Wild Duck Journal 4:

Journal 4: Compare how the authors have explored disguise and deceit, and with what effect.

Sophocles, in his tragedy Oedipus the King, disguises Oedipus' affliction (his fate) through Oedipus' own flaws: his pride, temper, and inability to see despite having eyes. Oedipus is still blind to his fate even when Tiresias reveals it to him. He spun a web of deceit around his own life, ignoring all the facts, and the truth of what others said to him. Likewise, Ibsen explores disguise and deceit. He disguises all the people of The Wild Duck as the Wild Duck or the clever Dog, thus leading to the point discussed in a previous journal. While the duck encompasses all the lies of the Ekdal lives, and Oedipus spins his own demise and ultimately falls to the fate of the gods, both authors manipulate what is hidden to the reader and what is hidden to the characters, spinning a juxtaposing web of lies. In Oedipus, all Grecian citizens already knew of the story of Oedipus. However, Sophocles spins the deception not around Oedipus' famous actions, but around his revelation of knowledge, of the truth, to point to the common place idiom that ignorance is bliss, but also to speak as a message to the audience that what really lies in one's path to truth is oneself.
Ibsen follows a little bit in these same steps, but he shrouds the characters with disguise and deceit to convey the emotional loss of living falsely, as in Hjalmar's case, when he is clouded into thinking that all he is doing is going to help his decent family, until he learns that Hedvig isn't his daughter.