What are the implications of the Old Man's nickname of "Semiramis" for the Old

Woman?
The first meaning is a direct allusion to Semiramis, the 9th-century B.C. queen of Assyria,
renowned for her beauty. She was known as the fertility goddess, and was both the wife and
mother of Nimrod, the great-grandson of the Bible's Noah. The Old Man often calls her his
mother during his crying fits, and the Old Woman says she is wife and mother to him. The
man's confusion over his identity and agehe is at times senile and at times infantile
reinforces the idea that his life is circular, revolving around only the present-tense routine.
The line between beginnings and endings, such as birth and death, therefore, are blurred, and
the Old Woman truly is Semiramishis present wife and past mother.
"the further one goes, the deeper one sinks. It's because the earth keeps turning around,
around, around, around"
The Old Man provides an answer for why it gets darker earlier in Part One. He and the Old
Woman lead lives of repetition, of routines that never advance but cycle continuously around
themselves, and his image of the earth's revolutions captures this revolving stasis. He also
alludes to the death such repetition comes before. Their lives are devoid of novelty and, while
their routines, such as storytelling and fantasy conversations, aim to stave off boredom and
make life bearable. However, the repetitions actually grind them into a routine that
approaches death, "the deeper one sinks," as into the ground, just as the earth's revolutions, in
the Old Man's mind, increase the darkness.
"I'm an orphandworfan."
The Old Man wails these words to the Old Woman in a fit, which occurs in Part Two. His
belief that he is an orphancoupled with his infantile manner of expressionis evidence of
his confusion over beginnings and endings. In his cyclical, repetitive world where the past is
mostly inaccessible, beginnings and endings are conflated. Likewise, he is ninety-five years
old, but he still believes he is a child. His regression and immaturity also speaks to his
irresponsibility as he sloughs off adult commitments and becomes a crying infant. His
nonsense word"dworfan"presages the Orator's nonsense words when delivering the Old
Man's message. According to the existentialists, since the Old Man has taken no
responsibility, his message will remain absurd and irrational, just as the word "dworfan" is
similarly meaningless.

The Old Man's final touch of irresponsibility is putting the onus of conveying the message
onto the Orator, since he feels he cannot express himself well. One can view the Orator's
butchering the message along these lines of irresponsibility, in which case Ionesco is
criticizing his own irresponsibility in not transmitting the message himself. However, another
possibility is that Ionesco criticizes the Orator for not understanding his message. The Orator
is essentially an actor, as he looks the part, is self- absorbed, and signs autographs. At any
rate, he is a frustrated playwright who feels either he or his actors have failed his work.
Themes
The repetitive present and inaccessible past

The Old Man and Old Woman are stuck in a repetitive existence, retelling the same story and
performing the same imitations day after dayeven the water around their island is stagnant.
The man can hardly even advance his story, rarely getting past "Then at last we arrived,"
which is itself a conflation of an ending and a beginning that circles around itself. In fact,
they are not entirely sure what does come next. When the man resumes the story, after having
remembered they were in Paris, he says "at the end of the end of the city of Paris, there was,
there was, was what?" He keeps pushing to "the end of the end," but the end of the road is
shrouded in mystery. But perhaps a previous comment the man has made sheds some light.
Giving an explanation for why the sky gets darker earlier now, he says "the further one goes,
the deeper one sinks. It's because the earth keeps turning around, around, around, around"
The revolutionsof earth and of a repetitive existencegrind the couple into deathly
routines, cyclical actions that inch them closer to death as they seek ways to create some
excitement in their lives. The man, especially, is such a prisoner of this repetition that he is at
times infantile, belying his ninety-five years, and calls his wife his mother, and father, at one
point. His confusion over beginnings and endingswhether he is a child or old manand
finds some roots in his story, which is about being cast out of a garden. The reference is to the
Garden of Eden, and since he cannot remember mankind's initiation into the real world and

