The Wild Duck By Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen and the story

of his life

The
father of
modern
drama
 Henrik Ibsen was born in Skien (Norway) in 1828 and grew up as the oldest of
five siblings. His parents were the merchant Knud Ibsen and Marichen Ibsen.

Henrik Ibsen (1828 - 1906) is one of the very greatest names in world literature.
He was a central figure in the modern break-through in the intellectual life of
Europe, and is considered the father of modern drama. His plays are still highly
topical, and continue to be staged in all parts of the world. It is said that Ibsen is
the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare.

He is called "the father of modern drama" because his extremely influential
plays dealing with domestic life dealt with some of the most shocking issues of
the day - venereal disease, a wife abandoning her husband and children to
discover her own worth as a human being, suicide, etc. He also wrote a few verse
dramas, among them "Peer Gynt“

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) published his last drama, "When We Dead Awaken", in
1899, and he called it a dramatic epilogue. It was also destined to be the epilogue of his
life's work, because illness prevented him from writing more. For half of a century he
had devoted his life and his energies to the art of drama, and he had won international
acclaim as the greatest and most influential dramatist of his time. He knew that he had
gone further than anyone in putting Norway on the map
  Henrik Ibsen was also a major poet, and he published a collection of poems in
1871. However, drama was the focus of his real lyrical spirit. For a period of
many hard years, he faced harsh conflict. But he finally triumphed over the
conservatism and aesthetic prejudices of the contemporary critics and
audiences. More than anyone, he gave theatrical art a new vitality by bringing
into European bourgeois drama an ethical gravity, a psychological depth, and a
social significance which the theater had lacked since the days of Shakespeare.
In this manner, Ibsen strongly contributed to giving European drama a vitality
and artistic quality comparable to the ancient Greek tragedies.

 Norwegian playwright, one of "the four great ones" with Alexander Kielland,
Jonas Lie and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson of the 19th-century Norwegian literature.
Ibsen is generally acknowledged as the founder of modern prose drama. He
moved away from the Romantic style, and brought the problems and ideas of
the day onto the stage of his time. Ibsen's famous plays, Brand (1866 ) and Peer
Gynt (1867), were originally not intended for the stage; they were "reading
dramas
 His plays:_ When we dead awaken , Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Little Eyolf, Peer
Gynt, A doll’s house ….
 
The Wild Duck
 The Wild Duck is a tragedy with comic episodes. Henrik Ibsen himself
characterized the play as a tragicomedy. It depicts ordinary life realistically
instead of romantically and sentimentally, a revolutionary concept in Ibsen's
time.

 In this manner, Ibsen strongly contributed to giving European drama a vitality

and artistic quality comparable to the ancient Greek tragedies."
 Ibsen wrote the play in Dano-Norwegian, a mixture of the Danish language and
Norwegian dialects.

Setting
 The time is the early 1880s. The action takes place over three days in an
unidentified town in Norway. Act I takes place in the home of Hkon
Werle, a wealthy businessman. The rest of the play takes place in the
apartment of photographer Hjalmar Ekdal and his family.
 CHARACTERS :
1. Hkon Werle.
2. Mrs. Werle
3. Gregers Werle
4. Old Ekdal
5. Hjalmar Ekdal
6. Gina Hansen Ekdal
7. Hedvig
8. Mrs. Bertha Srby
9. Doctor Relling
10. Others (Molvik, Pettersen, Jensen, Grberg, Chamberlain Balle,
Chamberlain Flor, Chamberlain Kaspersen, Porter, Two
Sweethearts, Ship Captain, Madam Eriksen, Porter's Wife).
 Short Summary :
This play is about the Ekdal's family .

This family consist of Hialmar the father ,

Gina the mother and Hedvig the daughter . They were a

happy family until, Gregers Werle appears in their life
and change it up side down .Gregers tells the family
many tragic facts , leads to the distraction of the family
. He claimed that he calls for the ideal life . His idealism
leads Hedvig to kill herself at the end of the play .
Protagonists: Gregers Werle, Hjalmar Ekdal.

 Hkon Werle: Wealthy businessman whose affair with a young woman in the
distant past sets in motion the action of the play.

 Mrs. Werle: Late wife of Hkon Werle. The memory of her plays a role in the
rancorous relationship between Hkon and his son, Gregers Werle.

Gregers Werle: Son of Hkon Werle. Young Werle is little, mean-spirited(un
fair), and vengeful. Rather than right wrongs, he creates them. In his
pursuit(chaste) of truth and idealism, he alienates himself from his father,
precipitates turmoil in the Ekdal household, and indirectly causes the death of
Hedvig Ekdal. Although he has laid bare a shocking truth about his father
namely, his dalliance with Gina Ekdal in the distant past his vision of reality
blots out the good that his father has done to redeem himself. It also fails to
acknowledge the damage his meddlesome fact-finding could and did do to the
Ekdal family. His only motivation is to expose he truth, whatever the cost.
Ironically, he remains blind to the truth about himself to the very end of the
play.
Old Ekdal: Disgraced(shamed) former business associate of Hkon Werle.

Hjalmar Ekdal: Son of Old Ekdal. Hjalmar is self-centered, lazy, and
laughably mediocre. As a family man and provider, he relies on the
benefactions of Werle, the hard work of Gina, and the quixotic dream
of a revolutionary invention to get from one day to the next. His
character begins to reveal itself early on, in Act 1, when he is too
ashamed to acknowledge the presence of his father at the Werle dinner
party. Although he feels awkward and tongue-tied at the gathering and
keeps to himself except for his conversation with Gregers, he tells his
family after he arrives home that the guests coaxed him to recite
something but that he denied them the pleasure.

