Exit the King by Eugène Ionesco (Book Analysis)

This practical and insightful reading guide offers a complete summary and analysis of Exit the King by Eugène Ionesco. It provides a thorough exploration of the play’s plot, characters and main themes, including absurdity, decline and destiny. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time.

This clear and detailed 35-page reading guide is structured as follows:

• Biography of Eugène Ionesco
• Presentation of Exit the King
• Summary of Exit the King
• Character study
  • King Berenger the First
  • The king’s wives
  • The chorus
• Analysis of Exit the King
  • The genre of the play: (anti-)tragedy
  • The representation of death
  • The lost hope of modern man: a pessimistic universe

About Exit the King

The single-act play Exit the King first appeared in 1962 and follows King Berenger as he struggles to come to terms with the fact that he will die in just over an hour. The play is unusual in that its title gives away its climax (this is even clearer in the original French, as the title Le roi se meurt means “The King Dies”), and Ionesco rejects many of the conventions of theatrical writing to produce a though-provoking examination of the inevitable decline that awaits us all.

About Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian-born French dramatist. He wrote a series of plays in the mid-20^th century, and was the leading figure of the Theater of the Absurd, a movement which broke with the conventions of traditional theater. Besides Exit the King, Ionesco also wrote The Bald Soprano, The Lesson and The Chairs. He is one of the most influential and widely performed French dramatists of the 20^th century. He was elected to the Académie française in 1970, and died in Paris in 1994.