expulsion from a godly one, it helps explain his confusion over lesser beginnings and
endings.
In this never-ending present-tense cycle, the man and woman both try to access a past that is
now beyond reach. The woman even takes a dose of salt each night, she says, to erase her
memory of her husband's story, while the man expresses his distaste for history. More than
that, they both regret the course their lives have taken. She continually reminds her husband
that he could have had a better occupation had he been more ambitious, a notion he derides,
as he is already the "general factotum" of their house. While the woman flirts with the Photoengraver, the man has a deeper attachment to Belle, waxing poetic about their lost chance at
romance. When he says, "I loved you, I love you," it is clear he has not given up on her and
wishes he could change his past. Much like the tramps in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
and the old couple in Beckett's Happy Days, the couple in The Chairs is trapped in a
repetitive prison with their best days either behind them or completely forgotten.
Responsibility and a meaningful life

Ionesco was one of the founders of Theatre of the Absurd, the French postwar theatrical
movement. The Absurdists shared many ideas with the existentialist philosophers, such as
Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Above all, the existentialists believed man's condition in
the universe was absurdbeyond human rationalityand therefore meaningless. Only by
committing oneself responsibly to a greater good, they thought, could a life have meaning.
The old man in The Chairs certainly aims for this; he feels his life of suffering will have
meaning once he communicates his message and saves humanity. But when the Orator finally
delivers the message, it comes out garbled, nonsensical, irrationalin other words, it is
absurd.

The failure of the message can be attributed to the fact that the old man did not take
responsibility through his life. Most notably, in the play we see him and his wife create an
illusory world so they can escape from the real one. Escape marks the man's character for
much of his life. He denies being in the wrong in his rifts with his brother and someone
named Carel, and his double suicide with his wife is another form of escape. The
existentialists believed that taking responsibility in life meant accepting death as inevitable,
confronting it rather than shying away from it. But suicide, most of their literature suggests, is
not a confrontation but a retreat. The only part of the Orator's message that makes any sense
is something he writes on the blackboard that looks like "Adieu, Papa." Whether this is
intentional is unclearthe blackboard sequence was not even in the original production,
making the message all the more crypticit does recall what the couple's son said to them
before he left: "It's you who are responsible." The parting shot has a double meaning; the
parents are responsible for his departure, and it's also an ironic comment since they are not, in
fact, responsible. The man denies they even had a son, another form of irresponsibility, but he
does own up to his cruel abandonment of his dying mother, though his wife refutes this.
Finally, a more immediate reason behind the message's irrationality is the man's
irresponsibility in the actual delivery. He fears he cannot express himself well, so he doles out
the responsibility of conveying the message to the Orator.
Motifs
Self-conscious theatricality

The Theatre of the Absurd is known for its innovative use of self-conscious dramatic
techniques. In Ionesco's Rhinoceros, for example, a character recommends the plays of
Ionesco. The Chairs is ripe for this, since the stage can be seen as another auditorium, filled
with chairs for an audience. When the old man introduces himself before the message is to be

delivered, and thanks everyone involved in the eveningthe crowd, the Orator, the
organizers, the construction workers, the technicians, and writers of the programsit bears
more than a passing resemblance to the way a playwright might thank everyone involved in a
production of a play. The old man, especially, is much like a playwright; not only he has
toiled over his "message," culled from his life and his philosophy, but he is a storyteller and
an illusionist, crafting characters with his wife out of thin air. The Orator, then, would be an
actor, someone who merely delivers the lines the man has written. "Merely" is an appropriate
word, since The Chairs suggests that Ionesco does not think highly of actors. The failure of
the garbled message may be Ionesco's charge that actors ruin his work, and that they do not
understand it and render it unintelligible. On the other hand, the old man is a coward, not
taking responsibility for many things, among them delivering his own message. The Orator's
failure, then, may be a self-criticism of his inability to deliver the message on his own.
Symbols
Semicircular stage

Ionesco's semicircular stage design evokes one of the main themes of The Chairs, that the
present is circular and repetitive. But the semicircle is just thata half-circle. While the
complete half can be seen as the present that the couple must circle around endlessly, the
missing half is the inaccessible past.

