The Story Archive

One, No One and One Hundred Thousand

Luigi Pirandello · 1926 CE · Novel · Italian · Modernist

Vitangelo Moscarda's wife mentions in passing that his nose tilts a little to the right, and he discovers he has spent twenty-eight years not knowing his own face. Following the thought, he finds that everyone who knows him carries a different Moscarda about, none of them his, and he starts dismantling the one his town has built by proving in public that the bank he lives off lends at usury. Pirandello worked at it for fifteen years and called it the most bitter of all his books.

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Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalSatire
Theme
Identity & SelfAppearance vs RealityMadnessIsolation & Alienation
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanThe DoubleWise Fool
Plot structure
ConfessionUnreliable NarratorIronic Reversal
Symbol / motif
The MirrorThe MaskThe City
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
IronicModernistSatirical
Culture / tradition
Italian

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