 Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
THE WILD DUCK Key Literary Elements Setting The play is set in Ibsen's native Norway. The first act specifically takes place in the home of a wealthy businessman by the name of Werle. When the curtain rises, Werle is throwing a party supposedly in honor of his prodigal son Gregers, who has come home after an absence of almost seventeen years. The toast, however, is raised not for Gregers, but in honor of Mrs. Sorby, whom Werle plans to marry. The remaining acts take place at the studio of Hialmar Ekdal, a photographer and a dreamer. The attic behind his studio is very important throughout the play because it houses the wild duck. Hialmar constantly makes improvements to the attic for the bird. It is also in the attic that Hedvig commits suicide. Table of Contents
Characters Major Characters Hialmar Ekdal - the protagonist of the play, though a terribly flawed one. He is a lazy, idle dreamer who lets Gina, his wife, and Hedvig, his daughter, do all the work, including the tasks to be performed in his photography studio. He naively nurtures a dream of redeeming his father's name through a great photographic invention. When Gregers reveals the truth about his wife and daughter to him, he does not have the nobility of spirit to face the truth and forgive Gina; instead, he demands to know whether Hedvig is his daughter or Werle's. When he does not get a definite answer, he starts doubting Hedvig's love for him and demands that she give up her life as proof of her love. In answer to his demands, the devoted Hedvig commits suicide, an act that shatters Hialmar. Gregers Werle - a wealthy and unattractive young man whose philosophy is a "claim of the ideal." Disgusted with his father, the realist, he leaves home for a period of seventeen years to work in the family mining business. When he finally returns home, Gregers confronts his father about sending his mother to an early grave and about his many affairs. When he learns that his father has discarded one of his mistresses, Gina, by encouraging Hialmar to marry her, Gregers is furious that his friend has been duped. He goes to Hialmar's house to tell his friend the truth about his wife and daughter. Hialmar cannot accept the truth and destroys his daughter in the process. Gregers is partially responsible for Hedvig's death. Hedvig - the fourteen year old daughter of Gina and Hialmar, whose eyesight is failing. Like her mother, she adores and pampers her father. When he questions whether or not she is really his daughter and rejects her love, she is totally distressed, for there is no way to prove whether Hialmar or Werle is her father. When Gregers goads her into sacrificing the wild duck, with which she identifies herself completely, she also sacrifices herself, trying to prove her love to her father. Her suicide disturbs all the major characters in the play. Table of Contents | |
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