“War” by Luigi Pirandello was my favorite story this week. I liked it so much because it feels like the 1920s, but it’s also timeless. I also like the reversal at the end. That ending is what gives the story its point. It’s the reason this piece matters. The effectiveness of this scene comes from the emotion, which is created by the dialogue. The descriptions are just enough to give the reader a setting and an idea of what the characters look like, but the dialogue is more important. The dialogue sets the story in a certain time period, but because the descriptions of the characters who are speaking are so sparse, the reader is able to imagine that it could be English characters talking about their English sons or that it could be modern characters talking about their modern sons. The brilliance of this story comes with the idea of being happy, or at least at peace, for your son’s death because he died doing what he loved. By the end of the story, the fat traveller realizes that is a falsehood. The bottom falls out for him and the bottom falls out for the readers too. The last sentence gives a visceral image of grief that draws the reader in and allows them to grieve with the father.
This is a great description of how the emotions in this story are produced.
ReplyDelete