I wonder if the "spiritual lubricant" is the desire to have and take care of a child. Fefu's continued feeding of the cat, combined with its repulsive nature, points to the obligation to take care of one's child, no matter their character or behavior. Of course in the play, she's dealing with a cat, not a human, and the cat is not hers. Still, she's stuck in an absurd situation, where the idea of being a caretaker takes precedence over the nasty experience of caretaking. The repulsive cat does not unbound Fefu from her caretaking instinct (and perhaps more importantly, societal expectations for caretaking). This behavior seems to pull her closer to the traditional model wife character, and Fefu's strange relationship with her husband pulls her away. Fefu's experience with the cat is one of the few moments where she is not portrayed as striving towards masculinity. She is stuck between the masculine and feminine.

The family members have become increasingly bound to the idea of being part of a family, while their relationships to each other have deteriorated. They have to balance their desire for being part of a family and having human connection, with the fact that they no longer have particularly strong affection for the particular characters in their family. To Agnes, the family must be kept together, and in this passage, she rambles on about her role in maintaining the family unit. At the dinner table, she shuts down uncomfortable, confrontational topics, like Julia's divorces. Agnes is working to maintain the postwar ideal (illusion?) of living in a suburban, upper-middle-class area with a loving family and cordial friendships.

Claire concedes that she is an alcoholic, at least on Agnes's terms. But Agnes cannot declare victory because Claire defiantly puts on a "smile too sweet" and childishly challenges Agnes to consider "[w]hat are you going to do about it?" Agnes wins in the metaphorical battlefield of language because Claire describes herself in terms that Agnes defined. But this sounds like a small technicality, and the real work for Agnes is reforming Claire's drinking habits. Claire doesn't seem to care if she is or is not considered an alcoholic: the language of alcoholism is not enough to shame her into reformation. Agnes will take no material steps because of Claire's drinking problem -- such as booting Claire from the home -- and so there will be no progress made in the relationship between the sisters.

Agnes does not try to use material means to address the relationship with her sister, and using language fails to have any lasting impact. This failing of the material and language is reflected in the family as a whole. Agnes perceives the family unit as inseparable, regardless of how the individual relationships between family members are strained, and she will never force anyone out of the home. When Agnes speaks poorly of her sister at the start of the play, she is shot down by Tobias and asked to apologize. Agnes's influence with language to change the family's behavior is limited.

Ben gives straightforward, obedient, almost robotic answers to the person at the other end of the speaking-tube, who may be his boss Wilson. In between each of Ben's lines, the stage directions/movement are robotic ("To ear. He listens. To mouth."). Note that Gus is not part of this conversation. Without Gus's incessant questioning, Wilson speaks as an unchallenged authority from a hidden space. Ben's servility characterizes Wilson's authoritarianism, even though Wilson is kept at a distance from the audience. In real life, when we try to make sense of authority, we often take cues from others who may be our senior (such as Ben is to Gus) or have more experience with such authority. The authority is abstracted by speaking from a hidden space, yet their influence yields a much wider range because we often find that fear (or conformity) is contagious.

It is worth noting that the speaking-tube is used for communicating with someone above the basement room. The staging makes it apparent that Ben and Gus are speaking with a figure that is "upper-level" in two ways: higher status and elevated physical positioning. Status is tied to physical location (the hidden stage that is a higher floor of the building), and the pair are certainly reminded of their status when the gas doesn't start and they sit on unclean bed sheets.

The General looks in the mirror after The Girl recounts the fantasy in which men are dying ("deepening a wound, dimming an eye, tearing off an arm...") and Death falls asleep on The General's shoulder. He imagines himself as a great general, with numerous medals, and references Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Austerlitz. An important part of the General's fantasy is being close to death. In the brothel, The General is a commanding, legendary figure whose presence will be remembered after death. Outside of the brothel, the revolution is life-threatening, and it is likely that The General's death will be quickly forgotten. He faces his mortality and the conception of legacy in the brothel. In the brothel, people are able to act out powerful roles that contrast with the helplessness they feel because of the revolution.

