Pirandellos Six Characters in Search of an Author - Essay Example

Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an The play starts with six characters that become animate and insist that their reality is not an illusion as thought. The play’s has the age-old goal of theater; to achieve the perfect illusion of what is real (Pirandello 23). Pirandello uses the theater to represent the physical component of this illusion. The script is controls the play that is acted out by the actors whose acts represent the life and illusion that is the characters’ reality. Pirandello attempts to create the perfect illusion in this work and successfully so that the audience and the Author himself is left wondering which is the reality and which the illusion. Modern theater is constituted by both arts that represent reality just like in a painting and art that is performed in a similar manner to dance. The actors with roles are real people representing fictional characters bringing them to life and telling their story. Theatricality is an art whose components and things are what they seem. This is unlike fiction or film. Pirandello successfully created characters that are aware of the illusion, which is their reality (Lorch 39). Pirandello’s imaginative and dramatic skill leaves the audience stunned as he successfully brings to life fictional characters. These are characters from a fictional play whose story remains unfinished and their only desire is to find an author to write out their story (Pogue 45). However, this play is an example of a modern day experimental work whereby the author seems unaware of his stand in his own work. This is made clear when he explores the nature of theatricality in his quest to illustrate that art does not constitute reality but perception. It would appear that he is trying to prove that art is the perception that the author has and he or she presents this perception to an audience seeking to convince them of the reality in the illusion (Lorch 37). This is a story of six characters that are looking for someone to finish out their story and give them the reality they need. It is a story that is told from the different perspectives of the characters who are realizing that there is a difference between art and life. The lead of the characters who is the father explains to the new author to finish what their previous author had started but had left pending. He claims that their story not being finished had left them as unrealized characters halfway brought to life and suspended mid air. The stage manager whose play had been interrupted tries to dismiss them but then they start telling their story, which intrigues him. This is a play within a play in that, there are six characters whose life story was left incomplete by their author and as such, they are looking for an author to finish their story. The manager and the actors of the interrupted play are also spectators (Pirandello10). Pirandello skillfully executed this unique art. Here he questions human existence, his identity and the meaning of life. The context of the play is befitting as the author aims to differentiate between life and art. Pirandello provides a befitting answer to this valid question. The father character starts by telling his version of the story. He explains how the mother character fell in love with his male secretary and of how when he found out he gave them his blessings. Here the father insists that his is a tragedy and he is the victim in all this. The daughter on the other hand has her own version of things, which she is convinced to be true. She vilifies her stepfather telling her own story. It becomes clear that she is seeking vengeance for the wrong done her by her father who she insists was aware of their relationship when he tried to buy sex from her. It becomes clear that the father wants to rid himself of the guilt of not only his encounter with the stepdaughter but of the whole situation, that has brought them to this point. The stepdaughter on the other hand is ill bent on vengeance, which she expertly executes by taunting her stepfather. The manager of the interrupted play insists that he wants his actors to act out the rest of the characters’ story. This does not go down well with the characters particularly the father and the stepdaughter who insist that their characters are their reality and is best represented by them. To the characters, fantasy is an important aspect through which their characters are realized. The father strives to explain to the manager the characters have eternal life in art that is theatre where they are born and developed. He insists on the importance of both the authors and audience’s fantasy where the characters not only exist but are real. The complexity of each individual’s story makes it difficult for theatre to handle him or her concurrently. It is rather impossible for the play to depict the silence and grief of the mother who had tragically lost two children; one drowned by the other and the other committing suicide. The older boy is suffering from feelings of abandonment when mother leaves and then confused and angered by her return. The daughter’s malice and vengeance towards the father for what she perceives as premeditated action. The father acting self-righteously and believing that he is also a victim. It is difficult to depict their suffering perceived or otherwise without making the play melodramatic and predictable to the spectators. This difficulty in making their story into a play that is understandable represents the reality that is communication and understanding between individuals existing in reality. It is clear that a living