Literary Analysis: Ionesco, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Beckett, Faulkner
Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco
Rhinoceros is one of the most outstanding works of Ionesco, alongside The Bald Soprano, The Chairs, and The King Dies. It presents the viewer with a succession of symbolic scenic images: the streets of a town are terrorized by a rhinoceros, which is, in fact, a man transformed into a beast. This metamorphosis, reminiscent of Kafka, gradually affects all the people of the place, who are overcome by selfishness, hypocrisy, the desire for domination, and violence. Berenger, spared only because of his great humanity, is tempted by the feeling of loneliness to follow the others. This work includes a critique of the gregarious, those who need to follow the mass, needing a permanent refuge in others.
Ernest Hemingway: Life, Literature, and Legacy
Given that Ernest Hemingway’s work owes much to his adventurous life—avid traveler, war-wounded, reporter for the press throughout the world, anti-fascist activist, lover of hunting in Africa, womanizer, passionate about bullfighting, and ultimately, a suicide—his characters generally participate in the tradition of facing danger, embracing physical pleasure, and defying fate in a violent world. Many of them die amidst violence, but they are afraid of the unknown. His novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is set in the Spanish Civil War and is a hymn to the spirit of sacrifice and solidarity. The Old Man and the Sea and The Green Hills of Africa are among his other notable works. Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: A Critical Look
F. Scott Fitzgerald, an American writer fond of parties, luxury hotels, and drinking, eventually wrecked and sunk into alcoholism. Born into a modest family of Irish extraction, he was able to study at elite schools thanks to an aunt. Completely fascinated by money, he was heavily influenced by his wife, Zelda, who suffered a violent fit of madness in Paris in 1930, which greatly affected the writer. In his writing, we see a poetic disappointment, a great ability to foresee the outcome of the false promises of happiness. Fitzgerald admitted that alcohol and Zelda led him to attempt suicide twice. In 1937, he moved to Hollywood and worked as a screenwriter. He is undoubtedly the interwar novelist who best describes the frantic attempts of Western society to forget the horrors of World War I and face the looming Second World War. The Great Gatsby is a delightful and surprising love story, portraying his generation, devoid of moral values and dazzled by money and social success.
Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days: An Allegory of Existence
Happy Days is a tragic allegory of human endeavor to seek happiness despite its limitations, the absurdity of life, and the agonizing wait for death. In the fifties, Winnie is buried to the waist in the middle of a desert of burning grass, slowly sinking. She talks and talks nonstop while her husband, who seems detached from the situation, merely reads a newspaper advertisement or releases some grunt. In the midst of their plight, Winnie strives to assert her happiness, remembering, and waiting: “This promises to be another happy day!”
William Faulkner: Exploring the Dark Side of Humanity
William Faulkner, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, was attracted by the primitive, the macabre, the abnormal, and the grotesque. He paints in his works a world of chaos and decay, filled with dark tones. In The Sound and the Fury, he tells the story of incest from four points of view. Soldiers’ Pay raises the disappointment with the war and the withdrawal of combatants. In As I Lay Dying, the action unfolds in 59 monologues by different characters of a very low social strata, many of them affected by sub-normality, madness, or sickening hypocrisy.