The Revolver Symbol Analysis

Recalling the Characters’ bizarre entrance, Act Two of Six Characters in Search of an Author begins with a handful of inexplicable and seemingly absurd events. The Step-Daughter comes to the stage with her two siblings: the confused Child, whom she comforts, and the anxious Boy, whom she berates after she notices a revolver in his pocket.

The revolver at once fulfills and mocks the narrative conventions of the theater. On the one hand, it literally references Chekhov’s famous declaration that “if you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.” This principle, commonly known as “Chekhov’s gun”—that everything in a story must have and fulfill a specific purpose, that all loose ends must be tied up—is the essence of the Manager’s quest to convert the Characters’ messy and conflicted family drama into a coherent, neat story. While he wants to remove loose ends by “group[ing] up all the facts in one simultaneous, close-knit, action,” the Characters want to express themselves individually and present their conflicting versions of events.

On the other hand, while the revolver points to the narrative principle that everything must have a place and purpose, it also foreshadows the utterly inexplicable conclusion of the story, which dismantles this narrative principle. Just before the final curtain, the Child drowns in the fountain and the Boy shoots himself. There is no explanation for why or how this happens, and the Actors, Characters, and audience never determine whether the Boy and Child are acting out their past experiences or actually dying before the Manager in the theater.

The revolver therefore first looks like a red herring: strange, out of context, and irrelevant to the Characters’ drama, much like the Step-Daughter’s French song and dance in the First Act. However, it is later revealed as a crucial part of the storyline—but only because it effects a conclusion that makes just as little sense as its initial appearance. This narrative double-cross allows Pirandello to challenge the apparent opposition between messy, conflicted, uncertain reality and clean, coherent storylines in which everything has a reason and effects a logical outcome.