This paper examines how Luigi Pirandello's play, "Six Characters in Search of an
Author", is a representation of
reality as opposed to the presentation of reality via
drama. It looks at how it can also be interpreted as a division of the conscious mind from reality, or what Freud called 'doubling', since the characters in the play are separated into
actors and the characters they are to play. In particular, it attempts to show how the relationship between the author's characters and the actors who attempt to play the characters can be understood in terms of Freud's theory of the
uncanny.