"Six Characters in Search of an Author"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Luigi Pirandello's play, "Six Characters in Search of an Author", is a representation of reality as opposed to the presentation of reality via drama. It looks at how it can also be interpreted as a division of the conscious mind from reality, or what Freud called "doubling", since the characters in the play are separated into actors and the characters they are to play. In particular, it attempts to show how the relationship between the author's characters and the actors who attempt to play the characters can be understood in terms of Freud's theory of the uncanny.

From the Paper:

"In the play, six characters appear at a rehearsal and are looking for a way to have their story told. Their goal is to have actors play the parts they represent in the story as yet completed. It is a paradoxical situation in which the actors are imitating the characters as they "perform" the circumstances of their lives. The conflict is made manifest in the discussions between the father and the producer as to what constitutes reality. The actors are "real" because they are living humans. The characters are "fictitious forms" of consciousness. From the perspective of the characters, the actors are comical in their attempts to recreate what the character has created. The actor is both "real" and an imitation while the characters are a representation presented to the world as "real" because of the reality of their stories."

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