individual’s identity is not fixed and how he or she acts in the present may differ from how they act next time or they may repeat the same actions. The living man has been afforded choices and freedom to choose and change where necessary. This freedom comes with responsibility and may not taste as sweet as expected. The father in the story wishes for nothing else but freedom. However, he desires to be freed from this freedom and to be made into a character in the story so that his identity is clear as he plays a fixed role. The author accepts to assign him a role to play and that is when he again feels all his freedom slip away. He equates this with the ground slipping away under ones feet when they reflect on their past and perceive their future. The author depicts that life on stage is constantly changing. However, the actors on stage have eternity; not to change while the people themselves change. The stage is increasingly more real than life itself especially for the characters. The characters are the reality and the stage is used to depict this reality. They seek to dislodge the illusion of their reality and replace it with their reality. Life is not constant and keeps changing even in art itself. The author writes of the inborn tragic conflict that exists between life itself and form. Life he argues, keeps changing, moving forward while form is fixed, and non-movable. He explains that it is inherent that every creation in fantasy and theatre needs their drama to exist. He or she is the character in his own life and forms his main function necessitating his existence. The author explains that man is a character seeking an author and life is the stage on which he acts out his own drama in which he stars. He explains that life gets its meaning from individuals playing the roles they invent and use other characters or individuals as the supporting or co actors in his life. While staging the play, the manager insists that the actor and not the characters of the story are to play the roles. The father rather forcefully objects to this as he claims that no one else is capable of playing his role as accurately as he can himself. That the actors would not be able to accurately depict their emotions and feelings of suffering. The stepdaughter is particularly distraught about the stage arrangement as she feels that the manager does not accurately set the stage up as it should be. She protests having realized that the manager was turning their life’s tragedy into a miserable story of the middle class in society, further stereotyping their plight and lessening the value of their suffering. Semiotics refers to the study of sign and in theater; it refers to the variety of gestures used to convey messages to the audience and other characters. The play employs the use of semiotics when the manager scoffs while explaining to the father character (Lorch 32). The characters appear on stage dressed all in black representing the family in mourning over the recent tragedies that have befallen them. The older boy who had felt misunderstood and abandoned by the mother had acted out in anger and drowned his youngest step sister and then committing the heinous act of suicide. The mother’s veil depicts her mourning, as it is clear she has suffered the most loss. The father is seen trying to unveil her depicting that her sorrow is not only her own but shared by the family. However, the mother refuses preferring to suffer alone and blaming herself for the turn of events. Their mourning shows the guilt they are feeling for neglecting their children. The mother is especially affected as she chose the second husband over her only child and in doing so caused him to be confused and frustrated. Not being able to understand why his mother left him. The older boy should not have had access to a loaded revolver that he used to take his life. This shows recklessness of the parents. It also appears that neither of the parents or older sister was watching over the small child murdered by the older child, further symbolizing the elders’ recklessness. The manager’s insistence of using his actors distresses the characters, especially the father. He continuously tries to make the story suit his needs and ideals. The father feels that when the manager tailors the play to suit his needs, a terrible injustice occurs to the characters themselves. Characters are real people and even more real than reality itself. That the characters do not have any life outside the play and the play though perceived to be an illusion, is their reality. The father tells the manager that a character may question the individuality of a man since the character has his own life as shown by his characteristics and role making him “somebody” while a man may be a “nobody”. He believes that while the characters life is very real, that of the actor is not as real as the latter pretend to be someone else while the character is he. He justifies that man is nothing as time determines his existence, his reality is what he feels, and he shows this through illusion. As for the character, their reality remains as such forever. The father who is vocal and self-justifying character explains to the manager that there is a difference between real life and the reality that exists in art (Blevins 76). The author through the idealization of his fantasy expresses the reality in art while in real life idealization does not feature. The family’s plight is so real and captures the audience leaving them more confused as to which is which between the reality and illusion. The author successfully portrays what most play writers have not been able to display. This seems to be