The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello Book Review

📌Category: Books
📌Words: 1447
📌Pages: 6
📌Published: 22 June 2021

Think about a time you were placed in a tough situation or with a tough question to answer. How did you overcome this, what steps did you take to get over the block in your so-called path? Every individual from one time to more times that they can count on their hands and toes have been placed in these situations. Their decision in the end defines them as a person, from what they think of themselves to what others think of them. We make these decisions based on a checklist of things we either carefully think them through or decide on whims. Mattia Pascal is faced with a multitude of these tough decisions throughout his story. The Late Mattia Pascal, is a novel written by Luigi Pirandello, where the main character, Mattia Pascal, is declared dead which he discovers and has a chance to start over. What he does with this new life, this second chance is what shapes him as a person, the new identities, problems, and coping he goes through. The way Mattia Pascal handles the tough situations he’s put in and how he copes with the hard times he faces, is what in the end defines him as a person. In this paper I will go through the decisions he makes on his journey, and how in the end they define him. 

Early in Mattia’s journey he is faced with a big loss in his life, which is the death of his two daughters, twin daughters, and also the death of his beloved mothers’ death. In news of these awful deaths, Pascal decides to run away from home, running away from his problems. This is how he decides to take action on the curveball’s life had thrown at him. Instead of dealing with the death of his two daughters, of whom he is grieving for, he decides to go gamble in a casino city. He gambled his pain a way yelling, “I’d won!” over and over again until he got tired of winning (Pirandello, The Late Mattia Pascal, 53). He used the gambling the deal with death, instead of facing it head on, how does that paint him as a person? Not in a good light, he is seen as being avoidant or running away when times get tough, which isn’t something one should do when times get tough. But he doesn’t stop running there, after he is done gambling, he heads to Rome. This action of running away is also seen with the captain, who is also seen gambling, with Pascal. The captain is found dead, by self-drowning, “When the empty ship set sail, the unlucky gambler (the captain) drowned himself… and was relieved also of the weight of its captain,” it can be seen that the captain had no money and no cargo he decided his own fate, of death (Pirandello, The Late Mattia Pascal, 5). Instead of carrying this weight of loss and trying to fix it the captain decided to avoid it, to get rid of the weight, leading eventually to his death. By running away from his problems, Pascal had caused more that he can’t imagine, this decision will play out not in his favor in the end, which will be seen through the journey of his next big life decisions. 

After leaving the Casinos and heading to Rome Pascal decides to head back home. On the train back he reads a newspaper article pronouncing him dead, by his own home community. This causes him to take on a false identity, two different ones, to be specific. It can be seen here again, instead of continuing his journey back home and explain the misunderstanding he flees from the problem. He decides to live a lie, while he is lying to himself, saying that it is better for everyone if he doesn’t come back. Pascal felt a feeling of freeness from his old life, causing him to change trains and take on a new identity. The first one he takes on is the one of Giuseppe, which only last until he gets on his next train to his new life, but Adriano Meis is the one that carries through the rest of his journey. He chooses his new identity his new life no matter the consequences that may follow, “Adriano Meis! Excellent! They’ve baptized me,” Pascal made 

this decision out of likeness for himself and was not thinking of others (Pirandello, The Late Mattia Pascal, 83). Pascal acts on a whim, thinking for himself and also the thoughts of others that taking on this false identity will be better for the both of them, which can be seen to not be true in the end. False identities are seen as bad, to make things worse than they already are, for another example it can be seen in another one of Pirandello’s pieces, On Humor. In this piece Pirandello shows an old lady, “all dolled-up like a young girl,” the opposite of what you perceive an old lady to be, “the opposite of what a respectable old lady should be.” (Pirandello, On Humor, 113). This lady is seen to be something she isn’t, taking on a false identity as Pascal is, she does this to please her husband, once again thinking for others just as Pascal does. In light of this, the lies that he lives the false identities, are they really “benefiting” his family? No, in living this lie, the lies he is keeping from his family, the weight of his old life all way down on him. This is not a healthy thing for him to do, it will end of damaging him even more in the end, if he keeps up with all these lies. 

Coping with these hard times Pascal decides to return back to his home and explain to everyone that he is not dead and that he is alive and well. For him, this unfortunately doesn’t go all to his plan. He makes his way home only to notice that his life has, his old life, has moved on without him, making him feel like an outcast. This causes him to act out and makes things worse, by trying to make everything go back to how it was before he left. In trying to do such he makes things worse, more specifically his reaction to his wife getting remarried. Pascal is not very ecstatic at the news of this marriage, “‘And I have to take her back,’ I exclaimed angrily,” he was told this marriage was only the fault of himself (Pirandello, The Late Mattia Pascal, 225).

Due to his anger, he does things that he does not mean to do, with the decisions he makes his life become worse than he could imagine. He has now not only lost his identity as Mattia Pascal, but also as Adriano Meis, the death of both, caused by his own actions and how he coped with the hard times. In the end he ends up losing everything, due to his own fault, which in the end defines him as the person he has to live with, “the late Mattia Pascal,” (Pirandello, The Late Mattia Pascal, 244). In the play Six Characters in Search of an Author, also written by Pirandello another example of a character needing to cope comes to light. This play shows a young girl and her interaction with a man, which turns out to be her stepfather. He was accused of looking at her, in a inappropriate way, “I am almost in the nude,” the step daughter says, this comes off looking very bad for the father and he has to deal with all the accusations (Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author, 19). Accusations such as being called a pervert, while the stepdaughter comes off as the victim, in this case it’s his word against that of a victimized young girl. It’s his decisions and actions he takes in this situation and how he copes with it all that shape his character through the rest of the play. With novels, plays and even real-life situations the way you go about them say a lot about a characters or persons values. Especially the way the decisions are made, how a man’s vices and virtues help understand how they rationalize and make life decisions, is a key value that Aristotle keeps in mind in his writing of Virtues and Deficiencies, Continence and Incontinence. For example, with Pascal, “His desires for pleasure… make him care too little or not at all about acting ethically,” just the way Pascal let’s his desires get in the way (Kraut, Aristotle’s Ethics). Here Mattia uses his rational virtues and emotional virtues to find balance in his life, so that he can finally find happiness (LITR 202). 

In conclusion, Mattia Pascal was defined as a person, his true identity was found, due to the decisions he made during his journey. From running away to starting a new life to eventually returning home and coping with the life that has become without him. With the lies he lives and the ways he makes decisions all play into defining Mattia Pascal as a person. He had to be careful with each decision, just as we do when it comes to our own lives, otherwise those decisions will define us for the rest our lives.

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