چکیده:
Eugène Ionesco in his play, The killer (1960) depicts a true reflection
of the human condition; he depicts the images of life and death, being
and non-being, and the reality of man’s reduction into the cypher of nonbeing.
He wants man to come to grips with his true situation; hence,
man's existence is fundamentally a conflict between the infinite
extensions of the human urge as opposed to the necessary and limited
state of being. The aim of this paper is to examine Ionesco's ideas on the
loneliness of man in this alienated universe, his hidden anxieties and his
struggle for survival within an Existential framework of Søren
Kierkegaard; examples are drawn from The killer (1960) in order to fully
examine Ionesco’s particular vision of life. Such a study aims at bringing
about a realization and understanding of the conditions man is exposed
to in the universe. It is too hard for Bérenger to believe that nothingness
precedes, envelops, and conditions all being. He faces the two coexistent
side of living: in felicity and in the shadow of death.
خلاصه ماشینی:
The aim of this paper is to examine Ionesco's ideas on the loneliness of man in this alienated universe, his hidden anxieties and his struggle for survival within an Existential framework of Søren Kierkegaard; examples are drawn from The killer (1960) in order to fully examine Ionesco’s particular vision of life.
Bérenger (to the ki l l er): you’re a human being, we’re the same species, we’ve got to understand each other, it’s our duty… (Act III, 103) Kierkegaard’s ‘Being unto Death’ and Bérenger’s Chaotic Vacuum Inside The Killer by Ionesco can be said to be written in a European point of view concerning death, that life can be satisfactory and genuine if only it is pointed toward death; this view is in direct contradiction to the American one that as Gray po ints out, We rejoine, why not devote yourself wholeheartedly to social ideals?
Bérenger is probably the honest fighter who is not going to surrender to life’s most disastrous destiny of which he is aware, but to encounter it and does his best to struggle for his survival, persuading the killer and deterring him although in vain; he is to change a fate predestined for him as an individual casted away from heaven to bear the troubles of living in a desolate loneliness; Bérenger never doubts either his being in that radiant city or finding the killer; while entering the city, Bérenger’s ‘immediate consciousness’ at first does not judge about things, but tries “register impressions - of heat and cold, colour and light” anxiety and fear, but later he has an immediate experience of facing a killer (Rudd, 1998:75).