the story of the father’s life. This is so because of the father’s assertiveness and insistence of his important role in the family. However, the other characters especially the stepdaughter and the older son plays an important role in their family’s story. It is clear that life presents every individual with equal opportunity on to which to base their life whereas art divides the life of its characters into main and supporting roles. Symbolism in theater refers to a solid and identifiable thing that is a representative of an element or idea that cannot be easily depicted in art or sculpture. For example, the characters are all dressed in black to represent mourning (Lorch 31). The audience is expected to deduce that the family is in mourning for the two children tragically lost yet at the same time accept that this illusion is the character’s reality. The elder son’s silence represents his anger and frustrations towards his mother for abandoning him and the new family situation. He uses silence to express his feeling towards the new situation and the family arrangement. His final act of suicide is the ultimate symbolism. This signifies the end of his suffering or perception thereof at the same time ridding his family of the complexities. This is an act of anger towards the parents who he feels let him down when the father allowed the mother to leave. It is especially an act of anger towards the mother for leaving him. He makes her suffer the loss of her youngest and her oldest (himself). Signifier or the signified form the core elements of semiotics. Signifiers refer to a word or sound that point to an image while the signified is the meaning allured to by the signifiers (Lorch 36). Dialogism in theatrical art refers to the several voices that are in contest. These voices represent the ideological positions of the characters free from the author’s control. Throughout the play, there is dialogism between the characters themselves as they tell their story, between the actors and characters that attempt to mimic them and between the actors and their managers (Blevins 56). This is characteristic of a theatric setting, which Pirandello clearly depicts. The author also employs indexicality in the play where he lets the characters use their personas in telling their stories. Index or indexicality refers to the signs of modality used in art. Heteroglossia refers to the stratification of language into dialects of social nature, group behavior and voice diversification. In the play, we see social dilects when the stepdaughter communicates in French. For example “…under the pretext of selling robes et manteaux.”( Lorch 80). Icon or iconic is used to represent an image or picture. It bears a likeness and represents or stands in place of an object as either an analogy or concrete representation (Lorch 87). Even before Pirandello’s time and works, there were writers who wrote art just for the sake of writing it as well as symbolist writers seeking to establish the difference between life and art. Theirs was the question about who is an imitation of the other (Pogue 45). Is the art a representation of life or vice versa and there were questions of which was superior to the other, art or life. Pirandello sought to provide an answer for this by writing his play “Six Characters in Need of an Author”. In this play, he depicts that life imitates art claiming that art was superior to life. He rationalizes that this is so because art offers people the chance to reflect on their past, present and future (Blevins 3). This play serves to invoke the feelings of the audience and manager or new author alike. This is because it depicts the daily struggle of the middle class and lower middle class. The family struggles to balance their newly acquired status when circumstances force them to consolidate the whole family as a unit. The author explains that the mother and her other three children are under financial strain and the Madame Pace owning the dress shop cam prostitution ring seeks to take advantage of their situation. She compels the daughter to work for her as a prostitute presumably to allow her mother to continue working there. This is similar to the situation that most middle and lower middle class households go through daily. The author depicts the world as a cruel and imperfect place and every individual has his or her share of suffering. It is clear from the play that the author advocates for tolerance for the weaknesses of others and the shortcoming of the world. It is clear from Pirandello’s play that illusion and reality are not synonymous to each other. What one person may perceive as illusion may be the reality of the other. This play features six characters of a story or book that is unfinished desiring that their story be finished by an author. It appears crucial for their existence that this is so. Works Cited Bühler, Karl, Donald F. Goodwin, and Achim Eschbach. Theory of Language: The Representational Function of Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co, 2011. Internet resource. Blevins, Jacob. Dialogism and Lyric Self-Fashioning: Bakhtin and the Voices of a Genre. Selinsgrove, Pa: Susquehanna University Press, 2008. Print. Lorch, Jennifer. Pirandello: Six Characters in Search of an Author. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print. May, Rollo. Symbolism in Religion and Literature. New York: G. Braziller, 1960. Print. Pogue, Tammie J. Pirandellos Development of Metatheatre. , 2002. Print. Pirandello, Luigi, and Luigi Pirandello. Theatre of the Absurd: Luigi Pirandello : Six Characters in Search of an Author. Princeton, N.J: Films for the Humanities, 2008. Read More