The Child Character Analysis

A tenuous light surrounds them, almost as if irradiated by them—the faint breath of their fantastic reality.
This light will disappear when they come forward towards the actors. They preserve, however, something of the dream lightness in which they seem almost suspended; but this does not detract from the essential reality of their forms and expressions.

The drama consists finally in this: when that mother re-enters my house, her family born outside of it, and shall we say superimposed on the original, ends with the death of the little girl, the tragedy of the boy and the flight of the elder daughter. It cannot go on, because it is foreign to its surroundings. So after much torment, we three remain: I, the mother, that son. Then, owing to the disappearance of that extraneous family, we too find ourselves strange to one another. We find we are living in an atmosphere of mortal desolation which is the revenge, as he (indicating Son) scornfully said of the Demon of Experiment, that unfortunately hides in me.

SOME ACTORS. He’s dead! dead!
OTHER ACTORS. No, no, it’s only make believe, it’s only pretence!
The FATHER (with a terrible cry). Pretence? Reality, sir, reality!
The MANAGER. Pretence? Reality? To Hell with it all! Never in my life has such a thing happened to me. I’ve lost a whole day over these people, a whole day!
Curtain.

A tenuous light surrounds them, almost as if irradiated by them—the faint breath of their fantastic reality.
This light will disappear when they come forward towards the actors. They preserve, however, something of the dream lightness in which they seem almost suspended; but this does not detract from the essential reality of their forms and expressions.

The drama consists finally in this: when that mother re-enters my house, her family born outside of it, and shall we say superimposed on the original, ends with the death of the little girl, the tragedy of the boy and the flight of the elder daughter. It cannot go on, because it is foreign to its surroundings. So after much torment, we three remain: I, the mother, that son. Then, owing to the disappearance of that extraneous family, we too find ourselves strange to one another. We find we are living in an atmosphere of mortal desolation which is the revenge, as he (indicating Son) scornfully said of the Demon of Experiment, that unfortunately hides in me.

SOME ACTORS. He’s dead! dead!
OTHER ACTORS. No, no, it’s only make believe, it’s only pretence!
The FATHER (with a terrible cry). Pretence? Reality, sir, reality!
The MANAGER. Pretence? Reality? To Hell with it all! Never in my life has such a thing happened to me. I’ve lost a whole day over these people, a whole day!
Curtain.