Analysis: The Tricycle (Le Tricycle) — 1953 by Fernando Arrabal

 

Analysis: The Tricycle (Le Tricycle) — 1953 by Fernando Arrabal 

Fernando Arrabal’s The Tricycle, written in 1953, is an early and significant example of the unconventional dramatic world that would become associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. At the centre of the play are three impoverished young people—Climando, Apal, and Mita—who live outside the comfortable and orderly world of ordinary society. Their lives are marked by poverty, uncertainty, imagination, play, and a constant desire to escape their difficult circumstances. Arrabal uses their apparently simple existence to create a disturbing picture of human life in which innocence and cruelty, comedy and tragedy, and fantasy and reality exist side by side.

One of the most striking features of the play is the contrast between the childlike behaviour of the characters and the seriousness of their situation. Climando and Apal frequently behave as though life were a game. They invent stories, play with ideas, and find entertainment in their limited surroundings. Mita also becomes part of this strange imaginative world. Their playfulness initially gives the impression that they are able to create happiness despite poverty. However, this childish behaviour gradually appears as a means of escaping from an unpleasant reality. Their games cannot remove hunger, poverty, or social insecurity. The contrast therefore makes their eventual suffering even more disturbing.

Poverty is a fundamental element of the dramatic world. The characters possess very little and have almost no opportunity to change their circumstances. The tricycle itself is closely connected with this condition. It represents their attempt to earn a living and survive within a society that offers them few possibilities. Their economic difficulties influence their decisions and eventually contribute to the increasingly tragic direction of the story. Arrabal does not present poverty merely as a background condition; it shapes the characters’ relationships, ambitions, behaviour, and choices.

The relationships among the three central characters are also important. Climando, Apal, and Mita form a small alternative society of their own. They depend upon one another for companionship and emotional support because they are largely separated from the wider social world. Their relationship contains affection and loyalty, but it is also affected by insecurity and competing desires. Their little community provides temporary protection from loneliness, yet it remains fragile. The characters cannot completely escape the pressures of the outside world.

Another important feature of the play is Arrabal’s treatment of reality and imagination. The characters frequently move between ordinary conversation and invented situations. Their imagination becomes a kind of refuge. Instead of accepting reality in a conventional manner, they transform it through play and fantasy. This technique creates an uncertain theatrical atmosphere in which the audience is encouraged to experience events differently from the way they would in a realistic social drama. The strange behaviour of the characters is therefore not simply comic; it reveals their attempt to give meaning to lives that otherwise seem empty and hopeless.

The play also demonstrates the characteristic mixture of comedy and tragedy found in much absurdist theatre. Some situations and conversations can appear amusing because of the simplicity, innocence, or unusual behaviour of the characters. Yet the comedy gradually becomes uncomfortable because the audience is aware of the poverty and desperation underlying it. Laughter and suffering exist together. Arrabal refuses to keep the comic and tragic worlds separate, making the audience experience the disturbing instability of the characters’ lives.

The language and dialogue contribute to this effect. Rather than relying on long philosophical speeches or elaborate realistic conversations, Arrabal often uses simple exchanges, repetitions, games, and unexpected shifts in conversation. The simplicity of the language contrasts with the seriousness of the circumstances. At times, the dialogue seems disconnected from ordinary logic, creating the impression that the characters inhabit a world governed by its own strange rules. This is one of the ways in which the play moves away from conventional realism.

The play can also be understood as a representation of social isolation. Climando, Apal, and Mita exist on the margins of society. They are not powerful figures who can control events around them. Instead, they are vulnerable people attempting to survive with the limited resources available to them. Their isolation makes their small community especially important. Yet even this community cannot provide permanent security. Their marginal position ultimately leaves them exposed to circumstances they cannot control.

Arrabal’s treatment of violence and death intensifies the tragic dimension of the work. The movement from innocent games toward serious and destructive consequences demonstrates how quickly the characters’ artificial world can collapse. Their attempts to improve their situation do not lead to the happy escape they imagine. Instead, their desperation brings them into increasingly dangerous circumstances. The contrast between their dreams and their fate gives the play its powerful tragic quality.

The tricycle itself can be viewed as a central theatrical object around which much of the characters’ existence is organised. It belongs to the ordinary material world—it is a means of work and survival—but it also becomes part of the characters’ imaginative world. In this sense, the object connects their dreams with their poverty. It represents movement and the possibility of going somewhere, while the characters themselves remain trapped in their circumstances.

Overall, The Tricycle is a play about people who attempt to construct a small world of friendship, imagination, and play in the midst of poverty and insecurity. Arrabal deliberately avoids the conventions of traditional realistic drama and instead creates a world that is simultaneously comic, poetic, absurd, and tragic. The characters’ childish games do not make their suffering disappear; rather, they make the harshness of reality more visible. Their dreams promise escape, but reality repeatedly closes in upon them. Through this unusual combination of innocence and brutality, Arrabal presents a deeply unsettling picture of marginalized human beings searching for companionship and meaning in an apparently indifferent world.