tugas DRAMA

Mohammad Sholeh Shidiq

A320080142

The lesson

Summary for the Lesson

In the beginning of the play, the young pupil is eager to learn and she dominates the professor with her confidence and youth, but as the story develops she is getting meek and vulnerable. Even more she is suffering from the professor’s voice and explanation, such as toothache, earache, headache and eyes ache. The maid, Marie, always warns the professor about his “health” and calamity that might happen.

The maid warns him when the professor explains about philology, and again, the professor ignores her. The maid also warns the professor again when he starts asking about ‘knife’ in different languages, but the maid is already tired to warn him.

In the end of the play, the professor kills the pupil with an imaginative knife and with the help of his maid he could get rid of her corpse and then the stage is set again with another young pupil who is ready for the lesson. This play employs a lot of repeated scenes and sometimes those scenes don’t influence the progress of the play, and the end of the play is set again as how the play began.

The Meaning Of the Title on The Lesson

The meaning of title The lesson is about hour-long exchange between a professor and a pupil, where information is reduced to meaningless and disturbing verbiage. The Lesson is concerned with the meaningless of meaning, the way we embalm ourselves in knowledge. How much of what you know do you really understand and how much you have merely absorbed, the pupil gains nothing from her lesson; it is the audience who are supposed to learn.

From the progress of the play, the professor underestimates the pupil, who is clever, eager and enthusiastic to learn the stage is bare; in the centre two chairs face each other; against the far wall stands a small, white, house-shaped structure. From this house various maids (all called Marie) issue forth to give cryptic warnings to professor and pupil

  The end, when it comes, is abrupt and mysterious, Teachers are not supposed to dismiss you in a state of non-comprehension. The play is difficult, both to watch and to perform. Through you may leave the classroom, your mind remains with the lesson. We can conclude that everything in human life is a lesson. Anything that we get will become the lesson for our life.

The Character on The Lesson

                      There are three main characters:

The maid, aged 45 to 50, The maid, Marie, always warns the professor about his “health” and calamity that might happen

The professor, aged 50-60,

And the young pupil aged 18.

The theme in the Lesson

            The theme on this play is man between man and society. This play, by Ionesco is a drama that satirizes totalitarianism in education, politics, language, psychology, and sexuality. The end is really the beginning and the inevitable play of wits between youth and age, power and manipulation is staged over and over again as a part of the game of life itself

            The play is set in the study of a professor who tutors one student at a time.  The  way that he teaches these doctorate students proceeds in a manner that becomes completely stifling and controlling. He talks nonsense and expects the student to verbalize what he wants them to say.  He eventually kills the student.  The maid, a central character in the play continues to warn him not to proceed yet she helps him clean up his mess.  

Message for the Lesson

Recognition inability to find any rational explanation for human life. It is understood as the fundamentally meaningless situation of humans in a confusing, hostile, and indifferent world. It is a reflection in which the cyclical plot takes place in our daily life, and in which there are a lot of unfinished problems which, at the moment, we cannot solve yet.

The story in Ionesco’s The Lesson is a portrayal of nowadays status versus control. In specific terms the ‘professor’ is associated as the cleverest and the highest. Besides, from the progress of the play, the professor underestimates the pupil, who is clever, eager and enthusiastic to learn. in this play the professor is insane.

From this play, we can see a portrayal of status and control as seen in Indonesia Many professors underestimate their pupils and consider them as people who are ignorant, too much confident and always to parade their knowledge. Meanwhile, the professor himself, in fact, does not make sense and ignorant, too. This is seen from his explanation in philology and how he ignores his maid every time she warns him. In the end, the ‘professor’ kills the ‘pupil’ with his imaginative knife. This kind of phenomenon is also seen in Indonesia.