The character that grabbed my attention the most was the Old Man. As his character has a much deeper purpose in the play, we learn about what his role is in the story more so than the Old Woman. The Old Man is a very dynamic character in that he can be both dependent on his wife or he can be completely detached from her. He can be both easy-going or fearful depending on how much he can control in a given situation. When things go array with the guests, he becomes stressed. When he talks to his wife he is calm again. He is, then, a very situational character, in that his persona changes upon every single occurrence in the play. At one point in the play he acts as though he is a child. Soon after it seems as though he has grown up. One can say that the old man is a character that the audience witnesses growth from, from the very beginning to the end of the play.
The scene that impacted me the most was the final scene, when we learned that the long awaited orator was, in fact, deaf and dumb. Indeed, the one man who the Old Man relied on to get his message across cannot physically communicate. The old man has committed suicide, so he has essentially died from an unfinished life because he was never able to share himself with the world. This is a scene where irony is used most significantly.
An interesting choice that Ionesco made in telling the story was by including imaginary characters to portray real people. Indeed, there are only two characters in the play, but through imaginative stage direction, it comes across as if there are many people filling the stage, as the assemblage of chairs onstage represents each imaginary character. Another interesting element in Ionesco's writing is his ability to show the glaring contrast between characters. For instance, while the Old Woman is a character who is quick to stand under someone else's shadow, the Old Man is far more domineering, a "master of the house" in a sense.
