What is the theme in Rhinoceros, and Other Plays by Eugene Ionesco?

The individual a gainst collectivist ideologie. Both "Rhinoceros" and "The Future is in the Eggs" focus on the struggle to preserve individual identity in societies which celebrate only social and national progress. Such societies were surely fresh on Ionesco's mind from World War II. The governments that arose in Italy, Germany, Spain, and many other places were obsessed with collective goals and diminished or even condemned individual achievement. This collectivist spirit did not die at the end of the Second World War, of course. Writing in 1960, the high point of the Cold War, Ionesco surely looked with fear upon the growing popularity of communism in the West and specifically in his own country. Though often depicted as opposites, Ionesco's plays see communism and fascism as two sides of the same totalitarian coin.