(3 of 3)
Without pity or grief or laughter, anger is neither moral nor healthy but simply dehumanizing. In Ionesco's scenario, just before the planet blows up, a man sitting in a café turns puce and explodes. Which is more destructive, Ionesco seems to ask, the atom bomb that swats all those flies or the chain-reaction anger behind it, disintegrating a man into his obsessions? In either case, the Ionesco moral is clear: in the 20th century, anger requires safety standards.
A diet of tranquilizers? Electrodes in the hotspots of the brain? Genetic engineering? The men in white jackets are waiting with newfangled anger cures. The scientist who invents bombs also invents alternatives. If these cures appear nearly as frightening as the malady they treat, who knows? Perhaps a better kind of cure is simply to get angry, just a little angry, about anger.