At the top left corner of this page is the name of the author of this paper. Is that knowledge necessary in acquiring meaning from this essay? According to Roland Barthes, the answer is no. Barthes argues in his essay titled “The Death of the Author” that the author should be banished from his pedestal when regarding a work and instead be replaced by the reader in which the signification of the text lies because “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author” (224). This proverbial birth that Barthes refers to is meant as an elevation of importance in the role of the reader versus the importance that has been hitherto placed on the author in gathering meaning from a work. In an interesting take on the reader-author-character problem, Luigi Pirandello’s play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, simultaneously supports and complicates Barthes’ argument. Pirandello’s play in part verifies but also obscures Barthes’ argument that the author of a text is not necessary in gathering meaning of that text most obviously in the title itself, Six Characters in Search of an Author, as well as in the mutability of the actors, audience, and their interpretive strategies, the immutability of the characters, and the characters’ existential dependence on the author. I will utilize Barthes’ essay to further present his argument as well as Foucault’s “What is an Author?” and Derrida’s notion of deconstruction; next, using Stanley Fish’s Is There a Text in This Class? and excerpts from Six Characters I will present the mutability of the actors and audience and their interpretive strategies; thirdly, using excerpts from the play I will present the fixity and immutability of the characters; finally, utilizing the previous information given I will show how the play both supports and complicates Barthes’ theory.
     Roland Barthes, in his “The Death of the Author,” seeks to denounce the importance placed upon the author of a given work, insisting instead that it is the reader who provides signification of a text. Barthes argues that
     [t]he image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centred on the author, his person, his life, his

     tastes, his passions, while criticism still consists for the most part in saying that Baudelaire’s work is the failure of

     Baudelaire the man, Van Gogh’s his madness, Tchaikovsky’s his vice. The explanation of a work is always sought in

     the man or woman who produced it, as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory

     of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the author ‘confiding’ in us. (221, Barthes’ emphasis)
Here, Barthes paints the author as the center of “the image of literature.” Barthes insists that meaning is always looked for in the author as the person, as if they are secretly confessing to us, the readers. If we bring in Derrida’s notion of structure, with a center that is both within and outside of the structure, and which defines said structure (878), or text, Barthes is insisting that it is the author that has been assigned this role of “center” and he is calling for a deconstruction of this structure, or a displacement of this author as center. The author’s identity, Barthes argues, is insignificant because “[t]o give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author…beneath the work: when the Author has been found, the text is ‘explained’—victory to the critic” (223). To have an author, then, is to impose a definite meaning on a text. Critics seek to find the author and by doing so to give the immutable, definitive explanation of a work. Barthes argues that finding a single definitive meaning in the author is absurd.
     The author-reader problem has been discussed by theorists for years. Michel Foucault, in his essay entitled “What is an Author?” further argues Barthes’ point of meaning being deprived from the author, insisting that
     [m]odern literary criticism, even when—as is now customary—it is not concerned with questions of

     authentification, still defines the author the same way: the author provides the basis for explaining not only the

     presence of certain events in a work, but also their transformations, distortions, modifications (through his

     biography, the determination of his individual perspective, the analysis of his social position, and the revelation of

