A Study of The Lack of Identity in Luigi Pirandello‘s Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV

In modern age, after the World Wars, the concept of “self” and “identity” were important. Most critics and writers of the era focused on this concept in their works. One of the authors of the modern age is Luigi Pirandello, whose works emphasized this concept. He believed that “self” and “identity” are concepts which are lost and unachievable in human beings. He emphasized that all human beings wear a “mask” which hides their identities. He traced the concept of “self” and “identity” in his plays and novels. As one can trace, he was familiar with psychology; moreover, one of the aspects of the psychology is to help man to achieve his “self” and “identity.” In the path of psychology, one of the prominent psychologists is Carl Gustav Jung and his theory of “archetypes.” As the process of “individuation” and “archetypes” show, every man can achieve his “self” and “identity” through these “archetypes.” Therefore, in this thesis the Jungian psychology is applied to the characters of Pirandello‘s Six Characters in Search of an Author and HenryIV , in order to explicate the lack of identity in these works.