In his horror at participating in the spectacle, the Son also offers the play's most explicit articulation of the trope of the mirror. Faced by the actor who would absorb him, the Son protests that one cannot live before a mirror that not only "freezes us with an image of ourselves," but also "throws our likeness back at us with a horrible grimace." The Son thus charts two effects of the mirror between Actor and Character. In the second and more straightforward complaint, the image of the subject imitated in the other renders that likeness grotesque. In the first, vaguely reminscent of the Medusa, the fascinating image of the Actor would freeze the Character it reflects. Put otherwise, the animation of the image requires the petrifaction of the body; the life of the persona or mask is the death of the person. The animation of the Character in the place of the Actor, an animation that takes place through imitation, is the Character's defacement. This meditation on the petrifying effect of the mirror—one that kills the Character by fixing him—reads in tension with the Father's comments on the Character's life and reality. According to the Father, both inhere precisely in its image. Unlike transitory man, the mask is real and alive insofar as it cannot change. The Character's drama and role are fixed for all time and perhaps the difference inheres in the process of alienation. The frozen image is fatal when reflected in the Actor because the places the self-image in the place of the other.

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