Six Characters

A detailed Summary of Six Characters

As the 1934 literature laureate of the prestigious Nobel Prize, author and playwright Luigi Pirandello was truly a pioneer in his field. The award was given to him "for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art". He is today known as the greatest Italian playwright of his time. His contributions to the genre are unequivocal. Even today the influence of his writings can be seen through the works of many prolific writers such as Eugene O'neill, Samuel Beckett, and Eugene Ionesco. What many argue to be the pinnacle of his career as well as the best know of his works Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1921) has been critically acclaimed for its fresh outlook and commentary on the interdependence of the characters from the author, and the distinction between reality and actuality.

The first act begins with a group of actors preparing for a rehearsal of a Pirandello play entitled Il Giuoco delle Parti (Mixing It Up). The rehearsal is short lived however due to the appearance of several people claiming to not really be people but instead characters of an unfinished play. The manager, who is also the direct of Mixing It Up, becomes somewhat intrigued with these characters and

There are several important themes to be found and interpreted in this play. The most obvious of these deals with power struggle and relationship between an author and his characters. Pirandello uses the play to question how a playwright or any author for that matter is able to develop characters (outside of first person point of view) and control them in their environment, while still allowing the character to be sensational and the work a true masterpiece of art. Through this work he points out that for a character to be truly great, the author can not control him, rather he must grow on his own. He also some what criticizes other authors for being lazy when it comes to developing their characters as well as commenting on the creativity adapting the character to the story can hinder. "A playwright's usual quest of verisimilitude is derided as a covering for the lack of true creative power. The artist foolishly seeks the verisimilar, when 'life is full of infinite absurdities'" (Shipley 503).

The play however becomes more then a simple question of reality and theatrical tradition

agrees to become an author to finish the play, which in turn will bring the characters to life. The character of the father tells the manager all he has to do is write down what they perform, and then the actors can take over.

The characters begin to explain their history to the manager. Originally, the father and mother were married and had a son. The mother fell in love with the father's secretary, and the father not only lost interest in the mother but wanted to be free to visit with prostitutes so he told her to leave with the secretary. The mother went on to have three children with the secretary and the father began to miss the very same family he had pushed away. The father took it upon himself to keep tabs on the new family, even going as far as to bring the youngest girl gifts after school. The mother was not happy about the father's new involvement and the family moved away. Eventually the secretary died the mother and her three children were forced by poverty to return to the city where she and the father had lived. The mother and her daughter find work as a mender and a prostitute respectively. One day the father tries to pick the daughter up but the mother intervenes. The father takes in the mother and the three kids, causing immense resentment from the son towards the family and more specifically the mother he views as having abandoned him. The mother makes several attempts to reconcile this situation, but all are in vain as the son wants no part of it.

Another theme Pirandello examines is that of realism in a theatrical sense. What is actual reality and what is reality in art is constantly being questioned. Although the characters are not thought of as actually living human beings, Pirandello points out that in many aspects they are more real then the actors that try (and fail) to portray them. When the actors try and imitate the scene they were masks, where as the characters have their own faces, that is, their own identities. The characters while not alive represent the living breathing unabridged version of the play in which they were created to perform. However in sharp contrast, Pirandello constantly points out that the characters are extremely limited in what they are able to do. Because they were created for the sole purpose of the characters, they are completely restricted of anything outside of their original designated purpose. For example in the final act of the play the manager tries to stop the son from leaving but the step-daughter says to the manager "Don't bother to stop him: he won't go away" (Pirandello 66). The step-daughter knows that the son can not leave because his part has not yet been acted out. The same that is true of the characters is true of the actors and the manager. The actors and the manager has unlimited potential to act or direct any work they want, using any

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3824
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English