Realism in Six Characters in Search of an Author.
Six Characters in Search of an Author is different from all the plays I have read so far. The more we read it, the more we explore the truth. This play is really not simple. All the characters misunderstand each other. The daughter blames her father for all her bad luck. The father blames her mother who he says left her for another man. It's not the mother's fault either that she fell in love with a man who, she says, was introduced to her by her father himself. The mother feels that she would have remained with her husband if she had not been kicked out of the house. The son is not attached to anybody because he had a non-attached feeling. The boy always feels lonely and decides to suicide. .
In some ways we can say this play is realistic but it is presented in a very unrealistic, weird style. The six characters appear in real life looking for an author. What kind reality is that? The characters are not human.
In act two Pirandello criticizes tow things: the setting and the director. The characters are shocked when they realize that they setting is not realistic at all, not the way they remember it "I just don't recognize it at all" (Gilbert, 182). This shows the difference in location between the theatre and the place that the author describes. The theatre cannot overcome what the author describes and therefore remains fake. All the actors also attack the producer, who wants to cut and rearrange the scene. The father argues that truth must be played, in its unchangeable form. This is how Pirandello attacks directors who cut and change an author's work. .
Therefore, there are two realities: one consisting of the actors and their props, and one consisting of the characters. This double reality can be seen in Madame Pace's dress shop. The scene is first played by the characters and then acted by the actors.
The father says " the truth is that they"re certainly not us!" (Gilbert, 187) He is saying that as characters they are more real in their parts than the actors can ever be.
