الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract This thesis aims at examining three of Eugene Ionesco’s plays: The Lesson (1951), Rhinoceros (1959), and Hunger and Thirst (1964), employing Jung’s theory of archetypes. Of these archetypes, the thesis is concerned with four–anima, animus, shadow and persona–and how some or all of them are at action in each play. It examines how the anima, being the repressed feminine side in men, is at play first in The Lesson, where it takes the form of sexual fantasies and a childish yearning for a mother. Then, it explores it in Rhinoceros, where it is projected on the protagonist’s love interest in the hope that together they can save the world. The thesis discusses how it is present in Hunger and Thirst too, where the protagonist escapes negative animas to seek a positive one, not realizing that he already has the latter at his own home. The thesis also investigates the animus, the repressed masculine side in women, as it exists in The Lesson and Rhinoceros taking the form of irritating reason in the former and destructive tendencies in the latter. The thesis also probes the persona, which is the social mask with which man interacts with the world, leading, due to identification with the mask, to rape and murder in The Lesson and to animality in Rhinoceros. One more archetype the thesis looks into is the shadow. The shadow, the dark aspects of the personality a person refuses to acknowledge about himself, appears in its collective form in Rhinoceros, where all the characters, except the protagonist, choose to join the masses and become rhinoceroses. |