ing. Oswald, who spent time in Paris as an artist, returns home to find himself bored, tired and, most important, a victim of a lie. In Wild Duck, the characters' searches are more obvious. Gregers happens to know that Gina, before her marriage, was the cast-off mistress of his own father; because she has not told her husband this, Gregers conceives their life as founded on a lie. He accordingly sets himself to work out the couple's salvation by establishing frank relations between the pair. According to one expert, "The dependence of family unity on a fiction of appearance, even if it is fostered by a consenting inner circle, is precisely what makes it so vulnerable to Gregers's attack." Hjalmar figures it is his place to re-establish the name and fortunes of his father. In order to accomplish this, he works on an invention.
The next theme is the effects of idealism as a social force. According to one expert, "You find idealism everywhere in Ibsen if it is defined as such: an idealist is a man prepared to sacrifice all the normal expectations of life and happiness in pursuit of some and which for him represents a higher value. To other people in the play, the end which he pursues may seem incoherent or incomprehensible." In Ghosts, Mrs. Ilving's idealism is evident in her desire to open the orphanage as a memorial to her husband. By doing this, she thinks she would be putting to rest the past and their deceitful marriage. The effects of her idealism are widespread. Oswald learns the truth about his father and is too weak to take all the deception. As a result, Mrs. Ilving is forced to take part in the death of her own son. This leads one expert to ask, "At the end of Ghosts, who can bear to gain what has been gained?" In The Wild Duck, there are more idealists. Gregers is willing to sacrifice everything to wake up his friend, Hjalmar, to the truth about his marriage. This represents a higher value to him than ...