How does Ionesco use dialogue to show breakdown?
Dialogue in my plays is a weapon of demolition. It is not about conveying information, but about demonstrating its disintegration. In 'The Bald Soprano,' for instance, the conversations are a perverse echo chamber, filled with polite inanities and stock phrases that lead nowhere. Words are divorced from their referents; meanings evaporate like mist. The sentences repeat, morph, and multiply, much like the multiplying chairs in 'The Chairs,' overwhelming the characters and the audience. Language is failing us, not because it is insufficient, but because we have emptied it of all genuine content, leaving only the hollow rattle of echoes.
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