Wednesday, 8 February 2012

It takes all sorts to make an article!

Hi my regular and irregular readers.

At the beginning it is important to inform you that The Future is in Eggs is a part of an absurd trilogy. As you may have noticed in the previous article I thought that Future Eggs has a sequel but the truth is that it  is a sequel by itself. Actually, this big absurd trilogy started by the book Jacques or Obedience then Future is in Eggs were written and whole story was finished by Jacques or Submission.  I have to say that I put a great effort to find the "Jacques plays" in PDF (or any other) version but sadly I did not succeed in my mission. Even though I would really love to read the whole trilogy.

Names of the connected plays might have suggested to you that one of the main characters is called Jacques, and that´s actually right! Even more there is not only him who´s carrying that name but his whole family does. To imagine, their names are Mother-Jacques, Father-Jacques, Grandmother-Jacques, Grandfather-Jacques, and with a bit of originality his sister Jacqueline. There is the partner of Jacques called Roberta and you can easily guess names of her parents (very similar to those of Jacques´ family). Those two (Jacques and Roberta) probably got together in Jacques or Obedience and it was not by accident--their marriage was arranged by their families. To me it seems that these families are there more important than Jacques and Roberta because those two are just doing whatever they want.

The fact that it is an absurd play is visible from the first exchange of interjections (I can´t call it a dialogue). So that you could understand there are first lines of the play :

Jacques: Puss...Puss...
Roberta:Puss...Puss...
Jacques: Puss...Puss...
Roberta:Puss...Pus...
Jacques: Puss...Puuusss...
Roberta:Puuuss...Puuuuuuuuuuss...

Happily, just after that the Mothers and Fathers enter, those lovely dialogues of the couple are ended.

As you know from the lessons of Czech where we studied absurd theatre, the plot is not very complex (in comparison with Shakespeare not at all). Basically, in this play, family decides and children act as they say. During those scenes the dialogues are repeating, the characters are shouting and screaming (just like in real life). So far (after 10 pages of reading), it seems that family need to convince the couple to breed (I use this word in purpose, because it is described like something they need to do, not like something they would enjoy). As Father-Jacques claims "We must assure the continuation of our race." Even though the plot is not worth describing (actually, impossible to describe), I´ve noticed that Ionesco is supposedly expressing his attitudes towards the whole Nazism thing. I´ll see how the play continues next time I´ll read, probably tomorow, and then I´ll share.

Bye





1 comment:

  1. I guess that when Ionesco named the characters Jacques-Father etc., then it must be very easy to follow (just like in Our Town Dr Gibbs, George Gibbs, Rebecca Gibbs,...)...
    I like your "breeding" part :D

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