Probably the greatest success that Pirandello achieved with "War" is the fact that two main characters addressed in this story have come alive so spectacularly. By the end of this short story, the man with the dead son and the woman with the enlisted son have become distinctive characters, even though they share the same pain and emotional turmoil brought about by war. The fact that they are not mere caricatures of soldiers' parents comes directly from the two reversals of expectations - one experienced by the mother and the other experienced by the father who lost his son.
The first reversal, for me, was not as immediately obvious during the first time I read this story. However, the second time around, when I recognized the opposite directions of the mother's and the father's emotional and (almost) ideological shifts, not only did this reversal become more coherent but it also added to the three-dimensionality of the mother's characterization. We met her on page 1260 as a caricature of a mourning mother: "a bulky woman in deep mourning was hoisted in- almost like a shapeless bundle." With the shift of the story towards her stream-of-consciousness musing and her movements on page 1262, ("the words of the traveler amazed and almost stunned her" and "she lifted her head, she bent over from her corner trying to listen with great attention...") I felt a reversal of expectation. The reason for this is the fact that generally, grief consumes us and does not let us listen to rationales, especially one as ideologically driven as given by the "fat man," father of the dead soldier. This gave me a much clearer view of the mother as a real person with a clear mind and not just a mother overwhelmed by grief.
The second reversal of expectation comes forward with a doubling effect on both the father and the mother as characters. For the mother, this is noted explicitly in a short paragraph: "just as if she had hearted nothing of what had been said and almost as if waking up from a dream" (1262) This, on the wake of her ideological epiphany earlier, (knowing that she needs to "rise up to the same height of those fathers and mothers willing to resign themselves") reverts her back onto her grief. However, by this point, this just serves to make her more three-dimensional and not to rebuild her as a caricature as this flash of emotion adds to the conflict within her between ideology for the greater good of the nation and her fear and grief for her child. The effect of this reversal of expectation on the characterization of the father, however, is even more prominent. Before, I viewed him as an ideologically driven man and, even worse, a caricature of government propaganda. However, as noted in the many blog posts before mine, the simple question of the mother, "Then… is your son really dead?" has brought about the outbreak of emotions in this man and "his face contracted, became horribly distorted […] he snatched in haste a handkerchief from his pocket and […] broke into harrowing, heart-rending, uncontrollable sobs." This outbreak of overwhelming emotions is what brings him to life as a character with all-out emotional reactions to the death of his son, void of any trace of his previous ideologically driven rationalization.
Thus, with two well-placed reversals of readers' expectations in a 3-page story, Pirandello has brought two characters so spectacularly to life that they have made the wounds of war cut deeply into readers' minds and made us sympathize with not just the two main characters, but anyone who has been forced into a situation similar to theirs.
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