[In this excerpt, Archer examines elements of satire and black humor in Anouilh's piéces griçantes.]

The key to the cycle of pièces grinçantes lies in the scene in La Valse des Toréadors during which General Saint-Pé becomes desperate at the thought that life is not at all what he had believed it to be. Perplexed, he turns to the doctor and asks him the meaning of all he has read in books, the grandiose loves, the prodigious revelations, the tender young girls who love men forever, the joy one feels at having at one's side a little "brother in arms" who changes into a lovable woman at night. The doctor anvswers calmly that these things represent the dreams of authors who must have been poor devils just like the general, and they both agree that such authors should be prevented from spreading false notions of this kind. The fabrications enumerated by the general are obvious references to Anouilh's themes in the pièces noires. Anouilh suddenly seems to be turning his back on the idealism expressed in his earlier work.

In the pièces grinçantes he no longer divides the world between idealists and realists, but fills it with ludicrous puppets) and cynical hypocrites. He once praised Molière for having written the blackest form of theatre in a manner which made men laugh at their own misery and hideousness. As the use of the term "grinçantes" shows, Anouilh intends to do something similar in this new collection of plays. The word "grinçantes" implies, first, the interrupted motion of something which hits a snag. As such it can be applied to laughter interrupted by the awareness that one should probably cry. Secondly, it refers to the unpleasant sound of something which crushes or grinds, thus recalling the sound of things one does not really want to hear. It follows, then, that the laugh Anouilh wishes to extract must be brought about by a special brand of black humor. It is no surprise, therefore, that he introduces his first anti-hero, General Saint-Pé, in the first two pièces grinçantes, Ardèle and La Valse des Toréadors. As the first part of the general's name implies, he may wear the halo of the martyr, but as the second part ironically indicates, he will emerge from the plays as unwonted as a putrid bubble of human gas.

Although in Ardéle (1948) the action does not directly affect the general, it revolves around him. He starts out by leading a sort of burlesque ballet of people pursuing their personal images of love. What they call love turns out to be an amalgam of infantile sexuality, pathological fixation, and insolent mimicry. For a time he thinks he is conducting a family council, gathered to decide the fate of an aunt who is a hunchback and who is in love with another hunchback; in reality, he is accepting with a disturbing complacency the monstrous pronouncements of caricatures who indulge in a ludicrous masquerade of love. Unfortunately, he is too flighty to recognize the cannibalism hidden in their decision that hunchbacks have no right to love, and he chatters away unaware of the urgency of the situation he has created. But Anouilh soon destroys the mood of light banter with a brutal cascade of bullets. The shock of the incident reminds everyone that human souls are at stake, but it is too late. The poor hunchbacks have been left only one escape, suicide. Not one person has really cared about them. The voice of the young man who encouraged his aunt Ardèle to love, despite her relatives' advice, has gone unheard. Only the cackle of the caricatures Anouilh has painted here still rings in our ears. He evidently wants to convince us that idealism is pitifully destined to be drowned in the empty gibberish of the wicked and the futile. The general is totally inadequate to meet the responsibility he assumes when he locks up his sister, so he lets the hypocrites decide her fate. Thus he is just as guilty as they are of the ugly act which causes the death of the two innocents. And ugly acts have a way of propagating, as Anouilh points out in his last scene: The young children of the household are pretending to "be in love," so they imitate what they have seen their elders do, they fight like cats and dogs; with this sort of conception of love, we can envision that some day they will also decide on someone's right to love. Somehow the scene is so ludicrous that we smile, but from embarrassment, at the mere sight of such illogical behavior among men. Our smile is "grinçant," it cannot last long, for we realize there is a serious lesson hidden in that spectacle.

