“The Wheelbarrow” (“La carriola”)
Translated by Robin Pickering-Iazzi
How to cite this work:
Pirandello, Luigi. “The Wheelbarrow” (“La carriola”), tr. Robin Pickering-Iazzi. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2025.
“The Wheelbarrow” (“La carriola”) was published in the Giornale di Sicilia on January 17-18, 1915, but it was republished after two years as part of the miscellany collection And Tomorrow, Monday… (E domani, lunedì…; Milan: Treves, 1917). In 1928, the story became part of Candelora, the thirteenth collection of Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno).
As one of Pirandello’s most iconic and widely read short stories, “The Wheelbarrow” (“La carriola”) offers a compelling illustration of his theory of humor, which he theorized in his seminal essay from 1908, On Humor (L’umorismo). Likewise, the story’s tragicomic undertones dramatize the clash between “life” and “form” that lies at the very heart of Pirandello’s poetics. The plot here revolves around the dramatic confession of a man overwhelmed by the weight of his social role as a lawyer, professor, husband, and father, who feels trapped within a form of life that he no longer recognizes as his own. To others, he embodies respectability and authority, but inside himself he feels like a fraud, living a life that is forcefully imposed on him. This dissonance culminates in a grotesque yet liberating secret act as each day, in the privacy of his study, he takes his old dog and makes her walk like a wheelbarrow, lifted by her hind legs. To anyone else, this would seem like nothing more than a child’s prank, but for him, it is a fleeting rebellion against the suffocating dignity that defines his existence.
This plot captures Pirandello’s conception of humor, where laughter at an apparently comic situation gives way to a deeper double-sense of understanding, where the underlying tragic components of a situation convert that laughter into a form of compassion. Here, the reader’s laughter at the protagonist’s foolish behavior is simultaneously transformed by reflection into a kind of pity: the comedy of seeing a respectable lawyer reduced to childish play with a dog quickly reveals the tragic underside of his actions. He is a desperate man who realizes he has never truly lived on his own terms and now sees his own identity as a mask constructed by duties, expectations, and conventions. This maps onto the broader discrepancy between form and life, that is between how one appears as a fixed exterior reality and what one feels as a changing inner one. It is the perception of this discrepancy that generates a form of humor that is both comic and profoundly unsettling. In this sense, the protagonist’s confession is not merely eccentric but existential. His act of madness is both a parody of freedom and a desperate attempt to recover it. Through this paradox, Pirandello dramatizes the fragility of identity and the tragicomic fate of those condemned to live in “forms” that no longer belong to them.
The Editors
Whenever I have someone else around me, I never look at her. But I feel her looking at me, she looks at me, she looks at me without taking her eyes off me for a moment.
Face to face, I would like to make her understand that it’s nothing, she should rest easy, that with others I could never allow myself this brief act, which is not important to her at all and is everything to me. I do it every day at the opportune moment, in utmost secrecy, with frightening joy, because, trembling, I taste the bliss of a divine, conscious madness in it, that frees me for an instant and avenges me for everything.
I had to be sure (and it seemed to me that I could be sure only with her) that this act of mine would not be discovered. Because if it were discovered, the damage it would cause, not only to me, would be inestimable. I would be a ruined man. Maybe they would catch me, tie me up, and, terrified, drag me off to a madhouse.
The terror that would overcome everyone if this act of mine were discovered, well, I see it now in the eyes of my victim.
I am entrusted with the life, honor, freedom, and wealth of innumerable people who besiege me from morning to night in order to have my work, my advice, my help. I am burdened with other public and private duties of utmost importance. I have a wife and children who often do not know how they should behave, and must therefore be continually held in check by my strict authority, by the constant example of my inflexible and irreproachable obedience to all my obligations, one more serious than the other, as husband, father, citizen, professor of law, and lawyer.[1] Woe betide, therefore, if my secret were discovered!
My victim cannot speak, it is true. Nonetheless, I have not felt safe anymore for a few days. I am dismayed and anxious. Because, though it is true that she cannot talk, she looks at me, she looks at me with those eyes, and the terror in them is so clear that I fear someone might notice it at any moment, and be prompted to look for the reason.
I would be, I repeat, a ruined man. The value of the act I carry out can be estimated and appreciated only by those very few people to whom life has been revealed as it was suddenly revealed to me.[2]
To put it into words and make it understood is not easy. I will try.
Fifteen days or so ago, I was returning from Perugia, where I had gone for professional business.
One of my more serious obligations is to take no notice of the tiredness that weighs heavily on me, the enormous weight of all the duties that I have taken on and others have imposed, and not to indulge whatsoever in the need for a little distraction, which my weary mind demands every now and then. The only distraction I can allow myself when I am too overcome by tiredness due to a troublesome matter that has been occupying me at length, is to turn to a different new one.
Therefore, I had brought some new papers to study in a leather satchel along with me on the train. At the first problem encountered while reading them, I looked up and turned my eyes toward the car window. I was looking outside, but did not see anything, engrossed as I was in that problem.
I couldn’t actually say that I saw nothing. My eyes saw. They saw, and perhaps they were enjoying the graceful and pleasant Umbrian countryside. But I, to be sure, paid no attention to what my eyes were seeing.
However, little by little the attention I was paying to the problem that engrossed me started to fade, yet nonetheless, without leading me to give more notice to the sight of the countryside, which was even passing under my eyes, clear, soft, and soothing.
I was not thinking about what I was seeing, and I no longer thought about anything. For an inestimable length of time, I remained as if in a state of suspension that was vague and strange, but also clear and calm. Airy. My spirit was almost cut off from my senses, at an infinite distance, where with a delight that did not seem its own, it faintly discerned, who knows how, the teeming of a different life, not its own, but that could have been, not here, not now, but there, in that infinite distance. The teeming of a remote life that had perhaps been the spirit’s—it did not know how or when—and gave breath to its vague memory, not of acts, not of appearances, but almost of desires that vanished before arising, with an agonizing, vain, and yet hard sorrow, the same as that of flowers, perhaps, that were unable to bloom. The teeming, in short, of a life that was meant to be lived, there, far far away, where its throbbing and flashes of light beckoned; and it wasn’t born. In that life, the spirit, well yes, ah, it would have rediscovered itself as full and complete, in suffering too and not only enjoyment, but in suffering that was truly its own.[3]
My eyes slowly closed without my noticing, and perhaps I carried on dreaming of that life that wasn’t born as I slept. I say perhaps, because when I woke up, all stiff and with an unpleasant, bitter taste in my dry mouth, already about to arrive, I suddenly found myself in an entirely different mood, with a sense of how atrociously stifling life was, in a gloomy, leaden amazement, in which the appearance of the most usual things seemed emptied of all sense, and yet, to my eyes they were cruel, unbearable troubles.
In this mood, I got off at the train station, got into my car that was waiting for me at the exit, and set out to return home.
Well, it was on the staircase to my home. It was on the landing in front of my door.
I suddenly saw, in front of that dark, bronze-colored door, with the oval brass plate where my name was inscribed, preceded by my titles and followed by my degrees and professional positions, I suddenly saw myself and my life as if from outside, although not so that I recognized myself or my life as my own.[4]
Frighteningly I was suddenly overcome by the certainty that the man who was in front of that door, with the leather case under his arm, the man who lived there in that house, was not me, had never been me. I suddenly knew it was as if I had always been absent from that home, from the life of that man, and not only that, but from every life, really and truly. I had never lived. I had never been in life, in a life, I mean, that I could recognize as mine, that I wanted and that felt like my own. Even my very body, my appearance, which now unexpectedly rose before me, dressed like that, put together like that, seemed unrelated to me, as if others had pieced together that appearance and forced it onto me, to make me move around in a life that was not mine, to make me carry out acts of presence in that life from which I had always been absent, acts in which now, suddenly, my spirit realized it had never resided, never, never! Who had made him that way, that man who represented me? Who had wanted him like that? Who put him in those clothes and shoes like that? Who made him move and talk like that? Who imposed all those duties on him, one more onerous and odious than the other? Commendatore, professor, lawyer, that man whom everyone sought out, whom everyone respected and admired, whose work, advice, and assistance everyone wanted, for whom everyone competed without ever giving him a moment of respite, a moment to catch his breath—Was it me? Me? Really? But when in the world? And what did I care about all the troubles that man was drowning in from morning till night, about all the respect, all the esteem he enjoyed, commendatore, professor, and lawyer, and about the wealth and honors that he received from his assiduous, scrupulous performance of all those duties, from practicing his profession?
And they were there, behind that door bearing my name on the oval brass plate, a woman and four children were there who, with a sense of annoyance that was my own, but that I could not tolerate in them, saw every day that insufferable man who was supposed to be me, and in whom I now saw a stranger, an enemy. My wife? My children? But if I had truly never been, if I were truly not that insufferable man who was in front of the door (and I felt this with frightening certainty), whose wife was that woman, whose children were those four youngsters? Not mine! In that moment my spirit, if it had had a body, its true body, its true appearance, would have kicked or grabbed, torn apart, and destroyed that man, together with all his troubles, all his duties and honors and respect and wealth, and also his wife, yes, perhaps also his wife…
But the children?
I brought my hands to my temples and pressed hard.
No. I did not feel like they were mine. But through a strange, painful, distressing feeling about them, who were outside of me, whom I saw before me every day, who needed me, my care, my advice, my work, through this feeling and with the sense of atrocious suffocation to which I had awoken on the train, I felt myself return into that insufferable man who was in front of the door.
I took the little key from my pocket, opened the door, and proceeded to also reenter that house, and that previous life.
Now this is my tragedy. I say mine, but who knows how many have it!
He who lives, when he lives, does not see himself: he lives… If a person can see his own life, it is a sign he is no longer living it, he endures it, he drags it along. He drags it along like some dead thing. Because every form is a death.[5]
Very few people know it. Most, almost all, struggle, they do their utmost to set themselves up in life, as they say, and to achieve a form. Once that form is achieved, they believe they have conquered their life, and they begin to die instead. They do not know it, because they do not see themselves, because they can no longer break away from that dying form they have achieved. They do not know themselves as dead and believe they are alive. The only people who know themselves are those who manage to see the form they have given themselves, or that they were given by others, by luck, possibilities, the conditions in which each was born. But if we can see this form, it is a sign our life is no longer in it. Because if it were, we would not see it; we would live this form, without seeing it, and would die a little bit more every day in it, a form that is already a death in itself, without knowing it. Therefore, we can only see and know what is dead in us. Knowing oneself is dying.
My case is even worse. I do not see what is dead in me; I see that I have never been alive, I see the form that others, not I, gave to me, and I feel that my life, my true life, never existed in this form. They took me as they would take any material, they took a brain, a soul, muscles, nerves, flesh, and mixed them together and fashioned them at their will so that they would carry out a job, complete actions, obey duties, in which I look for myself and do not find myself. And I cry out, my soul cries out in this dead form that has never been mine: “But how? Me, this? Me, like this? But when in the world?” And I feel nauseated, horrified, and hateful about this thing that is not me, that has never been me, this dead form in which I am a prisoner and unable to break free. Form that is burdened with duties, which I do not feel are mine, oppressed by troubles that do not matter to me at all, and marked by esteem I have no use for. Form that is these duties, these troubles, this esteem, outside of me, above me, empty things, dead things that weigh on me, suffocate me, crush me, and do not let me breathe anymore.[6]
Free myself? But no one can make what has been done undone, and make death not exist, when it has seized us and holds us in its grasp.
There are facts. In any case, when you have acted, even without later sensing yourself or finding yourself in the actions taken, what you did remains, like a prison for you.[7] And the consequences of your actions envelop you like coils and tentacles. The responsibility you assumed for those actions and their consequences, undesired or unforeseen, gathers heavily around you like thick, un-breathable air. And how can you free yourself anymore? How could I welcome and commence a different life, a true life of my own, in the prison of this form that is not mine, but that represents me as I am for everyone, as everyone knows and wants me, and respects me? A life in a form that I feel is dead, but that must exist for others, for all those who put it together and want it this way and not otherwise? It must of necessity be this life. It is of use to my wife, my children, society, which is to say to the university students in the Department of Law, to the clients who have entrusted their life, honor, freedom, and wealth to me. It is of use like this, and I cannot change it, I cannot kick it and get rid of it; I cannot rebel, cannot avenge myself, if only for a moment, every day, with the act that I carry out in utmost secret, anxiously and cautiously seizing the opportune moment so that no one might see me.
Well then. For eleven years, I have had an old, small German shepherd around the house, black and white, fat, short and furry, her eyes already cloudy with old age.[8]
She and I never had good relations. Perhaps, at first, she did not approve of my profession, which prohibited making any noise in the house. However, she began to approve of it little by little as she aged, so much so that in order to escape from the naughty tyranny of the children, who would have still liked to tussle around with her down in the garden, for a while now she had chosen my side, taking refuge here in my studio from morning to night, sleeping on the rug with her little pointed muzzle between her paws. She felt protected and secure here among so many papers and so many books. From time to time, she would open one eye to look at me, as if to say:
“Good job dear, yes. Work. Don’t move from there, because it’s certain that so long as you’re there working, no one will come in to disturb my sleep.”
The poor beast certainly thought this way. I suddenly became tempted to take my revenge on her some fifteen days ago, seeing how she was watching me.
