Ghosts & The Wild Duck (Ibsen)
This is an excerpt from the paper...
Ibsen introduced realism to the modern stage and established its conventions so powerfully that his is still the dominant stage technique. He substituted middle-class protagonists for kings and queens and wrote prose dialogue rather than poetry. He said, "My plays . . . are not tragedies in the old meaning of the word; what I have wanted to portray is human beings and that is just why I did not want them to speak the language of the gods." Two such plays during his realism period are Ghosts and The Wild Duck. Ghosts, written in 1881, and The Wild Duck, written in 1884, represent the breadth of Ibsen's realism. The Wild Duck and Ghosts are typical of Ibsen's dominant themes: the presentness of the past; people's search for their place in life; the effects of idealism as a social force; and the problem of people's ultimate freedom. The presentness of the past is apparent in both plays. The very title, Ghosts, shows how the past comes back to haunt the characters. With the presence of Regina, Mrs. Ilving is forever reminded of her husband's wildness. When Oswald makes advances toward Regina, Mrs. Ilving realizes that the son has inherited the father's tastes. As Mrs. Ilving says, "I am timid and faint-hearted because of the ghosts that hang about me." In The Wild Duck, the past is shown through old relationships. Childhood friends Gregers and Hjalmar finally see each other after many years. Old Eindal serves as a reminder of what happened in his business deal
. . .
the circumstances that have made the characters what they are. In The Wild Duck, on the other hand, a spatial tableau, rather than a causal chain, is laid out. Two whole acts are filled with a detailed presentation of the daily life of the Eindals: their daily occupations, their manner of talking and the make-believe world they have built up around them to make existence interesting. How they come to develop into these people with these habits of living is irrelevant. Remarks about their past seem obligatory incidentals rather than revelations of primary importance.
The major character in Ghosts is the mother. She, not Gregers and Hjalmar, is the tragic sufferer. As George Bernard Shaw said, "For suffering to affect us as tragic, there must be a personality fine and firm and great enough to support a degree of affliction altogether beyond the range of the average mental." In other words, the greater the sufferer's capacity for enduring anguish, the more profound the possibilities of tragedy.
Mrs. Ilving displays a rare combination of vigor, poise, and sweetness of character. Her spiritual superiority is apparent from the moment of her first appearance. She displays tact and sensitivity when discussing with the Pas
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Wild Duck, Bernard Shaw, Engstrand Regina, Hjalmar Eindal, Gregers Hjalmar, Duck Ibsen's, Ghosts Ilving's, , Duck Ghosts, Hjalmar Gina, wild duck, effects idealism, according expert, characters wild, characters wild duck, presentness past, people's search life, people's search, search life, idealism social, people's ultimate freedom, social force, effects idealism social, wild duck ghosts, duck ghosts,
Approximate Word count = 2341
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Ghosts & The Wild Duck (Ibsen)
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
