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The Mother
The oldest of the four children, and the only actual offspring of the Mother and the Father, who declares himself to be “an ‘unrealized’ character, dramatically speaking” and fulfills his prediction, avoiding everyone else and refusing to speak or act for the majority of the play. It initially appears that he disdains his Mother for abandoning him during his childhood to go live with the Clerk, and his three stepsiblings for abruptly moving into his household and demanding to be treated as his equals. Meanwhile, the rest of the family thinks the Son looks down on them as “vulgar folk” because of his county upbringing and elite education. While both of these are true to an extent, at the end of the play, the real motive behind the Son’s avoidant behavior becomes clear: the Son is the one to find the Child’s body in the fountain and see the Boy shoot himself, and he wants neither to reenact nor to publicly acknowledge these “horrible” events on stage. Despite his crucial role in the closing scene, however, the Son fulfills his promise to remain “unrealized.” The Father and the Step-Daughter suggest that his coldness might have contributed to the Child and Boy’s deaths, and he refuses to act out a scene with his Mother that supposedly takes place immediately before this grim climax. The Son’s coping strategy contrasts sharply with those of the Father, who philosophizes and seeks forgiveness publicly, the Mother, who suffers silently and dutifully obeys orders, and the Step-Daughter, who acts out dramatically to try and take revenge on the other Characters. The Son reminds the audience that works of fiction often require hiding characters’ feelings, thoughts, and true selves for their dramatic effect. More importantly, his behavior points to the perversity of turning private drama into a public spectacle, as Pirandello does by gesturing to his own family’s disintegration through his writing, and suggests that sometimes authors are right to leave their creations unfinished—even if their characters fight back. Indeed, the Son believes he is “stand[ing] in for the will of our author” by refusing to act.
The Son Quotes in Six Characters in Search of an Author
The Six Characters in Search of an Author quotes below are all either spoken by The Son or refer to The Son. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 1
Quotes
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.
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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.
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Act 2
Quotes
And they want to put it on the stage! If there was at least a reason for it! He thinks he has got at the meaning of it all. Just as if each one of us in every circumstance of life couldn’t find his own explanation of it! (Pauses.) He complains he was discovered in a place where he ought not to have been seen, in a moment of his life which ought to have remained hidden and kept out of the reach of that convention which he has to maintain for other people. And what about my case? Haven’t I had to reveal what no son ought ever to reveal: how father and mother live and are man and wife for themselves quite apart from that idea of father and mother which we give them?
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Act 3
Quotes
The SON (to Manager who stops him). I’ve got nothing to do with this affair. Let me go please! Let me go!
The MANAGER. What do you mean by saying you’ve got nothing to do with this?
The STEP-DAUGHTER (calmly, with irony). Don’t bother to stop him: he won’t go away.
The FATHER. He has to act the terrible scene in the garden with his mother.
The SON (suddenly resolute and with dignity). I shall act nothing at all. I’ve said so from the very beginning (to the Manager). Let me go!
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The Son Quotes in Six Characters in Search of an Author
The Six Characters in Search of an Author quotes below are all either spoken by The Son or refer to The Son. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 1
Quotes
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.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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.
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Act 2
Quotes
And they want to put it on the stage! If there was at least a reason for it! He thinks he has got at the meaning of it all. Just as if each one of us in every circumstance of life couldn’t find his own explanation of it! (Pauses.) He complains he was discovered in a place where he ought not to have been seen, in a moment of his life which ought to have remained hidden and kept out of the reach of that convention which he has to maintain for other people. And what about my case? Haven’t I had to reveal what no son ought ever to reveal: how father and mother live and are man and wife for themselves quite apart from that idea of father and mother which we give them?
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Act 3
Quotes
The SON (to Manager who stops him). I’ve got nothing to do with this affair. Let me go please! Let me go!
The MANAGER. What do you mean by saying you’ve got nothing to do with this?
The STEP-DAUGHTER (calmly, with irony). Don’t bother to stop him: he won’t go away.
The FATHER. He has to act the terrible scene in the garden with his mother.
The SON (suddenly resolute and with dignity). I shall act nothing at all. I’ve said so from the very beginning (to the Manager). Let me go!
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