While the audience is watching the staircase collapse, they cannot see the cause of the collapse, which the characters claim is a rhinoceros. The collapse occurs without warning, "under an obviously formidable weight," and the scene is loud and jarring. I think it's useful to compare this catastrophe to the killing of the Housewife's cat. In that scene, the audience may be unsure if there are rhinoceroses in the play because there could be many causes for the trampling of the Housewife's cat. In this scene, the audience is exposed to the sheer power of the rhinoceros. The rhinoceroses have a physical presence -- they are strong animals capable of downing a staircase -- and they feel real. The scene is absurd a la Lavery and Finburgh. The environment operates in an unpredictable, non-anthropomorphic manner. The staircase collapses without any human-perceivable reason. The audience is uncomfortable because the environment operates according to its own rules.

The Logician declares that a cat, even if it has no paws, is driven by its nature to catch mice. He is concerned with what is inherently true -- the fact that cat catch mice -- and fails to narrow his attention to the particular instance of a pawless cat being practically unable to catch mice. His portrayal of logic is narrow-minded and seemingly inapplicable to real-life circumstances. When the rhinoceros comes in, he does not recognize the absurdity of the situation. In fact, none of the characters seem to engage with the question that the audience is puzzled by: why, exactly, are there rhinoceroses running in the streets?

Doesn't matter to the Logician. As we read further on, the particular instance of a rhinoceros in his town takes a back seat to his ramblings on about the number of horns the Asiatic and African rhinoceros have.

There is a disparity between what is said on stage and what the audience sees: the actors talk about an object handed to the Old Woman identified as "a flower...or a cradle...or a pear tree...or a crow" or a painting, while the audience does not see the object. The gap between what is said on stage and what is seen is disorienting. The viewer must constantly reassess their understanding of the play by reconciling what they see on the stage with the dialogue. For many plays, this is no issue, because what I see matches what I hear. But, when what I see differs from what I hear, I have to engage with the tension between the auditory and visual. This is complicated by the fact that at times, what I see does match what I hear (I see the dragging of the chairs to the front of the dais), but mostly, I'm left out of the conversation (I don't see people being seated).

Hamm is telling the story about the father who begged Hamm for bread to feed his son. In response, Hamm insists that giving the man food would be futile because it would only support his family for a few days. The natural world is no longer suitable for supporting life: Hamm challenges the man to consider if “the earth will awake in spring?” Of course there is no spring, and so Hamm implies that, without a healthy natural world, it is not worth living. This is not just a common sense statement describing that “people need food to survive.” Without the natural world, the human world assumes greater importance. But Hamm jeers at the father-son relationship in front of him and he is not particularly warm to his parents or Clov. How does Hamm view nature? Let’s take Hamm’s statement literally -- what would happen if nature is restored? -- and we see that an idealized natural world can make Hamm’s life meaningful in ways that human relationships cannot. At present, nature is embittering because it offers no consolation for Hamm’s suffering.

In Chapter 6 of Poetics, Aristotle defines recognition as "a change from ignorance to knowledge." On this page in Beckett's play, Vladimir repeats the line "Unless they're not the same. . ." three times when he is struggling to determine if he "knows" Pozzo and Lucky. Vladimir does not reach a meaningful conclusion -- he ends with the same thought that he starts with -- and so these are failed moments of recognition. He is on the verge of realizing that he cannot "know" the master-slave pair because he can only conceptualize them as they were in the past, and will not know them in the present. He fails to become knowledgeable and is interrupted by the young boy, who relays Godot's message about his delayed arrival. Just as there are no answers as to if and when Godot will arrive, there are no answers as to whether or not Vladimir can be knowledgeable about Pozzo and Lucky. Vladimir remains ignorant.

Sabina takes the role of God by refusing to act the next scene and thus diverting the flow of the play-within-a-play. As a result, we recognize that the ground she stands on is merely a setting for theatrics, the "world as a stage," and those theatrics can be adjusted according to actor preference. In addition, Sabina's call out to the audience draws attention to her identity as an actor. She expresses concern for having to act in a manner that would arouse negative emotions for a personal guest in the audience. We are conscious of her feelings as an actor and not her feelings as a character; we confront the fact that Sabina is a conscious actor on the stage.

The "music" or "characteristic sound" is a mix between the march of prisoners on their way to being killed, and the light, free-flowing, clownish sounds suggested by the prisoners's hats. The hats are venomous objects that taunt the prisoners, reminding them of the vibrancy of life while they are being led to execution. The prisoners live within the seemingly contradictory realm of brutality and aesthetic consideration. Similarly, the audience is witness to Joan and Todd's budding romance and the juxtaposition with their work in producing hats for the execution industry. Perhaps somber clown music should be played when the prisoners walk to their deaths.