Prepared by:

Alvin Lalongisip
James A. Sarabia
ABOUT the
AUTHOR
☻ Luigi Perandello was born in
1867 in Girgenti ( now Argrigento) on
the island of Sicily.
☻ His father was a fairly
prosperous sulfur dealer.
☻ He entered a University where
he
completed his doctoral thesis, a
☻ In 1894, at the age of 27, he married a
young woman who he had never met.
☻ Antonietta Portulano – the daughter of
his father business partner.
☻ Antonietta suffered a mental
breakdown. The illness had a profound
effect on Perandello’s writing as well,
leading him to explorations of madness,
illusion and isolation.
☻ The Late Mattia Pascal
in 1904 – first novel.
☻ First 3 plays:
•Better Think Twice About
It!
•Liola
☻ First notable critical success
(1920)
•As Before, Better then
Before

☻ 2 master Pieces (1921)

•Six Characters in search of
☻ Komisarjevsky in London

☻ Brack Pemberton in New

York

☻ Max Reinhardt in
☻ Successful opening plays (1922)
• Henry IV
•Naked
☻ Legion of Honor in Paris
☻ Opened his own art theater in Rome
with the help of Mussolini
☻Awarded the novel prize in 1934
☻Death (1936)
☻ Pirandello studies Philology
in Rome
☻ Later was a professor of
Aesthetics and Stylistics at
the Real Istituto di Magistere
Femminile at Rome
 A BRIEF SUMMARY
This short story by Luigi Pirandello is
about a group of people traveling from
Rome to Sulmona, Italy.  They have had to
stop for the night to await a connecting
passage to the main line.  While they are
waiting a man boards the carriage with his
wife.  She is described as a very large
woman and he is very small.  The husband
tells the people that his wife is upset
because their only son has been called to
the front to fight in the war.
 A BRIEF SUMMARY

The rest of the story is a discourse on

the importance or lack of importance
of the war and who has the greater
suffering, a man with one son or a
man with two sons.  One man said
that the parents had no right to cry or
complain about their sons being sent
to fight for their country.
 A BRIEF SUMMARY

"Now, if one dies young and

happy, without having the ugly
sides of life, the boredom of it,
the pettiness, the bitterness of
disillusion...what more can we ask
for him?  Everyone should stop
crying; everyone should laugh, as
I do...or at least thank God—as I
do—because my son, before
dying, sent me a message saying
that he was dying satisfied at
having ended his life in the best
way he could have wished.  That
 A BRIEF SUMMARY

The woman asks the

man if his son is not
really dead.  He
contemplates her
question, realizes his
son is truly dead and
that he will never
see him again. He
CHARACTE
RS:
MAJOR:
1. Fat man - red face man with
bloodshot eyes of the
palest grey.

The who gave a beautiful

words or advice that enlighten
the minds of the travelers
about the reason on why their
children or sons need to leave
them for the sake of their
country.
MINOR:
1. A bulky woman.
the one who is looking for the answers in
deep sorrow or her son in which she don't
understand the fight of her son.

2. Husband - accompanying the wife on the train.

3. Other travelers who has their sons in the war.

SETTINGS:
PLACE:
☻ On the stuffy and
smoky second class
train at the small
station of Fabriano.

TIME:
☻ Dawn
PLOT:
EXPOSITION:
☻ The passengers who
had left Rome by the
night express had to
stop until dawn at the
small station of
Fabriano in order to
continue their journey
by the small old-
CONFLICT:
☻ The woman or the wife tried
to find in the words of her
husband and her friends
something to console her in
her deep sorrow, something
that my show how her a
mother should resign herself
to send her son not even to
CLIMAX:
☻ When the fat man speaks of decent
boys.

☻ Speaking about the feelings of every

parents who left their sons.

☻ Talking about the reasons in the

service of their sons in the country.

☻ There was a silence all around,

 C L I M A X:
"Why then," continued the fat man, "should we consider the feelings of
our children when they are twenty? Isn't it natural that at their age they
should consider the love for their Country (I am speaking of decent
boys, of course) even greater than the love for us? Isn't it natural that it
should be so, as after all they must look upon us as upon old boys who
cannot move any more and must sit at home? If Country is a natural
necessity like bread of which each of us must eat in order not to die of
hunger, somebody must go to defend it. And our sons go, when they
are twenty, and they don't want tears, because if they die, they die
inflamed and happy (I am speaking, of course, of decent boys). Now, if
one dies young and happy, without having the ugly sides of life, the
boredom of it, the pettiness, the bitterness of disillusion...what more can
we ask for him? Everyone should stop crying; everyone should laugh,
as I do...or at least thank God—as I do—because my son, before dying,
sent me a message saying that he was dying satisfied at having ended
his life in the best way he could have wished. That is why, as you see, I
do not even wear mourning..."
 DENOUMENT or
RESOLUTION:
☻ The words of the traveler or the fat
man amazed and the woman and almost
stunned her.

☻ She suddenly realized that it wasn't

the others who were wrong and could not
understand her but herself who could not
rise up to the same height of those
fathers and mothers willing to resign
themselves, without crying, not only to
ENDING:
☻ The woman asks the
fat man if his son is not
really dead. He
contemplates her
question, realizes his
son is truly dead and
that he will never see
him again. He then
 THEME:
☻ “We create our own
reality, deceiving ourselves
☻“Denial”
POINT of
VIEW:
☻ 3rd Person
 REFLECTION AND
EXPERIENCE OF THE
AUTHOR WHY HE WROTE
THIS STORY
☻ Perandello’s Italian birth and
student life in Rome is reflected
in WAR.
☻WAR also reveals a great deal
about Perandello’s
understanding of Patriotism.
☻Perandello’s feelings about
the destructiveness of WAR.
☻His personal experience with
madness and mental illness
☻Perandellos’ masterful
understanding of dialect.
ESSENCE OF THE
TITLE:
☻WAR is a short story written by
Italian Dramatist/Author Luigi
Pirandello in the early 20th
century.

☻The story depicts a time when a

country is at war, and we see
the parents of children who are
☻Human condition during
War.

☻Pirandello’s story is one

rife<malimit mangyari> with
the classic of denial,
where someone refuse to
 PASSAGE
“You may spoil your only son by
excessive attentions, but you cannot
love him more than you would all
your other children if you had any.
Parental love is not like bread that
can be broken to pieces and split
 PASSAGE
"War is like love, easy to
begin, hard to end and
impossible to forget”,
VOCABULAR
Y:
☻ Bulky – adj. Big
•A bulky woman
☻Puffy – a short, quick giving
out of breath, wind , air ,
smoke, etc. (Buga)
• He was puffing at a
cigarette.
•The train puffed smoke.
☻Nasty – adj. unpleasant,
disagreeable
☻ Disillusion – make
(someone) free from ideas or
beliefs that are false.
•Now, if one dies young
and happy, without
having the a\ugly sides of
life, the boredom of it, the
pettiness, the bitterness
of disillusion.
 ☻Livid – adj. ( Mangitim-
ngitim, pasa)