Irony in The Wild Duck and Oedipus the King

Tragic irony is one type of dramatic irony. In tragic irony the words and actions of the characters contradict the real situation occurring, one of which spectators are aware. Dramatic irony generates dramatic conflict, in that one or more characters rely upon something that the audience knows to be untrue. In Henrik Ibsen's study of family illusions, The Wild Duck, and in Sophocles' study of a well-meaning but misguided King, Oedipus The King; the authors rely heavily on tragic irony for impact. In The Wild Duck, Hjalmar Ekdal is unconscious of the fact that despite his image as a loving husband and father, he is a cruel, uncaring tyrant. In Oedipus The King, Oedipus is unaware that the murderer he seeks to right things in Thebes is, indeed, him. By using tragic irony to propel the action of Hjalmar and Oedipus, Ibsen and Sophocles respectively create dramatic conflict because we are aware of what these, ultimately tragic, characters are not.

The three acts of dramatic irony are installation, exploitation and resolution. We see these three stages in the tragic irony employed by Henrik Ibsen in The Wild Duck, in the character and actions of Hjalmar Ekdal, a married man with an adolescent daughter named Hedvig. We know early in the play that Gina is a former servant girl in wealthy industrialist Hakon Werle's house. He has an affair with her and, when she becomes pregnant, he marries her off to Hjalmar, a former

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gs from the most hidden depths of his personality, which he himself can neither understand nor control" (845). This leads to the tragic end of the Ekdal family, who can no longer live behind their fa�ade of illusions. In Sophocles' Oedipus The King, we have another tragic character unaware of his real nature, though a more sympathetic one. Oedipus is viewed as "greatest in all men's eyes" (Sophocles 112). He is more empathic than Hjalmar, someone who genuinely cares about his people and wants to do what is right. Unaware that he is the murderer of his father he seeks, Oedipus sees it as his duty to bring the guilty party to justice, "I would be blind to misery not to pity my people kneeling at my feet" (Sophocles 129). We see Oedipus' stubborn pride and strong-willed determination help him remain unaware he is the murderer of his father, or the installation phase of dramatic irony. Dodd notes it is misguided to see Oedipus as only "a victim purely of fate" (37). This is because his unawareness propels his fate. We also see that Oedipus' words contradict what we know when he vows to get the killer and benefit his own reputation. As he tells us, "I shall rid us of this pollution, not for the sake of a distant rela

Category: Literature - I