20 pages • 40 minutes read
Jean GenetThe Balcony
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Scene 6-9 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Scene 6 Summary
Scene 6 takes place in a shadowy square. Chantal and Roger are embracing. From their position they can see the balcony of Irma’s brothel. Three men with guns and black sweaters seem to be guarding them. Chantal and Roger talk about how much they love each other, although Chantal also insists that she belongs to no one. One of the men in black asks Roger if he has decided yet. He proposes to give Roger 100 women in exchange for Chantal. He says that Chantal is the embodiment of the rebellion, and if he can have her to use in service of their cause, they will win. He says that he intends for Chantal to sing from a nearby balcony, and that this will be enough to end the fighting. Chantal tells Roger that she wants to do it. She insists that she has played enough roles in her life that she will know how to play a singer when it is time. As the scene ends, she leaves with the men in black.
Scene 7 Summary
Scene 7 is set in one of Irma’s studios, called the Funeral Studio. The studio is torn to pieces. The Chief of Police’s uniform is torn, as is Irma’s tattered dress. A new character called the Court Envoy is there, dressed in an embassy uniform. Arthur’s corpse is on the ground. Carmen is there as well, but she looks the same as she has throughout the play. There is a massive explosion and everything shatters.
The Court Envoy tells them that the explosion came from the royal palace. He assures them that the Queen is safe, but that all other important government buildings are now under rebel control. He says that the Minister has sent him to the brothel to oversee their operations. But then he begins speaking in riddles, implying that the Queen might actually be dead. He says both that she is embroidering a handkerchief and not embroidering a handkerchief. His contradictory statements continue as the explosions outside worsen.
He gives them hope that they might actually become “real.”
Scene 8 Summary
Scene 8 takes place on the balcony itself. The Judge, the General, and the Bishop step onto the balcony. They are all wearing their ceremonial uniforms. They are followed by a character now known as the Hero (who was formerly the Chief of Police). Then Irma appears, wearing a jeweled diadem. She has become the Queen. A man called the Beggar appears and shouts, “Love live the Queen!” (70). Then Chantal joins them on the balcony. The Queen bows to her and a shot rings out. Chantal falls, dead. The Queen and the General carry her body offstage as the scene ends.
Scene 9 Summary
The conflict outside continues to grow. A client arrives and says that he wants a session with a prostitute during which he will play the role of the Chief of Police. George is overjoyed. This is the tribute that will immortalize him and justify his choice of career, because now someone finally views his life as a fantasy worth living. George locks himself in the studio known as the Mausoleum, and vows never to leave. Roger, after performing the scene with the prostitute, castrates himself. He sees that his fantasy of power cannot fulfill him, so he mutilates himself to mirror the psychological castration he has experienced. As the play ends, Irma is alone in the chaos of the shattered brothel as fighting continues to rage outside.
Scene 6-9 Analysis
The introduction of Chantal and Roger initially hints that the rebellion might be a worthwhile cause. For all the violence that must accompany a revolution, their love for each other seems as if it might be a hint of good to come. But the second half of the play lays waste to all of the character’s illusions, except for those of the Queen’s Envoy, who has always seen that disaster is the ultimate outcome of every situation.
When the men who play the Bishop, the General, and the Judge are finally called on to play their roles for real, they find that they are not up to the task. They resent the intrusion of their fantasies into real life, and the power they wield on the balcony is not as potent or as real as they had imagined in the studios with the prostitutes. When Chantal’s sudden death sets a cataclysmic chain of events in motion, it is readily apparent that Genet never had any intentions of convincing the reader that optimism is anything but naïve.
As the play ends, there is only the sense of a new cycle of death and corruption beginning. Just as the clients’ desires for fantasy begin again the moment after they are satiated, the idealism of the rebels will soon give way to disappointment, a new form of oppression, and a new group of people whose fantasies will involve the overthrow of the recent victors.
