Wild Duck Journal 5:

Journal 5: Literary.

Henrik Ibsen, author of the tragedy The Wild Duck, explores the use of irony. Throughout the entire play, Ibsen reveals knowledge through Gregers' pusruit of clearing Hjalmar's "spiritual tumult". But in fact, Ibsen never directly states what he is thinking. Not even does his revealer of truth directly say what is meant. The irony is the truth comes deceptively, through Gregers' continual nagging. Also, Rellings is used as a "doctor" in the play, to sweep aside Gregers' spiritual conviction of truth and places pyschological diagnostics in place to explain the family of the Ekdals. Ironically, the same Relling places a diagnostic on Gregers, saying that he suffers from too much integrity.
Ibsen also uses dramatic irony with the Livslognen that the whole Ekdal family is living under. Livslognen is literally the Life-lie in Norwegian. This is the word that Relling assigns to the "ideals" that Gregers places on Hjalmar. However, later on, Hjalmar is talking of the ideals, and because he doesn't know that they are really the life-illusions that Rellings brought forth, he continues to live in his lie until the very end of the novel, in which Hedvig commits suicide.

Journal 5: Literary.

Henrik Ibsen, author of the tragedy The Wild Duck, explores the use of irony. Throughout the entire play, Ibsen reveals knowledge through Gregers' pusruit of clearing Hjalmar's "spiritual tumult". But in fact, Ibsen never directly states what he is thinking. Not even does his revealer of truth directly say what is meant. The irony is the truth comes deceptively, through Gregers' continual nagging. Also, Rellings is used as a "doctor" in the play, to sweep aside Gregers' spiritual conviction of truth and places pyschological diagnostics in place to explain the family of the Ekdals. Ironically, the same Relling places a diagnostic on Gregers, saying that he suffers from too much integrity.
Ibsen also uses dramatic irony with the Livslognen that the whole Ekdal family is living under. Livslognen is literally the Life-lie in Norwegian. This is the word that Relling assigns to the "ideals" that Gregers places on Hjalmar. However, later on, Hjalmar is talking of the ideals, and because he doesn't know that they are really the life-illusions that Rellings brought forth, he continues to live in his lie until the very end of the novel, in which Hedvig commits suicide.

marked passages

Hialmar.

After a past like yours? There are certain claims -- I may almost call them claims of the ideal --

(*"Livslognen," literally "the life-lie." )

_____________


Gina.

You don't suppose grandfather can get on without his rabbits.

Hialmar.

He must just get used to doing without them. Have not I to sacrifice very much greater things than rabbits!

_______________
Hialmar.

Oh those two brutes, those slaves of all the vices! A hat must be procured. [ (Takes another piece of bread and butter.)]
Some arrangements must be made. For I have no mind to throw away my life, either.
[ [Looks for something on the tray.]

Gina.

What are you looking for?

Hialmar.

Butter.
_______________
[ GREGERS WERLE enters from the passage.]

Gregers
[ (somewhat surprised).]

What, -- are you sitting here, Hialmar?

Hialmar
[ (rises hurriedly).]

I had sunk down from fatigue.

Gregers.

You have been having breakfast, I see.

Hialmar.

The body sometimes makes its claims felt too.
______________________
Gregers
[ (after a short silence).]

I never dreamed that this would be the end of it. Do you really feel it a necessity to leave house and home?

The setting of most of the play is in Hjalmar's home. It is a studio with photographing equipment and photo developing equipment. It is where most of the play unfolds, and so, in this way, is a photograph development area of the whole story, where from the darkroom (the questions that the characters have) truth arises.
_____________________
Hialmar
[ (wanders about restlessly).]

What would you have me do? -- I am not fitted to bear unhappiness, Gregers. I must feel secure and at peace in my surroundings.

-------

Hjalmar, like Relling's had diagnosed, feels that he is biologically incapabale of bearing unhappiness. Earlier, Relling had turned away from Gregers' idea of Hjalmar's "spiritual tumult" and turned to saying it was a psychological problem. Then he goes on to say that Gregers suffers from integrity fever.

___________

Gregers.

Hedvig! Is it Hedvig you are talking of? How should she blot out your sunlight?

Ironic b'c Hedvig is the one turning blind

________

Hialmar.

It was that blackguard Relling that urged me to it.

Gregers.

Relling?

Hialmar.

Yes, it was he that first made me realise my aptitude for making some notable discovery in photography.

Gregers.

Aha -- it was Relling!

Hialmar.

Oh, I have been so truly happy over it! Not so much for the sake of the invention itself, as because Hedvig believed in it -- believed in it with a child's whole eagerness of faith. -- At least, I have been fool enough to go and imagine that she believed in it.

________

Hialmar
[ (without answering).]

How unutterably I have loved that child! How unutterably happy I have felt every time I came home to my humble room, and she flew to meet me, with her sweet little blinking eyes. Oh, confiding fool that I have been! I loved her unutterably; -- and I yielded myself up to the dream, the delusion, that she loved me unutterably in return.

WHAT? "unutterably"?

___________

Ekdal
[ (quietly).]

The woods avenge themselves

Motif of the woods/garret

_______

Gregers
[ (huskily).]

In the depths of the sea --

Referencing again to the Flying Dutchman, the broken ship.

_______

Hialmar.

