Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It (1954) by Eugène Ionesco (Summary)

 

Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It (1954)

by Eugène Ionesco

(Summary) 

Summary of Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It (1954) by Eugène Ionesco

Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It by Eugène Ionesco is a haunting, darkly comic tale about a married couple trapped in their apartment—and in their past.

 

A Marriage in Decay

In a small Paris apartment live Amédée and his wife, Madeleine. Once hopeful and creative, they are now worn down by time, resentment, and an unspeakable burden.

For fifteen years, something has been rotting in their bedroom.

A corpse.

No one knows exactly who the dead man is. Was he a lover? A stranger? A symbol? The couple argue constantly about it. Their memories don’t match. Their explanations contradict each other. The truth has dissolved, just like their marriage.

But the most terrifying part isn’t that the corpse exists.

It’s that it keeps growing.

Its body stretches across the room, its feet pushing through doors, its presence suffocating the apartment. The smell seeps into everything. The walls seem to shrink. The air feels heavier.

And still—they do nothing.

Paralysis and Petty Arguments

Amédée is a failed playwright, endlessly revising a script he cannot finish. Madeleine works tirelessly to support them, bitter and exhausted. Their conversations loop in absurd circles—blame, denial, sarcasm, fear.

Instead of solving the problem, they bicker over trivialities:

Whose fault is the corpse?

Why didn’t they act sooner?

What will the neighbors think?

Outside, life goes on. Inside, decay spreads.

The corpse becomes more than a body—it is their guilt, their stagnation, their unspoken crime, their dead love.

Yet they hesitate. Always tomorrow. Always later.

 

The Decision to Act

At last, when the corpse has grown so enormous that it threatens to burst through the walls, Amédée decides something must be done.

Madeleine pushes him. The smell is unbearable. The neighbors are suspicious. The world is closing in.

So Amédée prepares to remove the body.

The task is grotesque and strangely comic. He struggles to maneuver the gigantic corpse through narrow spaces. The absurdity is almost slapstick—but underneath the humor is dread.

He drags it to the window.

Outside, the city glows in ordinary indifference.

 

The Strange Liberation

As Amédée pushes the corpse out, something extraordinary happens.

Instead of crashing to the ground, the body begins to float.

It rises gently into the air, as though filled with helium, drifting upward into the night sky.

And then—

Amédée himself is lifted with it.

Caught in its ascent, he floats higher and higher, rising above the city, beyond the apartment, beyond the suffocating marriage.

Madeleine remains below, alone.

She watches him disappear into the sky.

Is this escape? Death? Freedom? Madness?

Ionesco leaves us suspended in ambiguity.

 

What the Story Really Suggests

Though surreal and absurd, the play speaks deeply about:

Guilt that grows when ignored

The decay of relationships

Creative paralysis

The impossibility of erasing the past

Escape through imagination—or death

The corpse is never fully explained because it is not meant to be literal. It is the weight we refuse to confront. The longer it stays hidden, the larger it becomes.

And when finally released, it carries everything with it.

 

The Final Image

A silent apartment.

A woman alone.

A man drifting into the dark sky, tied to a floating corpse.

Absurd.

Comic.

Terrifying.

Strangely beautiful.

That is Amédée—a story where the impossible feels painfully real.