Pirandello Character Analysis

They direct the flow and the motion of the story, claiming that that is their only reality, but because the reader/audience is not privy to their play as a written text or one that has been authored, unlike the one the “Actors” were performing before the intrusion of the “Characters”, it is harder to imagine the credibility of both their actual reality and overlaying illusion. Pirandello confronts this notion by emphasizing in the play that the “Characters”, although are seen as expressing agency with regards to their story, are also shackled to it because it is their only “immutable reality” (Act III). It is extremely noteworthy that the “Son” rebels and is persistent about not performing with the other “Characters” but he is not able to

The truth, as Luperini noted earlier is cannot be acquired by the “Characters”, it exists at the point of the “creation of signification” and because the “Characters” claim that their author has abandoned them, their quest for the “absolute and univocal truth” is futile. The “Characters” in Pirandello’s play are in search of a “universal truth” (42) which is objective and real but they argue that they carry the play in them and they are the real representations of their story and lives. Through this, it can be deciphered that the “Characters” in their futile and paradoxical search for a “universal truth” (42) and a written “book” – challenge assumptions regarding reality and truth in the real world. Like the “Characters”, people in the real world seek a larger truth or purpose to justify their course of life. The “Characters” take up this pursuit to justify the play that is in them, an origin for its existence and for their actions and behaviours. Most importantly, Pirandello places a mirror between the drama that happens on stage and the ongoing of the real world and with the conflation of reality and illusion, highlights that the real world is not different from the world of the stage, similar justifications shape both their

By the end of the play, the conflation of reality and illusion, which was subtle up until the end, becomes very obvious with the “death” of the boy. The “Actors” are confused about the boy’s death and are not sure if it is “reality” or a “pretence” (Act III). The illusoriness of the play is as acutely emphasized as the “immutable reality” (Act III) of the “Characters” throughout the Pirandellian drama. Here, after the gunshot, this illusoriness comes into conflict with the reality that the “Characters” claim. Considering that the action of the gunshot happens away from the main stage of the play, and is not seen directly by the audience, it remains hard to attest to the veracity of the supposed death. Only the gunshot is heard which although, does heighten the dramatic effect of the action, it does not fully grasp the audience as it would have if the boy had shot himself with the focus of everyone. The unconfirmed veracity of the boy’s death is emphatically linked to the meta-theatrical quality of Pirandello’s play. It is hard to believe, hence it plays well within the bounds of an illusion, just a drama created on stage. However, the choice to include the sheer possibility of death and a gunshot serves to intensify the illusion of the drama. But this intensification occurs because death is a real concept and a gunshot