Each in His Own Way by Luigi Pirandello
Published 1924 · 30,000 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Drama
How hard is Each in His Own Way to read?
Each in His Own Way scores 57 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
- Pirandello writes in clear, conversational Italian; English translations preserve this accessibility. Philosophical vocabulary appears but is embedded in dialogue rather than exposition.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Dialogue-driven with rapid exchanges. The complexity lies in tracking who is speaking within which layer of reality rather than in sentence structure.
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- The play's subject is the nature of interpretation itself. Characters debate epistemological questions about whether anyone can truly know another person's motives.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Dense argumentation in the interlude scenes. The play-within-the-play portion is more conventionally paced, but the metatheatrical frame packs philosophical content tightly.
- Narrative indirection: 65 out of 100
- The story is told through multiple contradictory retellings. The audience never gets direct access to what happened — only competing versions filtered through bias and self-interest.
- Symbolic density: 40 out of 100
- The theatrical frame itself is the dominant symbol. Individual images matter less than the structural metaphor of a play that cannot complete itself.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Pirandello observes his characters with detached irony, allowing each to be convincing and wrong simultaneously. The audience's inability to settle on a truth is itself the point.
- Resolution withholding: 75 out of 100
- The play literally cannot finish — the third act is never performed. Pirandello refuses resolution as a philosophical principle.
- Structural complexity: 70 out of 100
- Three nested levels of reality: the play-within-the-play, the lobby interludes with 'real' spectators, and the frame of the theatrical event itself. The levels contaminate each other.
How Each in His Own Way is regarded
Each in His Own Way holds a literary regard score of 60 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.