Berenger’s Monologue

The monologue changes the observer’s point of view. All throughout the play, Berenger has been displayed as an unkempt and undecided character. Always belittled by Jean and thinking very little of himself yet in the end of the play he remains unchanged. He is the perfect character to display the main theme that is man’s constant struggle to maintain his individuality.

Berenger wins the battle within. Though reason tells him he is a one man island left all alone and he acknowledges it when he says you tube (2007), “My skin is so slack. Oh, I’d love to have a hard skin in that wonderful dull green colour – a skin that looks decent naked without any hair on it, like theirs!”. He sees that he is left alone yet it can be so easy to capitulate but he stands firm in by what he is.

Even though Berenger is at a moment of despair, he declares that he will go on to fight and maintain his individuality. It is hard for Berenger because the people he looked to and often belittled himself in comparison to them that is Jean and Logic have succumbed to this rhino take over. The most admirable part is that Berenger himself knows that he is weak yet he shouts at the end of the play, you tube (2007) “I’ll take on the whole of them! I’ll put up a fight against the lot of the, the whole lot of them! I’m the last man left, I am not capitulating!”

This monologue signifies that the least can be the greatest. The one man who had no self-confidence and was not looked at as much by everyone else is the last man standing. He is the one who resisted the change that everyone else has curved in to. This is Ionesco’s way of showing that the least regarded can be used to fight for the masses.