"The Chairs" is an absurdist play by Eugene Ionesco that explores themes of meaninglessness, communication, and human existence. It features an elderly couple—an Old Man and an Old Woman—living alone in a decaying building surrounded by water. They spend their time reminiscing about the past and preparing for a big event: the Old Man is going to deliver an important message to the world, one that could change everything. The old man wishes to reveal everyone as he says- “I have a message, that’s God’s truth, I struggle, a mission, I have something to say, a message to communicate to humanity, to mankind”. However, he feels incapable of delivering it himself, so they’ve hired a professional Orator to speak on his behalf.
As the couple prepares, invisible guests begin arriving to hear the message. The couple greets them warmly, arranging chairs for each one, and the number of guests keeps growing. The Old Man and Old Woman become increasingly frantic, dragging out more and more chairs to accommodate the crowd—yet all the guests are imaginary. The stage fills up with empty chairs, highlighting the emptiness and absurdity at the core of their existence.
Eventually, the Orator arrives. The couple, believing their life's purpose is about to be fulfilled, joyfully throw themselves out of the windows into the water, committing suicide. The Orator then steps forward to deliver the Old Man’s grand message—but he turns out to be deaf and mute, and he only produces gibberish and meaningless scribbles on a chalkboard.
The play ends in silence, surrounded by hundreds of empty chairs, symbolizing the failure of communication, the illusion of meaning, and the absurdity of life. Through this darkly comic and tragic scene, Ionesco critiques human attempts to find purpose in a meaningless world.
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