Key Facts

full title The Chairs (in French, Les Chaises)

author Eugne Ionesco
type of work Drama
genre Absurdist drama/comedy
language French
time and place written Paris, 1952
date of first production Paris, April 22, 1952
publisher Grove Press
narrator No narrator; drama
climax The climax occurs when the Old Man and Old Woman commit suicide, and the
Orator unintelligibly attempts to deliver the message
protagonist Old Man
antagonist There is no direct antagonist, though the Old Man's inability to deliver his own
message is his primary obstacle
setting (time) Unclear and unimportant
setting (place) A house on an island
point of view As it is a play, there is no distinct point of view, but the audience empathizes
with the Old Man
falling action The invisible crowd makes noise after the Orator leaves
tense Play; present tense
foreshadowing The Old Woman warns the Old Man not to fall out of the window at the
beginning of the play
tone Absurdly comic, philosophical
themes The repetitive present and inaccessible past; Responsibility and a meaningful life
motifs Self-conscious theatricality
symbols Semicircular stage

Characters
Old Man - The protagonist of the play. The Old Man has been married to the Old
Woman for seventy-five years, and entertains her nightly with the same story
and imitations he has always done. Living on the island, he spends his time with
a few hobbies, but mostly devotes himself to his "message" with which he will
save humanity.
Old Woman - Has been married to the Old Man for seventy-five years. On the
island, her only entertainment is listening to her husband's stories and
imitations, which she keeps fresh by erasing her memory nightly. She often
reminds her husband of what jobs he could have had, and frequently plays the
role of the Old Man's surrogate mother
Orator - Since the Old Man cannot express himself well, the Oratorwho looks
like a pompous 19th-century artistis scheduled to deliver the Old Man's
message. He has an actor's regal bearing and hands out autographs. The Orator
is a virtual actor. He is dressed the part as an ostentatious artist, he signs
autographs, and he skims past the crowd as if only he exists. This is almost true,
literally, since everyone else but the Old Man and Old Woman are invisible, but
he believes they are all there. The Old Man has put all his hopes into the Orator's
delivery of his "message," since the Old Man cannot express himself well. But the
Orator turns out to be deaf and dumb, and the message, as both spoken and
written words, is unintelligible. The reason for this is because the Old Man has
not taken responsibility for his life and for the delivery of the message, and thus
the message becomes irrationally absurd, but Ionesco probably intended another
meaning. As an emerging playwright, Ionesco was most likely frustrated with
actors and productions that failed to understand and convey his work. The
Orator, then, is the actor who bumbles the work, mismatching his pleasant face

and voice with the difficult words. But Ionesco could also be criticizing himself for
allowing the Oratoror actorsto deliver his work in the first place. The Old Man
is cowardly and worships the godly Orator, and Ionesco may find himself at fault
for allowing incompetents to handle his plays.

Emperor - The most esteemed invisible guest the Old Man welcomes. The Emperor is
bathed in light, and the Old Man and Old Woman defer to him at all times.
Belle - The invisible former lover of the Old Man, and the current wife of the Photoengraver. The Old Man reminisces with Belle about their romantic past and appears to hold
on to what could have been.
Photo-engraver - The husband of Belle. He gives the Old Woman a painting when they
arrive, and she is much taken with him, flirting with overt sexuality.
Lady - The invisible first guest of the Old Man and Old Woman. They engage in casual
conversation with Lady.
Colonel - The second invisible guest, a famous soldier. The Old Woman rebukes him for
spilling his cigarettes on the floor, though she is also taken with his grandness, as is the Old
Man with his prestige.
Newspapermen and other guests - The newspapermen and other guests arrive at the end.
They are all eager to hear the Orator deliver the Old Man's message.