6 Characters In Search Of An Author

?? Essay, Research Paper

Pirandello’s play “6 Characters in Search of an Author” can in fact be interpreted as a tragedy, with the tragic flaw being fate. The actors are of a separate world, they are not a part of this tragedy. It is solely based upon all 6 of the characters who relive their scripted lives on stage. A play, a movie, a story will always have the same words and actions no matter how many times one sees it. Romeo and Juliet will always die, just as Rhett Butler will always leave Scarlet O’Hara at the end of “Gone with the Wind.” The characters were written into this type of situation and are fated to forever restage the same performance because of their destiny. This is what is so tragic. In the final scene of Pirandello’s play, the older son wants desperately to leave, to escape his reality of the script but he can’t. He must go on to find the young daughter drowned in the fountain. No one is allowed to leave except the stepdaughter. One could say that the little son’s death was an escape from the play. That he felt so neglected by the rest of his family that he had to escape his form. But then again, his shooting was written into the play, it was meant to happen and there is no escaping his fate.

It is quite tragic that they know their fate and know that they cannot escape it. At least Oedipus and Doctor Faustus kept hope that they could escape their fate, though of course, destiny led on. The 6 characters have been written into their script so well; there is no escape, no loophole, no hope. The Mother is to forever weep with sorrow, as the Father must forever carry a face of guilt. The masks the characters wear also signify tragedy. The masks cannot be taken off for they are the life and matter of the play. They represent the character and the story. The producer wants the Mother and the older Son to converse about the story between them but that story had never taken place. If it wasn’t written into the script then the characters can’t make it up and go on from there. It’s not allowed because their story, the script, is set in black and white with no changes.