Six Characters in Search of an Author

by

Luigi Pirandello

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The Mother Character Analysis

“Crushed and terrified” by the disintegration of her family, the Mother (whose real name is Amalia) is veiled and dressed in black throughout the play. She seldom speaks or looks up, and spends most of her time onstage either frozen in place or suffering emotional outbursts related to her children’s suffering. She even declares she does not “know how to talk,” and the Father calls her “deaf, deaf, mentally deaf!” Through seemingly no fault of her own, the Mother sees and must endure the death of her husband (the Clerk), the conversion of her daughter (the Step-Daughter) into a prostitute at the hands of Madame Pace, the Father’s visit to the Step-Daughter as a client, rejection by her Son, the deaths of her younger children (the Child and Boy), and the reenactment of all these traumatic events on the stage. Like the Son but unlike the Step-Daughter and Father, the Mother never narrates her own version of events, and her agony suggests that the reality of the family’s story—from the arc of her relationship to the Father to the question of who is whose child and who is responsible for whose death—might be even more devastating than the Father’s version of the narrative suggests. Suffering meaninglessly and with no end in sight, the Mother exemplifies nature according to Pirandello, while the Father embodies the mind.

The Mother 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 Mother or refer to The Mother. 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:
Reality, Illusion, and Identity Theme Icon
).
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.

Related Characters: The Manager, The Father, The Step-Daughter, The Mother, The Son, The Boy, The Child, The Door-Keeper
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

The whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do. Look here! This woman (indicating the Mother) takes all my pity for her as a specially ferocious form of cruelty.

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager, The Step-Daughter, The Mother
Page Number: 10
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.

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager, The Step-Daughter, The Mother, The Son, The Boy, The Child
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:
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?

Related Characters: The Son (speaker), The Father, The Mother
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
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!

Related Characters: The Manager (speaker), The Father (speaker), The Step-Daughter (speaker), The Son (speaker), The Mother
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Mother 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 Mother or refer to The Mother. 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:
Reality, Illusion, and Identity Theme Icon
).
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.

Related Characters: The Manager, The Father, The Step-Daughter, The Mother, The Son, The Boy, The Child, The Door-Keeper
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

The whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do. Look here! This woman (indicating the Mother) takes all my pity for her as a specially ferocious form of cruelty.

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager, The Step-Daughter, The Mother
Page Number: 10
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.

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager, The Step-Daughter, The Mother, The Son, The Boy, The Child
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:
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?

Related Characters: The Son (speaker), The Father, The Mother
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
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!

Related Characters: The Manager (speaker), The Father (speaker), The Step-Daughter (speaker), The Son (speaker), The Mother
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis: