Play: The Traveler Without Luggage

Overview
Jean Anouilh's The Traveler Without Luggage is a compact, morally sharp drama set in the uneasy aftermath of World War I. A man with complete amnesia returns to France and is taken in by a family who claim him as their long-lost son. As documents and relics from his supposed past are assembled, the stranger confronts an account of a life marked by selfishness and cruelty and must decide whether the identity the world hands him or a self-fashioned new life will define him.

Plot
A soldier who cannot remember his name or past is brought back from the war and becomes the center of a contest: several families and official agencies try to identify him. One family, the Renauds, insist he is their prodigal son and welcome him home with cautious hope. They and other characters produce a trunk of possessions and testimony that portray the missing son as a dissolute and morally bankrupt man who betrayed and harmed those around him. Confronted with this narrative and the physical "baggage" that supposedly proves his guilt, the amnesiac must weigh the claim of a known, damning past against the clean slate his forgetfulness offers. He ultimately repudiates the inherited name and the life attached to it, choosing instead to leave and become a traveler without baggage.

Main conflict and resolution
The central conflict is ethical and existential rather than legal: is a person bound by the actions of a body whose memory they lack? The family's determination to reclaim the man as their own collides with his emerging sense of autonomy. The proofs of past wrongdoing are concrete and painful, yet they come filtered through relatives who are themselves invested in appearances and advantage. Rather than accept punishment or atonement under a past identity, the protagonist refuses to be defined by testimony and objects and opts for self-reinvention. The resolution is bleakly humane: the man walks away from the past, leaving behind the trunk of possessions that symbolize both history and hypocrisy.

Themes and motifs
Memory and identity lie at the heart of the play. Anouilh explores whether identity is a continuity of actions and guilt or a narrative imposed by others. The notion of "baggage" operates on literal and metaphorical levels, representing both material evidence and the moral weight of history. The play interrogates responsibility: must one answer for deeds one cannot recall, and can oblivion be a form of moral escape or a chance for renewal? A satire of bourgeois self-interest runs alongside these questions, exposing how families and institutions shape and exploit stories about the past to serve their comforts and reputations.

Style and staging
Anouilh balances bleak irony with human sympathy in a style that is both economical and theatrical. Dialogue carries psychological and ethical weight, and scenes often hinge on sharp exchanges rather than elaborate action. Stagings tend to emphasize the symbolic trunk and the anonymity of the returning man, using sparse sets and focused lighting to underline existential and moral themes. The play's tone moves between bitter comedy and tragedy, allowing moments of sharp wit to undercut solemn moralizing.

Significance and reception
The Traveler Without Luggage established Anouilh's reputation for moral dramas that probe identity and social hypocrisy. Its postwar setting gives the play a particular urgency about the costs of conflict and the construction of personal histories. The work continues to resonate for its elegant handling of questions about memory, culpability, and freedom, and it remains a staple in discussions of 20th-century French theatre for its fusion of ethical inquiry and theatrical economy.