statement and I think that those who tried to read any of Ionesco´s plays would confirm it too. 

The last review that I´m going to mention is little bit more difficult to comprehend. A man called George Wellwarth summarizes a whole philosophy created by Ionesco. This paragraph is important for task 6 because this theory concerns Ionesco´s background for writing his early plays where Future is in Eggs belongs. 

"Since everyday life, whether absurd or not, depends for its coherence entirely on the coherence of speech patterns, it follows that if our speech patterns are absurd, everyday life in general is absurd as far as we are concerned (it is possible that to an individual the world does not appear absurd, but since he has no means of communication with other people except through intrinsically senseless speech patterns, it follows that his view is actually nonexistent in practice). Even if the world appears ordered and coherent to everyone, Ionesco is saying, it is still absurd because each person is trapped inside his own individual cell by the inadequacies of his means of communication."

What I´ve noticed after reading Ionesco´s play is that sometimes I am more aware of the nonsense situations and dialogues that are created during casual conversations. However, if I live in a community that uses those senseless speech patterns described above, who is the one that finally awakes and says WE LIVE AN ABSURD LIFE with nonexistent views? Ionesco´s theory is a bit depressing, isn´t it? 

Based on this philosophy the reviewer divided Ionesco´s early plays (1950-1953) into two groups. The first where the main theme of his plays is "the paradox of the isolation of the individual in the midst of his fellows" and the second group that concerns "the paradox of the ultimate meaninglessness of actions, which, taken together, constitute the sum of human existence."

Honestly, I can´t decide to which group Future is in Eggs should be put in. First of all, Jacques and Roberta are literally isolated between their families that make all of the important decision instead of them. However, whole family (together with Jacques and Roberta) throughout the play create an entirety of nonsense action that "constitute the sum of [their] existence" which is actually the reproduction. I believe that this piece is an absurd combination of those two themes. 

I´m about to finish, I just want to quote the last critic that has an interesting point of view about Ionesco´s plays--Susan Sontag. 

"Disgust is the powerful motor in Ionesco's plays: out of disgust, he makes comedies of the distasteful."

All quotes and information are taken  from  

the article published on www.enotes.com--link.

"Never tell your problems to anyone...20% don't care and the other 80% are glad you have them."-- Lou Holtz

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.

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." -- Oscar Wilde

Hi, 

due to the briefness of my play it is impossible for me to complete task 4. I´ve already read whole play and written everything about it except the conclusion on which I´m going to work in task 5. I´ĺl just leave you today with the quote of Oscar Wilde. Hopefully, the amazing article will come on Friday. 

Good night 

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand." (Kurt Vonnegut)

Hi,

for today´s assessment  I´ll just simply answer the given questions, and I thing it even would not hurt me. :P

OK, so the first question: "How is the time period in which is the piece set important to understanding the scenario?"

The time period, actually time at all is completely irrelevant in my play. Ionesco doesn´t specify the time period nor the place. As I said thousand times before he is just focusing on the absurdity of its plot.

Answer for the third question (because it´s easier):


I feel like repeating same things all over again. I think that I was talking about the relevance of this play in the first or the second article. So, again, YES, this play IS relevant and I think it´ll be relevant always. Our conversation topics is not going to change nor the answers and by reading absurd drama we´re going to realise the insanity of ourselves.

While talking about insanity, I´ve found out that actually I don´t know how to answer the second question. I´ve already finished whole play and it was really, really insane at the end. I was thinking about it a lot but I still doesn´t have a good theory what exactly is the end trying to suggest. However, it explains why is the book called The Future is in Eggs or It take all sorts to make a world.

You remember about the couple I´ve talked about in the previous article, Jaques and Roberta? So, they are having offspring at the end of the book. Jaques lays 3 eggs and Roberta is doing sounds like a rooster while he is laying them. Then one member of family asks what are they going to do with those offspring. So, they start shouting things out loud. Things like sausage meat, some eggs for omelets, knitting wool, proletariats, nationalists ... and so one.

If anyone of you has any cool idea about what is that supposed to mean, SHARE IT with me!!! I would be really grateful. :)