Rhinoceros Identity Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Act.Scene.Line

Quote #1

GROCER’S WIFE: Oh, you always have to be different from everybody else. (1.1.1035)

She doesn’t know it, but the grocer’s wife just dropped one of the key lines in the play. The need to be different—or the refusal to conform—becomes the controlling idea of Rhinoceros. She sees being different as a bad thing now, but a little difference might have kept her human in the end.

Quote #2

BOTARD: I’m a Northerner myself. Southerners have got too much imagination. (2.1.105-106)

It’s amazing, but people will identify themselves with groups based on just about anything: where they’re from, what sports teams they root for, where they went to school, etc. It’s this sentiment that makes it all too easy for them to join up with everybody else. In a way, they’ve already linked their identities to others. Maybe that’s why Raiders fans are literally the worst.

Quote #3

DAISY: All right. But does it exist or not? (2.1.426)

Nothing like a little existential debate about rhinoceroses to get you going in the workplace. Daisy is talking to Botard here, and she’s really just trying to get him to come to terms with the fact that there are rhinoceroses on the loose. In doing so, though, she raises a larger identity question. How do we know what truly exists? Do we really exist, or are we some computer program? Throw in Keanu and some awesome Kung Fu and we could turn this thing into a horny beast version of The Matrix.