In need of an ending: Closure and structural incompleteness in Pirandello's retrospective novels

This essay discusses the role of retrospectivity in three of Luigi Pirandello's novels: The Late Mattia Pascal (1904), Shoot! (1915), and One, No One, One Hundred Thousand (1926). While all these novels comprise different forms of retrospective narration, the different ways in which retrospectivity is used in each of the novels can shed light on the evolution of Pirandello's poetics. I argue that Pirandello employs retrospectivity to thematize the metaphysical crisis experienced by the modern subject and their demand for meaning in a world without God. In all the novels, the possibility of finding meaning is translated into the possibility of conceiving life as a meaningful plot. Over the years, however, Pirandello has moved on from such a possibility and abandoned the use of a retrospective structure. While The Late Mattia Pascal and One, No One, One Hundred Thousand can still offer a meaningful plot and therefore may present a retrospective concluded structure, in Shoot! , the retrospective structure implodes, suggesting that Pirandello has renounced the possibility of framing the life of his characters through a narrative frame.