La Valse des Toréadors (1951; English translation, The Waltz of the Toreadors) sketches another episode in the life of General Saint-Pé. As it happens, he does not handle his own affairs any better than those of others. He continues to wait for someone or something, for "the right circumstances" to decide what he must do, for he is confused by the contradictions between what he is told and what he vaguely discovers to be true. But no one shows him the way. He is like Estragon and Vladimir waiting for Godot. He has not understood that man must jump at the slightest opportunity for fulfillment. Since life is a "ball that lasts only one night," he should dance as much as he can "before the colored lights go off." The moral of the play recalls the "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may" theme. But the general may have missed his chance out of fidelity to his wife; the moral may then be, as the doctor tells him, not to try to know "one's enemy, especially if it is a woman." The doctor implies that the general should not have postponed his happiness out of pity for his wife when he fell in love with Ghislaine, for, women being unpredictable, his sacrifice may prove to have been wasted.

Although Anouilh exaggerates the play's cynicism for all its shock value, in reality he is asking whether it is worth while for the individual to cast aside his own happiness out of consideration for others who are themselves selfish. As we know, the general did not run away with Ghislaine the night he met her at the Saumure ball because he thought that his wife was deeply in love with him. Seventeen years later, while he still foolishly cherishes Ghislaine, his wife reveals to him that on that very night she left the ball and slept with a young officer. For having compromised and thought of others first, before reaching for his own happiness, General Saint-Pé ends up as a downtrodden buffoon, who wears a shiny uniform as if he were ready for a gala, but who has to find a pitiful solace in his kitchenmaid's skirts. Anouilh has provided the forbidding answer to his own question: at this point in his plays, ethics have disappeared into the realm of dreams.

There is no obvious tie between Ardéle and La Valse des Toréadors, other than the reappearance of General Saint-Pé. He emerges from both plays as an especially welldefined anti-hero who deserves close scrutiny. He represents especially the confused modern individual desperately trying to keep from drowning in the maze of contradictory forces which rule the world. He is made dizzy by the sweep of changing values in modern society, so he waits for a miraculous inspiration to move him in one direction or another. Since none materializes, he freezes into inaction. Face to face with evil, he does not recognize it or does not dare to acknowledge it. He struggles to find an ethic, although he is fallible enough to expect it to be easy to follow. A little cowardly, incredibly patient, he has been put on earth to be a victim, not a victor. He survives by sinking into sexual gratification, and by wearing a uniform which becomes his crutch. When he has the uniform on, others think that he is strong and brave. He knows that deep inside he is a lonely, frightened man, but appearances are good enough for him. He is Anouilh's image of today's man.

Ornifle, in the play Ornifle ou le courant d'air (1955; Ornifle; or, The Draft), is not a frightened man. He discovers, as does General Saint-Pé, that there can be no happy medium between honor and happiness. So he opts for happiness and then proceeds to laugh his way through life, often at the expense of those who are foolish enough to be gullible. Why should man, who does not ask to be born, spend his life surpassing himself? Society proves that any sort of self-denial is futile. Those who practice it are shy weaklings who deserve being used, or people who are possessed by an indecent brand of wickedness because they hide behind a mask of morality. So Ornifle will live for pleasure only.

This play succeeds in offering an interesting modern version of Molière's Don Juan. But Anouilh's motives when he created it were less innocent than Molière' s. Whereas the action remains forbidding in both plays, Anouilh lends a more airy, flippant tone to his hero so as better to allow him to flaunt his views. Furthermore, when Ornifle collapses of a heart attack as he is about to engage in the betrayal of another weakling, the suddenness of his death does not imply punishment as it does in the Molière play, for Anouilh does not show that his death is inflicted by a mystic supernatural power stronger than he, as is the case with Don Juan. In this instance, Ornifle falls dead as if struck by lightning; thus Anouilh bestows on him an almost painless death, such as we think only innocent creatures deserve. Anouilh is saying that Ornifle was an innocent creature, for he did not hide his wickedness.

The play Ornifle represented a first shot at a specific target, since Anouilh, who usually alternates writing at least two different types of plays, doggedly pursued his course, and the following year, with Pauvre Bitos ou le dîner de têtes (English translation, Poor Bitos), published what appears to be the sequel to Ornifle.

