The Story Archive

The Late Mattia Pascal

Luigi Pirandello · 1904 CE · Novel · Italian · Modernist

A library clerk in a small Ligurian town, penned between a wife who despises him and a mother-in-law who despises him more, walks out, wins a fortune at Monte Carlo, and reads on the train home that his body has been identified in a millrace. Rid of a name, he grows a beard, becomes Adriano Meis, and takes lodgings in Rome with a spiritualist and his daughter. Written as his wife's mental illness overtook the household, it is Pirandello's first full statement of the identity problem.

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Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalTragicomedySatire
Theme
Identity & SelfAppearance vs RealityFreedom vs FateIsolation & Alienation
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanThe DoubleWanderer
Plot structure
ConfessionIronic ReversalMistaken Identity
Symbol / motif
The Book / ManuscriptThe MirrorThe Mask
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
IronicModernistSatirical
Culture / tradition
Italian

Closest analogues