Ionesco's The Lesson - a hilarious satire of education

The Lesson is one of Eugène Ionesco's most widely performed and read plays. It begins as a hilarious satire of teaching, then alludes to learned linguistic theories: the tone then changes: the farce ends in tragedy when the teacher kills his pupil. But this tragedy, too, is parodic: everyone can give it any meaning they like. The murder at the end of the play marks a new desire on the part of the author, that of noting the need to satisfy a need inherent in a transcendental state resulting from a teaching that proves fatal.