Alternative Texts
TOM MURPHY
May 1, 2020
People have been discussing classical texts on plagues, like Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, and Albert Camus’ The Plague, plus some newer ones like Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, but no one has had the wherewithal to mention a more than interesting text than Rhinoceros by Eugéne Ionesco from the French Post World War II era of theater that Martin Esslin dubbed Theatre of the Absurd. In Rhinoceros, characters turn into Rhinoceros for no apparent or explicable reason as they canter in mass hysteria over doctors and safety, if that isn’t a metaphor for COVID-19 our COVFEFE-19 then what is? In lockdown are we all trying to avoid turning into rhinos? Are we hiding from radical change that would take our lives? Another classic Theatre of the Absurd drama is Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett in which when it was performed in San Quentin Federal Prison in 1957, the prisoners were rapt by the idle banter of Estrogan and Vladimir as they wait for the appearance of a man named Godot that never makes an appearance. Are we all in lockdown waiting for Godot to appear as well like the prisoners of San Quentin? Idle chitchat our way through the days. Have we not cleaned our cells, epidermis and domicile as well? If COVID-19 is Godot, do we want the encounter with it or are we more afraid of turning into Rhinoceros, will we use the antibodies of the Rhinoceros to help those waiting for Godot to ease their mindset and lives?
Then again, in some sense we are like the human pods in The Matrix film where the machine world extracts our energy to feed themselves, while the machines provide us Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Disney. It is too easy to see that the Overlords want their energy and thus end lockdown and start making money; products are a side issue to the balance sheet. In these times of COVID-19 lockdown, one may ask what good is capitalism? What does Late Capitalism give me for my hours of labor? Is there real worth in what I do for the dollars I receive in compensation? Is there any worth in anything but the time I wait to become a Rhinoceros while listing to Estragon telling Vladimir, “Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer.” And defers to get their answers from the one that will never arrive; Godot.
Here, I would like to clarify that Defoe, Camus, and Mandel are real answers, nonetheless, these two dramas of Theatre of the Absurd seem to take in the enormity of our lockdown world, while our Overlords are breaking out their switches to ignite productivity once again and have even sent Bertran de Born with his severed head as lantern to guide us from this lockdown state. In Betran’s stead, we have flag and sign waivers, and gun toting MAGAS. It is hypocrisy that these paid stooges, yes paid $1,200, have been likened to Rosa Parks, who never waved a flag, never carried a sign, never held a gun in public or marched on a state capital. Rosa Parks, a dignified human, refused to give up her seat on the bus where laws and rules and racism deemed her unfit to sit. The difference is astounding, her cause noble. But what is noble? Is being noble the mission of humanity? Is industry on any level noble? We have mined the earth for Millenia for metals, minerals and jewels, these metals have become weapons, these minerals have polluted are bodies and earth, these jewels ensconced in crowns. William S. Burroughs’ said language is a virus. Smith in The Matrix said humanity is a virus. Are we only a virus fighting another virus, waiting to be turned into rhinos while bantering in that wait for Godot? Is there a slim margin to repeal the hunger of the dollar that feeds the Capitalistic machine? I rather doubt our luck on that change, more likely turn into Rhinoceros, catch COVID-19 and then reconsider my options as I wait for Godot.
TOM MURPHY’S books include Pearl (Flower Song Press 2020), American History (Slough Press, 2017), co-edited Stone Renga (Tail Feather, 2017), chapbook, Horizon to Horizon (Strike Syndicate, 2015). Murphy is Langdon Review’s 2021 Writer-In-Residence, and he is a committee member of the People’s Poetry Festival of Corpus Christi.
