ABSTRACT
This chapter will present the playwright Eugène Ionesco’s major works through his multiple conceptions of the absurd and his reactions to World War II and the threats of totalitarianism. Ionesco’s absurd relates the shock of existence and the burden of death, as well as wonders at the possibility of language and the terror of ideology that destroys communication. This chapter focuses on his theater in terms of three larger themes: the theater of language to address communicability and incommunicability; the theater of proliferation to study emptiness and anguish; and the Berenger cycle, to present the individual facing totalitarianism and death.
