LUIGI PIRANDELLO (1867-1936) was an Italian
dramatist, short story writer and novelist. He won international fame xith his
plays, notably Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV The Late
Mathia Pascal is his best known novel. He won the Nobel Prize in 1934.

SUMMARY OF THE MORAL STORY 

Moral stories for kids, Five passengers were returning from Rome.
They were waiting at a small station named Fabriano to catch the local train. A
bulky woman and her small, thin and weak husband entered the compartment of the
local train. The women wore black dress of mourning. The husband’s face was
death-white. They were woe-begone as their twenty-year old only son had been
sent to the war. All the passengers were in the same plight as their sons had
also been sent to the front. A fat man tried to rationalize their emotions. He
radically differed from them. He considered that the children are duty bound to
fight for their country. They belong more to the country than to their parents.
Hence, it is not wise to prevent our children from serving the country and use
them for our own benefit. They must hold country above all.

The passengers who had left Rome by the
night express had to stop until dawn at the small station of Fabriano in order
to continue their journey by the small old-fashioned local joining the main
line witl-Sulrnona

English Story for Kids, At dawn, in a stuffy and smoky second-class
carriage, in which sve people had already spent the night, a bulky woman in
deep

our age. the love of our country is still
great. of course, but stronger than it is the love for our children. Is there
anyone of us here who wouldn’t gladly take his son’s place at the front if he
could ?”

There was a silence all around, everybody
nodding as to approve. “Why then.’ continued the fat man. “shouldn’t
we consider the feelings of our children when they are twenty ‘? Isn’t it
natural that at their age they should consider the love for their country (I am
speaking of decent boys, of course) even greater than the love for us ? Isn’t
it natural that it should be so, as after all they must look upon us as upon
old boys who cannot move any more and must stay at home ? If country exists, if
country is a natural necessity like bread, of which each of us must eat in
order not to die of hunger, somebody must go to defend it. And our sons go,
when they are twenty, and they don’t want tears, because if they die, they die
inflamed and happy (1 am speaking, of course, of decent boys). Now, if one dies
young and happy, without having seen the ugly sides of iife, the boredom of it,
the pettiness, the bitterness of disillusion What more can we ask for him ?
Everyone should stop crying; everyone should laugh, as I do or at least thank
God—as I do because my son, before dying sent me a message saying that he was
dying satisfied at having ended his life in the best way he could have wished.
That’s why, as you see, I do not even wear mourning.”

He shook his light fawn coat so as to show
it; his livid lip over his missing teeth was trembling. his eyes were watery
and motionless, and soon after he ended with a shrill laugh which might well
have been a sob.

“Quite so             quite so ”
agreed the others.

4. The woman who, bundled in a corner under
her coat, had been sitting and listening, had for the last three months tried
to find in the words of her husband and her friends something to console her in
her deep sorrow, something that might show her how a mother should resign
herself to send her son not even to death but to a probably dangerous life. Yet
not a word had she found among the many which had been said and her grief had
been greater in seeing that nobody–as she thought—could share her feelings.

English Story for Kids, But now the words of the .aueiler amazed
and almost stunned her. She suddenly reamed that it wasn’t the others who were
wrong and could not understand her but herself who could not rise up to the
same height as those fathers and mothers willing to resign themselves, without
crying, not only to the departure of the:r sons but even to their death_

She lifted her head, she bent over from her
corner trying to listen with great attennor to the details which the fat man
was giving to his companions about the way his son had fallen as a hero. for
his country. happy and without regrets. It seemed to her that she had stumbled
into a world she had never dreamed of, a world so far unknown to her, and she
was so pleased to hear everyone joining in congratulating that brave father who
could so stoically speak of hs child’s death.

5. Then suddenly               just as if she had heard nothing of what had been

said and almost as if waking up from a
dream, she turned to the old man, asking him :

“Then    is
your son really dead ?”

Everybody and Kids stared at her. The old man. too.
turned to look at her, fixing his great, bulging horribly watery light gray
eyes deep in her face. For some little time he tried to answer. but words
failed him. He looked and looked at her, almost as if only then—at that silly,
incongruous question—he had suddenly realized at last that his son was really
dead gone forever forever. His face contracted, became horribly distorted, then
he snatched in haste a handkerchief from his pocket, and to the amazement of
everyone broke into harrowing. heart-ending. uncontrollable sobs.