Vitangelo Moscarda discovers that he is not one: he is a hundred thousand, one for each person who sees him. And decides not to be one.
Pirandello's work
In One, None and a Hundred Thousand, by Luigi Pirandello, the protagonist Vitangelo Moscarda realizes that he does not have a unique identity: there is a version of him in each person's head. The discovery leads him to purposefully dissolve all the roles that defined him.
The parallel with Don Quixote
Identity, in both, is a social reflection. The difference is the gesture: Moscarda dissolves his own identity as an experiment; Don Quixote is forced to abandon his own when society imposes on him a single way of seeing reality. In one, multiplicity liberates; in the other, lucidity kills.
The common question
Both works leave the same modern concern: are we what we believe we are or what others stabilize in us? When the story we tell about ourselves is taken away, what is left? In Quixote, man remains; in Pirandello, the emptiness of masks.
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What is One, None and One Hundred Thousand about?
The fragmentation of identity. Vitangelo Moscarda discovers that he is perceived differently by each person and decides to abandon any fixed identity.
What is the connection with Don Quixote?
Both treat identity as a social reflection. Quixote is forced to abandon who he was; Moscarda chooses to dissolve. The basic question is the same.
Who is Vitangelo Moscarda?
He is the narrator and protagonist of One, None and a Hundred Thousand, who goes into crisis when he realizes that there is not a single self, but a hundred thousand versions of him in the eyes of others.
Continue: The Idiot, the Russian Don Quixote · What is metafiction · Free will in Macbeth: destiny or choice?
Source class (YouTube): Dom Quixote, Parte Dois (NousCast) · Um, Nenhum e Cem Mil, de Pirandello (NousCast)