Illusion and Reality in Terms

¶ … illusion and reality in terms of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author

The play Six Characters in Search of an Author opens meta-theatrically, with actors rehearsing a play within the play. However, the realism of the actors' rehearsal is quickly interrupted by the arrival of six characters, and immediately the audience is forced to question which reality they are supposed to consider 'true.' Even the play being rehearsed is subject to scrutiny and doubt, when the Prompter reads a stage direction and the Leading Man asks if he must wear the cooking hat as described in the text. When the Prompter responds that yes, the Leading Man has no choice but to adhere to the text, reality is established as the confines of the language in a certain context. Reality for the actors is not defined by their lives, but rather by the certainty of this moment in which they must portray permanent characters. In itself, this makes the audience aware of their role as spectators and consequently, the illusion of the stage becomes an integral part of a moment in each person's reality.

Even as the audience becomes a part of the story, the reality being played out before them is continually shifting. The Father almost instantly declares that he is the truest form of being among the living, because he is immortalized in writing. Although his character is a fantasy of the mind, he is not an illusion. He is a representation of the reality of human nature, which in Pirandello's opinion is a higher form of reality than the fleeting moments of life itself. When the Father descries that his reality is unchangeable, it is relative to the transitory reality of human beings. A character lives forever as is, repeating the same designated actions eternally, and these actions represent a certain truth. However, human beings understand their world differently from day-to-day and each of their actions is new and transitory. The illusion the audience experiences, then, is not one of the play itself, but one of thinking that their involvement with the play is a reality.

Second Question: How does Harold Pinter's the Birthday Party represent the limits of language and meaning? Describe the various ways language is employed in the play.

Language in the Birthday Party is employed as a device to undercut the sanity and understanding of every character, and it is also used to contradict what appears to be the truth from one moment to the next. Although the language itself is not particularly technical or confusing, the way in which the characters speak to each other bars any genuine communication. Even the audience is disallowed the privilege of understanding, because language is distorted in such a way that words lose meaning. Meg and Petey converse in empty, repetitive phrases that indicate their complete lack of connection. Meg uses the word to such excess that she voids the word of any positive association. Indeed, she reduces numerous expressions to sounds that fill the obvious ravine that separates her from Petey. When Petey tells her that his paper says nothing much, on some level he is indicting the vapidity of their existence. His paper says nothing much because he is incapable of saying anything of substance himself. Even if he read something of grave importance, his inability to use language as a communicative tool leaves him impotent to convey the weight of what he read.