I do not hurt her. I do not do anything to her. As soon as I can, as soon as some client leaves me free for a moment, I get up from my big chair cautiously, very slowly, so that nobody might notice that my feared and sought-after knowledge, my formidable knowledge as a professor of law and as a lawyer, my austere dignity as a husband, and father, have moved from the throne of this big chair for a little while. And, tip-toeing, I go over to the door to peer into the hall to see if someone is about to arrive. I lock the door, just for a brief moment. My eyes joyously sparkle, my hands dance with the delight that I am about to allow myself, to be crazy, to be crazy for just a moment, to get out of the prison of this dead form for just an instant, to destroy, to mockingly annihilate for just an instant this knowledge, this dignity that suffocates me and crushes me. I run over to her, to the little dog who is sleeping on the rug. Slowly, politely, I take her two small hind paws and I make her do the wheelbarrow.[9] That is, I have her take eight or ten steps, no more, with only her small front paws, while holding her by her back ones.
That is all. I do not do anything else. Right away I run to open the door again very quietly, without the slightest creak, and I sit down again on the throne, on the big chair, ready to receive another client, with the austere dignity of before, loaded like a cannon with all my formidable knowledge.
But, well then, for fifteen days the beast has been as if stunned, training those cloudy, terrorized, wide-open eyes at me. I would like to make her understand—I repeat—that it is nothing; she should rest easy, she should not look at me like that.
The beast understands the dreadfulness of the act I carry out.
It would be of no consequence if one of my children did it to her as a joke. But she knows that I cannot joke. It is not possible for her to admit that I joke around, even for a moment. And she keeps on goddamn watching me, terrified.
Endnotes
1. This list of obligations that the protagonist must assume sets the stage for the Pirandello’s critique of the grip of social roles and the ways in which they give rise to an existential crisis.
2. The motif of life being suddenly revealed “as it truly is” rather than in the external forms of it that people perceive is a recurrent theme for Pirandello. It is likewise often tied to madness, with the person who has “seen through” life appearing unrecognizable, like a madman, to those who still live within the forms of social convention. For instance, in the story “The Train Has Whistled” (“Ha fischiato il treno,” 1914), the protagonist’s detachment from everyday life is perceived as a special kind of madness; likewise in “The Trap” (“La trappola,” 1915), the protagonist speaks in a first-person confessional tone to the reader to reveal a similar kind of insight into the true nature of life. These are just a couple of examples of a theme that is pervasive, not only in his short stories but across genres.
3. This passage exemplifies Pirandello’s recurrent theme of the detachment of spirit from the body. In this story, the narrator experiences an estrangement from sensory perception, entering a moment of suspension where his self hovers between presence and absence. Such a state reflects Pirandello’s exploration of identity as fragmented and elusive. In this tension, the body becomes somewhat secondary, while the spirit moves toward a sort of metaphysical truth, underscoring the author’s vision of human consciousness as perpetually divided between certainty and possibility.
4. This passage dramatizes the quintessential Pirandellian experience of estrangement: the sudden perception of oneself “from the outside,” as though one were both protagonist and spectator of one’s own life. Such detachment highlights the fracture between living and “seeing oneself live” (“vedersi vivere”), a condition at the core of Pirandello’s poetics.
5. Theses lines exemplify Pirandello’s conception of the “death of form” as it is expressed in his seminal theoretical essay On Humor (L’umorismo; see pp. 151-3, Saggi, Poesie e Scritti Varii). Pirandello insists that life is only authentically lived when it escapes the self’s reflective grasp. In this sense, embodying truth through masks underscores a paradox because dramatic form, while striving to capture life, simultaneously fossilizes it into representation, exposing both the creative vitality of art and its inherent limitation.
6. This paragraph makes clear reference to Pirandello’s belief that identity is not something we build from within, but something forced on us from the outside. A person feels trapped in a “form” made by social rules, duties, and the gaze of others; it is like wearing a mask that hides the true self instead of expressing it. For Pirandello, life is split between the flow of inner feelings and the rigid roles demanded by society. This is why the soul cries out against a life never truly “lived.” This story exemplifies the clash between forma and vita, where characters fight against the weight of conventions in the hope of finding some kind of real authenticity.
7. In this paragraph, Pirandello presents the idea that the external “facts” of one’s life function as a kind of prison. Once an action is done, it cannot be undone: it remains fixed, like a cage that traps the individual. The consequences, whether intended or not, surround a person like suffocating air, creating a heavy responsibility that cannot be escaped. For Pirandello, this condition reflects the paradox of human existence, as the self is forced to live within a rigid “form” that society recognizes, even if the individual feels that this form is dead or false. The narrator’s rebellion against being trapped within the prison of his own actions resonates with that of the Father in Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, 1921), who describes himself as being pilloried by his past actions, which (in the mind of others) have come to define him.
8. This portrayal of the dog echoes almost word for word the description of Minerva, the dog in The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal, 1904).
9. This phrase is in italics in the original, highlighting it as something that stands apart for its strangeness.