     his basic design). (895)
Foucault argues that the author is and always has been defined as the supreme authority on certain things presented in a work and also their supposed misinterpretations due to his individual viewpoint, life experiences, and intent behind the work.       However, Barthes argues, “[w]e know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture” (223). No piece of text is relaying a single message communicated by its author to the reader; text is simply a rearrangement of texts that have come before and thus no text can be seen as original. If all text is simply a “tissue of quotations” lacking any sort of originality, than the identity of the author is insignificant because who deserves to take credit for something that is not original? The reader, then, displaces the author as the textual center because “a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the  reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination” (224). To summarize, all meaning and unity of a text lies in the reader. Thus, Barthes rejects the author as central to the text. It is those on the receiving end of a text—in the case of Pirandello’s play the actors or audience—that are central to its meaning due to the multiplicity of interpretations made possible by varying viewpoints, experiences, perspectives, etc.
     Now that Barthes’ argument has been explained in more detail, we will now move on to Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. This meta-theatrical play takes place during a production rehearsal which is interrupted by the entrance of six characters. These six characters—Father, Mother, Sister, Son, Boy, Little Girl—implore the Director to write down their stories and perform them.
     The actors or audience in this play are mutable entities—as opposed to the characters—and thus their interpretations of a text are mutable as well. In fact, the text itself is mutable given different contextual meanings, which is something Stanley Fish discusses in his book, Is There a Text in This Class? Fish recalls a certain situation regarding a colleague of his on the first day of class; a question was asked by a student and was received by the professor mistakenly, in a different context than was intended by the student. This specific situation opens a discussion regarding interpretation and context. Fish insists that “while at any one point it is always possible to order and rank [multiple meanings of the same phrase] (because they will always have already been ranked), it will never be possible to give them an immutable once-and-for-all ranking, a ranking that is independent of their appearance or nonappearance in situations (because it is only in situations that they do or do not appear” (308). In other words, even if a phrase is uttered without a given context, the hearer of said phrase will automatically place a context on that phrase and therefore gather meaning from that context that they have placed on the spoken phrase. Fish goes on to argue that “there are no determinate meanings and…the stability of the text is an illusion” (312). If this is so, then interpretations may be endlessly mutable. According to Fish, “authority depends upon the existence of a determinate core of meanings because in the absence of such a core there is no normative or public way of construing what anyone says or writes, with the result that interpretation becomes a matter of individual and private construings none of which is subject to challenge or correction” (317). In other words, due to a lack of a determinate core of meanings, no interpretation can be qualified as faulty or incorrect. In further support of this point, Fish argues that “no reading, however outlandish it might appear, is inherently an impossible one” (347). Every individual will always be in a position to place meaning on something because “there is never a moment when one believes nothing, when consciousness is innocent of any and all categories of thought” (319-20).
     The Father character within Pirandello’s play expresses the notion of individual interpretation, as argued by Fish, by stating that
     FATHER …Each of us has, inside him, a world of things—to everyone, his world of things. And how can we

     understand each other, sir, if, in the words I speak, I put the sense and value of things as they are inside me,

     whereas the man who hears them inevitably receives them in the sense and with the value they have for him, the

     sense and value of the world inside him? … (501)
Individuals place value on and make sense out of words in accordance to their own “world of things,” in the Father’s words; everyone has their own experiences, beliefs, and viewpoints which affect individual interpretation. Thus, the actors, audience and their interpretive strategies are mutable. Such is not the case with the characters, however.
     The characters, written and finite, are completely immutable; they are fixed entities due to their being placed in a story that is always already happening. Thus, their emotions remain constant as does their reality. In addition to immutability, the characters possess immortality; this immortality could be seen as resulting from their immutability. The Father states that
     FATHER …the author who created us, made us live, did not wish, or simply and materially was not able, to place us

     in the world of art. And that was a real crime, sir, because whoever has the luck to be born a living character can

     also laugh at death. He will never die! The man will die, the writer, the instrument of creation; the creature will

     never die! And to have eternal life it doesn’t even take extraordinary gifts, nor the performance of miracles. Who

     was Sancho Panza? Who was Don Abbondio? But they live forever because, as live germs, they have the luck to find

     a fertile matrix, an imagination which knew how to raise and nourish them, make them live through all eternity!

     (497-98)
Here, the Father is making his case to the director; the characters wish to find an author so that they may live. They have been born characters but have not been written, or placed in the immortal world of writing. To become a part of this immortal world, they must have their stories written down. The characters are always already living their story, unchanging. To be written down is to live forever; the characters will remain the same age as when they are written; they will experience the same events. Stories are present; they are always already happening when being read. For someone to write the characters is to give them immortality, and for someone to read them is to give them life. The Director thinks that the events in the lives of the characters are in the past, have already happened, but he is soon corrected by the Mother who cries
     MOTHER No, no, it’s happening now. It’s always happening. My torment is not a pretense! I am alive and presen

