Reality versus Fantasy in William Dean Howells’ Editha and Luigi Pirandello’s War

In the twentieth century, we are all too familiar with the horror of war and its dehumanizing effects. Both Editha (5091), one of William Dean Howells’ most successful and best-known short stories, and War (5050), a short story written by Luigi Pirandello―one of the most influential Italian playwrights of the twentieth century―inveigh against imperialism and revolve around radical ideas of country, patriotism, and war. Both War and Editha demonstrate that people may avoid the reality of tragedies that result from war in order to help themselves cope with the emotional impact. As Human kind cannot bear very much reality (T.S. Eliot), they try to rationalize the bitterness, facing denial and self-deception. What makes these two short stories appear in this article, based on its author’s viewpoint, is the use of an ideological language fueled by media and nation narratives to glorify wars. Both short stories take advantage of some character who embodies all the nonsense about the heroic romanticism of war and whose false sense of values drives the rest either to premature death in a questionable war or to a fantastic rather than realistic situation. Both Howells and Pirandello were well aware of the influence of propaganda, advertisement and nation narratives in shaping such an ideological language ending in glorification of wars at the mercy of imperialism

کلیدواژه ها:

Fantasy ، Ideology ، Media ، Reality