The Role of Revenge inThe Wild Duck - Essay Example

The Role of Revenge in the Wild Duck 2008 The Wild Duck is usually called the best play of Ibsen. It is praised for the masterful structure and genius elaboration of the characters. There is nothing superfluous here. Every word is weighted up and selected carefully. The play is realistic. It is full of routine details of household affairs and simple dialogues of simple people. The final tragedy seems almost inappropriate in this world of shrew reality. However, the realism of the play is sometimes even questioned due to the fact that the play deals with the realm of sub-consciousness, revealing the hidden motifs of the characters. These hidden motifs drive the play’s action. The mystic revenge of woods and the veil of enigma hang over the characters. The hints of the approaching tragedy are seen everywhere in the play, so that the audience remains in the anticipation of the some dreadful events. The revenge becomes the major driver of the tragedy in the Wild Duck. There are two secrets contributing to the tragedy in the play. The first of the secrets is the scandal around the lumber enterprise, which almost brought Werle to ruin and, due to Werle’s obvious betrayal, resulted in the fall of the Ekdals following the arrest and disgrace of Old Ekdal. We become aware of the enigma from the very beginning when Old Ekdal appears in the house of Werle during the dinner. His appearance arouses memories of the suppressed past. The events that follow seem to be the legacy of this hushed crime of the play’s two patriarchs. The enigma demands resolution, thus serving as the engine of the play’s action. This enigma acquires mythological qualities and proportions, dividing the world of the play into two parts – the mythic one and the reality. The resolution demanded by the enigma seems to be a kind of vengeance, as Old Ekdal puts it later, the revenge of woods. The vengeance demands the life of a child belonging to both of the clans. The second secret is the secret of Hedvig’s birth. As it has been mentioned the ‘realistic’ play is in fact divided into two layers, with most of the characters preferring to live in the mythical reality, in the world of fantasies and dreams. The attic in Ekdals’ house symbolizes this world. The “depth of the sea” is very dangerous. Not for nothing Hedvig reveals such a fear of these words. The “depth of the sea” is the depth of consciousness, the subconscious part of the characters’ selves. Wondering in the world of fantasies, the characters face their hidden fears and pain. These pain and fears, hidden in Gregers and Hialmar’s consciousness, require revenge on the person having caused them. Revenge on Werle brings to the death of Hedvig, who is much more vulnerable than the old merchant. The mythic enigma is constantly hanging over the families. It is seen and felt through the lines of the dialogues. The play begins with Werle demonstrating his superstitions about the thirteen guests at table. The thirteenth guest is Hialmar, invited by Gregers and not belonging to Werle’s world. This thirteenth figure is tabooed through the entire play, hushed like the old scandals. As Hialmar tells his wife and daughter of the dinner he says that there were either twelve or fourteen guests at Werle’s table. At the end of the play, when all the secrets are disclosed, Gregers takes on the destiny of “the thirteenth at the table”. Gregers is also the outsider in Werle’s circle, retuning from the self-imposed exile at the factory in the Hoidal woods to stir up the suppressed past and discover his father’s double betrayal. Relling compares the thirteenth quest to the devil, perhaps, referring to Judas, having caused Jesus Christ’s death. Gregers’ interference with the Ekdals’ life leads to the death of an innocent child, who “dreams of no danger” and “gay and careless and chirping like a little bird, flutters onward into a life of endless night” (Act II). Gregers’ gospel of true love brings nothing but ruin. The mythic reality intertwines with the routine life of the Ekdals. Their attic fulfills the role of a materialized world of their fantasies. The historical time has stopped here, which is symbolized by the broken clock. Instead, the Ekdals’ world is submerged into a mythic time, symbolized by the images of the woman and the death with the hourglass in Hedvig’s book. The whole family prefers to live in the realm of this mythic time. Hedvig finds escape from the reality in the books with pictures. Though she possesses the historical chronicle she doesn’t read it. As Gregers asks her whether she would like to leave home and see the real world herself, Hedvig exclaims: “Oh, no! I mean always to stay at home and help father and mother” (Act III). Old Ekdal also creates a world of his fantasies here. “The four or five withered Christmas-trees he has saved up are the same to him as the whole great fresh Hoidal forest; the cock and the hens are big game-birds in the fir-tops; and the rabbits that flop about the garret floor are the bears he has to battle with -- the mighty hunter of the mountains!” (Act V). Hialmar seeks every opportunity to escape into the mythic world of attic. And this mythic world of frozen time recalls the revenge of the woods. Gregers is another character living in illusion. The Ekdals’ life-illusion is supported by Relling, who sees it as the only remedy for ordinary people. “Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke,” he explains in Act V. devoted to “the claims of the ideal”, Gregers does his best to destroy the Ekdals’ life-illusion. For him Hialmar’s home is “a poisonous marsh”, where he “thrives in marsh vapours”, where “an insidious disease” has taken hold of him, and where he has “sunk down to die in the dark” (Act III). Sick with “the integrity-fever” and being “in a delirium of hero-worship” (Act V), Gregers strives for opening Hialmar’s eyes and laying “the foundations of a true marriage,” for making the Ekdals “to attain to the true frame of mind for self-sacrifice and forgiveness”. He hopes to see “the light of configuration”, but faces only “dullness, oppression, and gloom” (Act IV). Gregers makes numerous hints at the fact that the family lives in lie. When Hedvig confirms herself that this is only a garret, Gregers asks her: “Are you quite certain of it?” (Act III). Werle like Relling understands the mistake of his son and warns him of the consequences. Yet, Gregers is unable