     —always, in every moment of my torment—it keeps renewing itself, it too is alive and always present.
The characters, their emotions, and their experiences are always already happening; they are immutable for all eternity. The Father further insists on the characters’ immutability:
     DIRECTOR …And you’ll be telling me next that you and this play that you have come to perform for me are truer

     and more real than I am.
     FATHER There can be no doubt of that, sir.
     DIRECTOR Really?
     FATHER I thought you had understood that from the start.
     DIRECTOR  More real than me?
     FATHER If your reality can change overnight…
     DIRECTOR Of course it can, it changes all the time, like everyone else’s.
     FATHER But ours does not, sir. You see, that is the difference. It does not change, it cannot ever change or be

     otherwise because it is already fixed, it is what it is, just that, forever—a terrible thing, sir!—an immutable reality.

     You should shudder to come near us. (523)
The characters are fixed, immutable entities always already stuck in the same reality. Thus, the Father argues, the characters are more real than people because to be fixed in the same reality with the same traits is definite, more definite than the real world in which people live. To live the same events over and over was seen in ancient myths as punishment from the gods (i.e. rolling a giant boulder up a hill only to have it roll all the way back down once at the top, getting the liver pecked out by birds each day after regrowing the liver each night). Thus, the Father makes the melancholy statement to the Director: “You should shudder to come near us” (523).
     In accordance with the previous clarifications, the question of the play’s simultaneous support and complication of Barthes’ theory will now be addressed. One way in which this play supports Barthes’ idea is the notion of the characters coming to life through those who read them:
     DIRECTOR That’s all well and good. But what do you people want here?
     FATHER We want to live, sir.
     DIRECTOR [ironically]   Through all eternity?
     FATHER No, sir. But for a moment at least. In you. (498)
By the characters’ wishing to come alive through those that read them, the author is thrown out and thus Barthes theory is supported. Another way this play supports Barthes’ theory is by the acknowledgement of individual interpretation, such as is made by the Father:
     FATHER Well, the performance he will give, even forcing himself with makeup to resemble me, well, with that figure

     he can hardly play me as I am. I shall rather be—even apart from the face—what he interprets me to be, as he feels

     I am—if he feels I am anything—and not as I feel myself inside myself… (511)
The Father is saying that the actor who will play him will only play what that actor feels the Father’s character is, which is true because that actor will never actually be the Father character. By acknowledging individual interpretation, Barthes’ theory is supported by the fact that there is no determinate meaning set forth by the author; meaning is derived differently for each individual. Yet another way in which the play supports Barthes’ idea is the characters’ lack of criteria in their search for an author:
     FATHER No, no, look: you be the author!
     DIRECTOR Me? What are you talking about?
     FATHER Yes, you. You. Why not?
     DIRECTOR Because I’ve never been an author, that’s why not!
     FATHER Couldn’t you be one now, hm? There’s nothing to it. Everyone’s doing it. And your job is made all the easier

     by the fact that you have us—here—alive—right in front of your nose!
     DIRECTOR It wouldn’t be enough.
     FATHER Not enough? Seeing us live our own drama…
     DIRECTOR I know, but you always need someone to write it!
     FATHER No. Just someone to take it down, maybe, since you have us here—in action—scene by scene. It’ll be

     enough if we piece together a rough sketch for you, then you can rehearse it. (507-08)
The Father insists that anyone can be an author, that all the Director has to do is write down their story. This claim supports Barthes’ notion of the author as a scriptor—someone who simply takes down text without placing any meaning onto it; they remain separate from the text. Also, if anyone can be an author, than the author’s authority—the idea of the Author-God as a supreme ruler of a text—is destroyed. A final way in which this play supports Barthes is the characters’ telling of how they are independent of their author:
     FATHER …When characters are alive and turn up, living, before their author, all that author does is follow the words

     and gestures which they propose to him. He has to want them to be as they themselves want to be. Woe betide

     him if he doesn’t! When a character is born, he at once acquires such an independence, even of his own author,

     that the whole world can imagine him in innumerable situations other than those the author thought to place him

