“For life is quite absurdAnd death’s the final word… ”Look on the Bright Side of Life – Monty PythonDiscuss how the absurd relates to death, paying specific attention to Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.

We are born. We struggle for a while. We die. A post-holocaust rejection of God and, therefore, of any kind of an after-life, renders no alternative conclusion than that of the impossibility of meaning or significance that life carries: “[…] it is clear that I can never know […] why I am.” (Notes and Counternotes – Eugene Ionesco) . As a result, the day-to-day struggle of man becomes absurd and the significance of ‘nothingness’ emerges as a major theme for late 20th century and early 21st century art.

“The subject of the play is […] the absence of people, the absence of the emperor, the absence of God, the absence of matter, the unreality of the world, metaphysical emptiness. The theme of the play is nothingness…”
Ionesco on ‘The Chairs’ (Esslin, 1970:149)

Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, “a play in which nothing happens, twice” (Mercier, 1956: 6), Cage’s 4 minutes, 22 seconds, and Fontana’s slashed canvases, are just a few examples of work, f...