And I! I hunted her from me like an animal! And she crept terrified into the garret and died for love of me! [ (Sobbing.)]
I can never atone to her! I can never tell her -- ! [ (Clenches his hands and cries, upwards.)]
O thou above -- ! If thou be indeed! Why hast thou done this thing to me?

Change of dialect?

_______

Gregers
[ (looking straight before him).]

In that case, I am glad that my destiny is what is.

Relling.

May I inquire, -- what is your destiny?

Gregers
[ (going).]

To be the thirteenth at table.

__________

Gregers
[ (calls out to HIALMAR).]

She has shot the wild duck herself!

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.

Marked quotes

Hialmar.
"Bad ways" do you call them? Little do you know what a man goes through when he is in grief and despair -- especially a man of my fiery temperament.
________________

Hialmar.

And I, too, thought my home such a pleasant one. That was a delusion. Where shall I now find the elasticity of spirit to bring my invention into the world of reality? Perhaps it will die with me; and then it will be your past, Gina, that will have killed it.

______________________

Hialmar.

I ask you, what becomes of the breadwinner's dream? When I used to lie in there on the sofa and brood over my invention, I had a clear enough presentiment that it would sap my vitality to the last drop. I felt even then that the day when I held the patent in my hand -- that day -- would bring my -- release. And then it was my dream that you should live on after me, the dead inventor's well-to-do widow.

Irony - The audience knows Hjalmar to be the one who eats the bread literally.
______________
Hialmar.

Oh, the whole dream has vanished. It is all over now. All over!

____________

Hialmar.

In certain cases, it is impossible to disregard the claim of the ideal. Yet, as the breadwinner of a family, I cannot but writhe and groan under it. I can tell you it is no joke for a man without capital to attempt the repayment of a long-standing obligation, over which, so to speak, the dust of oblivion had gathered. But it cannot be helped: the Man in me demands his rights.

___________

Hialmar.

And yet, after all, I cannot but recognise the guiding finger of fate. He is going blind.

_____________

[

[Silence. HEDVIG, discouraged, looks first at one and then at the other, trying to divine their frame of mind.

]

__________

Hialmar.

What is all this hocus-pocus that I am to be in the dark about!

___________

Hialmar.

I don't want to attain it. Never, never! My hat! (Takes his hat.) My home has fallen in ruins about me. [ (Bursts into tears.)]
Gregers, I have no child!

______________

Hedvig.

In the morning it's light, you know, and there's nothing in particular to be afraid of.

What we can't see is the most terrifying

________________

Wild Duck Journal 3:

Hedvig
[ (standing by the table, and looking searchingly at her).]

I think all this is very strange.

_____________

Conversation between the Wild Duck, Ibsen, and Oedipus:

Ibsen: Morning, Sophocles.

Oedipus: Morning Henrik, g'day Duck.

Duck: Quack ('Tis a fine day for a swim. Alas, I have a wounded wing and, just like you Oedipus, I cannot take pleasure in what should be mine.)

Oedipus: Oh? What is it you mean?

Duck: Quack (I mean the blindness in your sight, the prophecy stabbing you in the back.)

Ibsen: You know, Duck, I'm not too far away from you either. You used to be a king of fowl, the Wild Duck, but now you swim in a bucket. I used to live in a great mansion, trees towering over me. Now I am a humble playwright. Although, we are still more different than alike.

Oedipus: Yes, I'd agree with Ibsen. I am similar, but still distant from all you are.

Duck: Quack (Please tell.)

Oedipus: I am the Blind Beggar. The man with lost judgement. But I have found resolution in my punishment. I see only false living in your apparent comfort. Just like your family, the Ekdals.

Duck: Quack (I know what you mean. Those Ekdals just spoil me too darn much.)

Ibsen: That isn't what is meant, Duck.

Duck: Quack Quack (Then what?)

Ibsen: You are living a life of corpulence and yet you retain your title of Wild Duck. Your Ekdals lead lives of fantasy. Hedvig, who ironically is losing sight as you lose vitality, is finding comfort in the books she gazes upon. Hjalmar, Old Ekdal's son, is working on a invention that consumes his life. Old Ekdal has been reduced to copying booklets by hand, and he still fantasizes being a lieutenant again. It is almost shameful.

Duck: Quack.

Oedipus: Alas, the duck is only that. Quack.

some marked quotes. (i have no book)

Gregers.

Not exactly to that. I don't say that your wing has been broken; but you have strayed into a poisonous marsh, Hialmar; an insidious disease has taken hold of you, and you have sunk down to die in the dark.

___________________________

Hialmar.

Now, my dear Gregers, pray do not go on about disease and poison; I am not used to that sort of talk. In my house nobody ever speaks to me about unpleasant things.

___________________________

Gregers
[ (leaves the table).]

No airing you can give will drive out the taint I mean.

Hialmar.

Taint!

Gina.

Yes, what do you say to that, Ekdal!

Relling.

Excuse me -- may it not be you yourself that have brought the taint from those mines up there?

Gregers.

It is like you to call what I bring into this house a taint.

Relling
[ (goes up to him).]

Look here, Mr. Werle, junior: I have a strong suspicion that you are still carrying about

---

-69-

that "claim of the ideal" large as life, in your coat-tail pocket.
Gregers.

I carry it in my breast.

_________________________

Relling.

Well, I'll tell you, Mrs. Ekdal. He is suffering from an acute attack of integrity.