     in. At times he acquires a meaning that the author never dreamt of giving him. (523-24)
This excerpt strongly supports Barthes more than any other portion of the play, specifically the very last line. The Father insists that as soon as character is born, he is independent of his author and can be realized in many different ways and even take on “a meaning that the author never dreamt of giving him” (524). If this is so, than the author’s individuality and identity is null and void because the character exists independently of the author.
     Although there is surmountable evidence in support of Barthes’ claims, there are also points and aspects of the play which complicate it as well. The first and most obvious is in the title itself. The characters are searching for an author, which means that they have some sort of need or a reliance on having an author. If this is so, then the author remains central in the textual realm. Going into the play itself, the first part that complicates Barthes theory is towards the beginning when the Director addresses the Leading Actors complaint with trying to explain what the actor is supposed to be doing and what it means:
     DIRECTOR We never get a good play from France any more, so we’re reduced to producing plays by Pirandello, a

     fine man and all that, but neither the actors, the critics, nor the audience are ever happy with his plays, and if you

     ask me, he does it all on purpose. … A cook’s hat, yes, my dear man! And you beat eggs. And you think you have

     nothing more on your hands than the beating of eggs? Guess again. You symbolize the shell of those eggs. … Yes,

     the shell: that is to say, the empty form of reason without the content of instinct, which is blind. … Understand?
     LEADING ACTOR Me? No.
     DIRECTOR Nor do I. Let’s go on. … (494)
Here, the Director acknowledges the author of the fictitious play, Pirandello, who also happens to be the author of this play, and tells the actor what he is apparently supposed to be gathering from what he is portraying. The actor does not understand and neither does the director. This excerpt brings the author in, by name, and the Director relays the meaning—determined meaning—of this author’s play. The author appears to have authority over the fictitious play’s meaning. Another moment in the play that complicates Barthes’ theory is when the characters first arrive and explain their reason for being there:
     DIRECTOR …Who are these people? What do they want?
     FATHER We’re here in search of an author.
     DIRECTOR An author? What author?
     FATHER Any author, sir. (496)
This excerpt goes along with the title in that the characters are expressing a need or reliance on having an author. Existentially, they are reliant on the author; the author is the only one who can bring them to life. Without the creator of the characters and their story, the author, there can be nothing to read and therefore nothing to be interpreted by the reader. This being so, the characters recall how they tried to implore their author to write scenes for them:
     FATHER … Imagine what a misfortune it is for a character such as I described to you—given life in the imagination

     of an author who then wished to deny him life—and tell me frankly: isn’t such a character, given life and left

     without life, isn’t he right to set about doing just what we are doing now as we stand here before you, after having

     done just the same—for a very long time, believe me—before him, trying to persuade him, trying to push him…I

     would appear before him sometimes, sometimes she [looks at STEPDAUGHTER] would go to him, sometimes that

     poor mother… (524)
Clearly the characters are heavily reliant on having an author, primarily existentially. If this is so, then still, the author remains at the center of the text and thus complicates Barthes’ theory.
     Each individual reader or audience member will extract meaning out of a piece of writing or a play according to their individual experiences, beliefs, and viewpoints. Of that, there is no doubt. However, the piece of writing or play would not exist without an author. Barthes has the right idea in displacing the author’s authority over a text’s meaning, but it is nearly impossible to do away with the author completely. Six Characters in Search of an Author presents characters as independent creations of the author, but even with this independence there is an inherent need for an author to write a story in which the characters can continuously live. Thus, Pirandello’s play both reassures and confounds Barthes’ theory. That is the meaning of this paper and you will get nothing more out of it because I am the Author-God!

 

 

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” (1967). 2004. PDF File. <http://www.case.edu/affil/sce/authorship/Barthes.pdf>

Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. 878-889. Book.

Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class?. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980. Book.

Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. 890-900.

Pirandello, Luigi. “Six Characters in Search of an Author.” The Norton Anthology of Drama: Volume Two. Eds. J. Ellen Gainor, Stanton B. Garner Jr., and Martin Puchner. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. 491-530. Book.