Six Characters by Pirandello is a play that attempts to explain the creative process to the audience. The author used his characters to personify the various stages of a playwright's writing process, while framing the action within the practical context of the stage. His characters are most closely tied to the Freudian structure of the human psyche, focusing primarily on the unifying characteristics of the superego, ego, and id (Merkur 31). However, Pirandello never explains that his characters are allegorical and simply presents them to the audience as creations of the "instrument of human fantasy" (Pirandello 6). He also indulged in notes of dark humor found throughout the play, which only further obscured the true meanings of the characters. The audience feels a sense of fragmentation, as even the manager doesn't know if the characters are real or not. More importantly, the one character who could make sense of it all, the Author, is woefully absent. Nevertheless, if the play may have been a precursor of the Theater of the Absurd movement, it nevertheless has a meaning: Six characters in search of an author is an allegory of a playwright who struggles to highlight his characters. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Before the six characters enter, Pirandello prepares his audience by setting the scene of a play within a play. The scene is arranged to give an appearance of incompleteness, an allusion to the fractured nature of the play. As the manager struggles to control his casting, the audience can get a glimpse of the often comical complexity of the creative process. By the time the stage door opens to reveal the six characters, Pirandello has already begun to create the backdrop of uncertainty for the play. However, upon entering the stage, the character of the Father quickly strives to establish a credible reason for his existence, appealing to the artistic sensibilities of the troupe. In this way, Father's speech is addressed as much to the audience as to the other actors on stage, while he positions himself as the main narrator. First, he proposes that the characters' existence can be explained by accepting the human psyche as a true plane of reality, where the characters are doomed to wander aimlessly until an author gives them life. At this critical moment, Pirandello courts the audience's disbelief with a logical fallacy, as Father begins to construct a plausible scenario in which he could exist: "life is full of infinite absurdities which, curiously, do not even have need to appear plausible, since they are true” (Pirandello 5). Relying on this abstract logic, the author offers a reason for the presence of his characters. Instead, Pirandello vaguely posits that characters who have been subjected to the realm of imagination have an “inner passion” to write (9). Thus, although the author has tried hard to explain the appearance of the characters, he supplements the setting of the play with a line of dialogue using subterfuge rather than exposition. Once his background is established, Pirandello gradually develops the plot in narrative flashes, often interrupted, as the characters tell their dramatic stories. The troubled family's descriptions of the events are contradictory to say the least, and the conflicting perceptions seem to highlight their disjointed nature. The characters do not dispute the events themselves, but rather their motivations, while the truth remains a mystery. The father, depicted as a narratorhyperrational and philosophical, most closely resembles the superego of the human psyche. Although each character represents a stage of the creative process, Father is the most prominent example of this personification. He is one of the most tenacious characters in the family's attempt to play out their story, and throughout the drama's narrative, Father continually defends his every decision with tortuous rationalization. The Freudian structure of the superego is characterized by a predominant feeling of morality and, at the same time, guilt. As the play progresses, it becomes apparent that Father, driven by both motivations, desperately wants his side of the story told. However, this only further ties him to the Superego: "A confession not only satisfies the confessor's desire for punishment... but by locating guilt in a subject, it allows those who sit in judgment to displace and then satisfy their own need." of punishment” ( Schmeiser 333). The father's dialogue is peppered with the implications of these tendencies: "All my life I have had these confused aspirations toward a certain moral reason" (Pirandello 17). By indulging in his moralizing affectation, Father illustrates how, within the creative process, the superego tends to dictate the editing and manipulation of the story. In sharp contrast to Father, Daughter-in-Law undoubtedly depicts the id in Freud's psychological construction. The daughter-in-law stands out for her sexual characterization and her unbridled laughter. No less than six times during the play, the daughter-in-law's hideous laughter is silenced by one of the other characters, which continues to accentuate her primal disposition, as well as her disconnection from reality. The daughter-in-law consistently responds to every warning with painful martyrdom, but always embraces the sexual tendencies that mark her assigned aspect of the psyche. Like the id, the daughter-in-law is fascinated by the visual elements of the story and frequently interrupts the father's narrative with only marginal information relevant to the visual context of the tale. Her descriptions of Madam Pace's shop, the pale blue envelope, and her schoolgirl outfit all indicate her obsession. Undisciplined and shameless, she is Father's main antagonist in Six Characters. The daughter-in-law constantly contradicts her father's perception of events and questions his illusion of morality. While the father rationalizes his every motivation, the stepdaughter simply throws the whole sordid story in front of the principal, while presenting her stepfather in a very dark light. Ultimately, she is the one who directs the action of the plot and insists on moving forward to each new and forbidden scene. Mother completes Freud's trinity of motivation. Signifying the ego, the mother tends to play the role of mediator between the father and the daughter-in-law. She embodies emotion, filling in the details between pretentious rationalizations and bitter, unbridled laughter. The mother mourns the victims of the creative struggle, her abandoned children. She is responsible for development, giving rise to new aspects of the story; as the Father points out, “His drama… resides, in fact, in these four children” (11). Together, the daughter-in-law, mother and father symbolize inspiration, development and creativity in the creative process: the playwright's Holy Trinity. However, the Manager plays a crucial role as editor of the tale. While the father, mother, and daughter-in-law present the raw details of the story, the manager is responsible for organizing this stream-of-consciousness narrative into a tolerable piece of theater. The characters object to the Manager's changes, but he responds with a simple statement: "The truth to a point, but.. 2013.