to look in the eyes of the reality. He needs the world of his ideal claims just like the Ekdals need their world of garret. The symbol of the wild duck is another hint of the tragedy to take place. This bird “has been taken away from all her friends” and is perceived as a mysterious creature with so much strange about it. As Hedvig puts it: “Nobody knows her, and nobody knows where she came from” (Act III). Having lied in the depth of the sea for so long, she seems to bear few marks of the hardships she went through. Gregers associates the wild duck with Hialmar, who is also to go through the process of transfiguration and resurrect from the depth of the sea to a new life. Old Ekdal is also symbolized by the wild duck, with her damaged wing and the loss of freedom. However, it is Hedvig who ultimately substitutes the wild duck. The girl’s birth is covered with an enigma, and Hialmar’s rejection of being her father makes her feel detached from the family. However, Hedvig’s substitution of the wild duck is real, not metaphoric, thus pointing to the danger of living in the world of metaphoric substitutions and mythic reality. Moreover, the girl feels this danger. So when she awakes in the morning Gregers’ evening proposition of sacrifice seems strange for her. However, crossing the threshold of the garret, she enters the world of myth, the world where the woods demand their revenge. Another hint at the final tragedy is the pistol used for hunting the rabbits. Hialmar’s story of two failed suicides establishes a parallel between the generations and reveals the unfinished act, which is certainly to get its completeness finally. When Hialmar tries to commit a suicide after the bankruptcy of the family, it is dark in his room and he feels that “the whole of existence must be at a standstill -- as if under an eclipse” (Act III). Hedvig kills herself in the garret where the time is standstill and where the light is eclipsed either. Old Ekdal, Hialmar and Hedvig are all associated with the wild duck, producing a sense of repetition of events, of the spiral standstill mythic time, and the revenge of the Hoidal woods. Hedvig’s death puts a final point in a play unfinished by her predecessors. The revenge of woods seems to be a mythical punishment. In fact, the tragedy occurs due the revenge of two concrete characters – Gregers and Hialmar – on their enemy Werle. Indeed, if we do not take this explanation, the whole story remains a mythical providence. Then it remains unclear and bewildering, why Gregers is so desperately striving to stir up the secrets of the family and disclose the double paternity of Hedvig, as well as it is difficult to understand the extreme cruelty of Hialmar’s rejection of the child he has loved so dearly. As Joan Carr (1977) suggests: “Bewildering as these events are, they carry total conviction. Gregers’ new-found mission and Hialmar’s outrage against the innocent Hedvig spring from the most hidden depths of their personalities, which they themselves can neither understand nor control” (p. 845). Werle has become Gregers and Hialmar’s bitter enemy due to their “unsure youth” and “totally beaten incipient manhood.” Unconsciously, Gregers struggles through his miserable childhood, again and again attempting to win love and admiration of his dead mother, obsessed with the unfaithfulness of her husband. Unable to struggle with his father openly, Gregers takes revenge on the father’s lover and child. The middle-aged Gregers still feels deeply wretched because of his father. During their conversation at the Ekdals’ in Act III, Gregers complaints to his father: “You have crippled my whole life. I am not thinking of all that about mother – But it’s thanks to you that I am continually haunted and harassed by a guilty conscience.” He sees traps set by his father everywhere. He feels “cowed and spiritless” and confesses that he was “mortally afraid of his father” in his youth. Now he claims of trying to find “some sort of cure for his sick conciseness” (Act III). Hiding behind his “claims of the ideal”, Gregers subconsciously resolves to destroy his father’s bastard, thus revenging on him for all these years of humiliation. Hialmar’s attitudes also become clear only as we look at the hidden motifs of his actions. As he discovers the truth of Hedvig’s origin and his family life, he subconsciously relives “the humiliating impotence of many years, when he was too cowardly to accuse Old Werle of having trapped his father into felony and family disgrace,” explains Carr. Hialmar never dares to admit this circumstance in the play, yet it must be suppressed and hidden in his sub-consciousness, while Werle has always provided his family living. As Hialmar learns of Werle’s blindness he perceives it as the divine punishment. Yet, he feels that finally Werle remains unpunished, while it is Werle, who gains “the true marriage” Gregers speaks of. As we can see, the Wild Duck has much in common with the revenge tragedies, like the Orestia and Hamlet. The Wild Duck deals with the revenge – a primitive instinct of humans. Moreover, there are themes and motives repeating in each of the tragedies. Orestes and Hamlet have often been accused of the Oedipus complex. Undoubtedly, this refers to Gregers either. Philos-aphilos (love-in-hatred) is another motive uniting the tragedies. Gregers commits the crime against his nearest and dearest, against “a part of himself”: he revenges on his father through his sister. The difference between the plays lies in the treatment of revenge. The Orestia signaled the shift from the archaic tradition of self-justice by means of personal revenge to the justice set by the court and jury. Hamlet revealed the transformation taking place in the souls of Christians, who started perceiving vengeance as a sin, primitive instincts and habits struggling with newly arising moral principles in the mind and heart of Prince Hamlet. The Wild Duck on the contrary demonstrates that primitive instincts, suppressed and hidden in the realm of unconsciousness, continue governing the lives of modern people. References: Carr, Joan. “The Forest’s Revenge”: Subconscious Motivation in “The Wild Duck.” The Modern Language Review, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Oct., 1977), pp. 845-856. Ibsen, Henrik. The Wild Duck. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. Available at: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/modeng/modeng0.browse.html Read More