Asri Dwi Hastari
A320080212
Class F
THE LESSON
BY EUGENE LONESCO
A. The Title
The writer gives the title “The Lesson” because the setting of this story mostly is lesson situation between the professor and his pupil. It is a story about teaching, the process of pedagogy, the student-teacher relationship and its innate power structure and a radical subversion of that power equation
B. The Characters
1. Professor, The Professor is associated as the cleverest and the highest. He is 50 to 60 years old. He cannot control his emotion. He is an aggressive person, excessively polite, very timid, his voice deadened by his timidity, dominating and unstable.
2. The young pupil aged 18. She is a rich person, and fool person but she is attractive, polite and dynamic.
3. The Maid, aged 45 to 50. She is friendly, patient, red faced. She is always pay attention to the professor.
C. The Synopsis
Set on the office of the old professor in France, this play presents three main characters: the maid aged 45 to 50, the professor aged 50-60, and the young pupil aged 18. In the beginning of the play, the young pupil is eager to learn and she dominates the professor with her confidence and youth, but as the story develops she is getting meek and vulnerable. Even more she is suffering from the professor’s voice and explanation, such as toothache, earache, headache and eyes ache. The maid, Marie, always warns the professor about his “health” and calamity that might happen. Unfortunately the professor, instead of listening to his maid, ignores her every time she warns him. In the end of the play, the professor kills the pupil with an imaginative knife and with the help of his maid he could get rid of her corpse and then the stage is set again with another young pupil who is ready for the lesson.
D. The Kinds of Drama
This story is classified as “man vs. society”, because the conflict arises between professor and his pupil. where the professor with his unstable killed his pupil. She wasn’t the first pupil but there were many runaway pupils before. It shows that the professor having difficulties to his society.
E. Moral Values
1. Reminds us to control our emotion when we are in difficult situations.
2. Reminds to not underestimate to other people.
3. Remind us in order to be open minded.