In truth, the political events that provoked his anger coincided with the point of development reached in his work that led him to write satires. In the early days of his vocation he had defended idealism in play after play. Then, as years passed and he looked more closely at the world, he discovered after World War II that more often than not idealism was a subterfuge used to cover the proverbial multitude of sins. He laughed in disenchantment at what might have been considered his naïveté. He was not certain whether it might not be that the world had changed so much that purity could no longer survive in it, so he seemed to ask those who had believed his beautiful images of purity not to take him too seriously. At times, it appeared that those who were pure enough to believe in tales of idealism were victimized either by life or by other men. Anouilh already knew the harsh rules of life; he now started to look at those who exploit men and he distinguished two kinds of opportunists: the Don Juan type, who openly join the forces of evil but who can be recognized, and the more dangerous variety, who wrap up their wickedness in all sorts of beautiful trappings. In Pauvre Bitos, the latter are the ones he pursues, while in Ornifle he shows how harmless openly wicked individuals actually may be.

After the Liberation of France, a political purge took place. The entire episode was odious, for it was based on finger-pointing and summary accusations, and sometimes it led to the executions of those who appeared to have "collaborated" with the Germans. Naturally, there were a number of unjust condemnations and many people were revolted by the situation. Against this background Anouilh, who was already tormented by various forms of rampant hypocrisy and who had never wanted to judge men, wrote his first brilliant satire, Pauvre Bitos.

As might be expected, the play's strong impact derives from Anouilh's daring frankness and the clever device he chooses to denounce the true character of the Epuration (the Purge). By allowing the participants in the debate between Bitos and his tormentors to wear the headdress of French Revolutionary leaders, he makes them express their motives more forcefully, for they can act safely behind what amounts to a mask. Since Anouilh wants to show the French their unfortunate tendency to repeat mistakes, the parallelism with the Terror initiated by Robespierre during the Revolution serves to concretize and reinforce his theory.

The indictment is a very severe one, for Anouilh lashes out not only at Bitos, the righteous self-appointed "defender of the people," but also at his tormentors. Bitos, the spokesman for those who hunted the "collaborators," turns out to be a little narrow-minded man for whom education is a dangerous thing. He retains only the cold theory of education, and resents those who teach him anything and those who exert any authority over him. He is a demagogue who actually hates men and who has been biding his time until he could revenge himself upon all those who have shown more talent, more wealth, or more graciousness than he has. Because he suffered, he has to make others suffer by submitting them to rigid rules which he can justify only in abstract terms. Most scathing of all is the fact that he will come to terms with those whose ideas he despises in order to serve his own personal needs. The provocation of Bitos' obnoxious behavior shows Anouilh's irresistible urge to stylize the humiliating image of a man "caught with his pants down," hence the scene when Bitos splits his pants and has to bend over to have them sewed up again while still wearing them.

More repugnant than Bitos himself is the fact that such creatures have been used from time to time in France by government leaders who did not want to do the dirty work themselves but found a way to be accommodating to those who did. One of the characters, Brassac, points this out when he says that in France one can always find a general to sign a decree, and then add a retroactive clause if need be. The satire reaches its height when Anouilh turns the table on the tormentors of Bitos. They are rich bourgeois or aristocrats who think they belong to an elite which can sit in Olympian fashion and laugh at those who at least try to perform some social service; they do not possess courage enough to roll up their sleeves and serve their country also. As Deschamps, the only moderate character in the play besides Victoire, gently reminds them, their motives are no more admirable than those of Bitos, for all they do is take from society and never give in return if they can help it.

Strangely enough, many critics reacted to Pauvre Bitos by lamenting that Anouilh was a man who hated humanity. But the play is precisely an indictment addressed to those who treat humanity with cold, mechanized methods instead of indulgence, compassion, and love. Anouilh enjoins those who see man as an abstraction to open their eyes and see that men are made of flesh and blood.