"War" by Luigi Pirandello

What I love about this story is how well Pirandello is able to characterize the husband and wife in just a few short pages. We get a good idea of who they are simply from the few sentences describing their physical appearances at the beginning of the story. Even though the wife never actually speaks the verbs Pirandello chooses to use when describing her actions work perfectly to show us her personality. We see how torn up she is about her son leaving and at the same time we see that she understands the pain that the other people on the train are going through and wishes that her husband would simply stop talking. Her husband on the other hand is greatly characterized through his words. He truly believes that his son going off to war is worse than anyone else's child going off to war. He keeps trying to get the others to understand this, even long after they have all explained to him what is so terrible about their situations.