Gina Hansen Ekdal: Wife of Hjalmar Ekdal. She is practical, hard-working,

down-to-earth, and forgiving. Although homespun and unsophisticated, she has
common sense and a firm grasp on reality. She is several years older than Hjalmar.

Hedvig: Daughter of Hjalmar and Gina Ekdal. Hedvig is about to turn fourteen.
Mrs. Bertha Srby: Hkon Werle's housekeeper and
wife-to-be.
Doctor Relling: Physician who lives in an
apartment on the floor below Hjalmar Ekdal's
apartment.

Molvik: strong and failed theology student who

lives with Relling.
Pettersen: Servant in Hkon Werle's house.

Jensen: Hired waiter in Hkon Werle's house.

Grberg: Hkon Werle's bookkeeper.

Chamberlain Balle: Guest at Hkon Werle's dinner

party.
Chamberlain Flor: Guest at Hkon Werle's
dinner party.
Chamberlain Kaspersen: Guest at Hkon
Werle's dinner party.
Gentlemen: Guests at Hkon Werle's dinner
party.
Porter: Doorkeeper at the apartment
building where Hjalmar and Gina Ekdal
live.
Porter's Wife: Woman who cleans the
apartment of Gregers Werle after he
throws water on a stove fire.
Madam Eriksen: Keeper of a tavern frequented by Old
Ekdal.
Ship Captain: Seaman called "the Flying Dutchman,"
although he was not Dutch. He once lived in the Ekdal
apartment. Hedvig plays with curios he left behind after
he drowned at sea.
Two Sweethearts: Couple whose photograph Gina Ekdal
takes while her husband is out (referred to in Act III and
at the beginning of Act IV).
Aunts Who Reared Hjalmar Ekdal
Mrs. Srby's Former Husband, a Veterinarian Who
Beat Her
 Plot
Hjalmar Ekdal, a photographer, lives with his wife Gina and daughter
Hedvig in a combined studio and apartment with a large adjoining loft
where they keep chickens and rabbits. Living with the family is old Ekdal, a
former deputy who was earlier imprisoned for a financial offence for which
Werle, a wholesaler, was actually responsible. Gina was Werle's
housekeeper earlier. At the beginning of the play his son, Gregers Werle,
has come home to attend a dinner given by his father. Gregers discovers
that Gina Ekdal was his father's mistress before she married Hjalmar, and
that his father had brought the two of them together and helped them
financially.
 Gregers now considers it his duty to get Hjalmar to see the truth
behind his marriage so that he and Gina can live together in a
marriage based on truth. Hjalmar confronts Gina with her
background and asks her whether he is Hedvig's father. Gina
replies that she does not know, and in distraction Hjalmar rejects
Hedvig as his daughter. Meanwhile Gregers has convinced Hedvig
that she can win back her father's love by sacrificing the wild duck
that lives in the loft and to which she is deeply attached. But Hedvig
shoots herself instead of the wild duck, and the play ends with
general despair at the death of the child.
 Climax
The climax of a play or another literary work,
such as a short story or a novel, can be defined as
(1) the turning point at which the conflict begins to
resolve itself for better or worse, or as (2) the final and
most exciting event in a series of events.
 The climax of The Wild Duck occurs in Act IV, according to the
first definition, when Gina admits that she had a sexual
encounter with Hkon Werle before her marriage to Hjalmar
and that she does not know whether Hjalmar or Werle is the
father of Hedvig. According to the second definition, the climax
occurs when Hedvig commits suicide.
 Conflict
Hkon Werle is the main source of conflict in the play.
Consider that, preceding the action of the play, he:

Fathered Gregers Werle, who dedicates himself as a

young adult to revealing ugly truths that cause domestic
turmoil.

Had an antagonistic relationship with his wife, which

helped motivate Gregers to turn against his father.

Took part in a business deal that disgraced and sent to

jail Hjalmar Ekdal's father.
Had an concern with a housekeeper, Gina Hansen, then arranged her
marriage to Hjalmar Ekdal. During her first year of marriage, Gina Hansen
Ekdal bore a child, Hedvig. Whether Hkon Werle or Gina's husband, Hjalmar,
fathered it is unknown. When Hjalmar learns of his wife's past and his
daughter's dubious parentage, he rejects Gina and Hedvig.

Provided money for Hjalmar Ekdal's photography training and began

employing Hjalmar's father after his release from prison, gestures that
Gregers Werle believes were intended to buy the silence of the Ekdals
regarding Hkon Werle's past behavior.

Shot and wounded the wild duck that his servant gave to the Ekdals. Hedvig
and Old Ekdal nurse the duck back to health and prize it as a pet. Hjalmar
curses the animal after he learns about his wife's past. Gregers attempts to
persuade Hedvig to shoot the duck as a way to win back the affection of her
father.
 Themes
1. Realism vs. Idealism

The major theme of the play is realism vs. idealism. From the very
first act, the antagonism between the two concepts is established.
Hakon Werle, the father, is a realist about life, love, and business.
He has allowed Old Ekdal to take all the blame and go to prison for
their plan to cut down lumber from public lands. He has
encouraged Hialmar to marry Gina, Werle's mistress, so that he
can extricate himself from the relationship. He is also able to see
the worth in Ms. Sorby, his housekeeper, who is equally as realistic
and truthful about life as he is.
In contrast to his father, Gregers is a total idealist. He has romantic,
pre-conceived notions about how life, love, and business should be, and
he believes that his father has broken all the rules. He is horrified that
Hialmar, his friend, is married to Gina without knowing the truth.
Wanting him to have a more ideal marriage, Gregers decides to tell
Hialmar the truth about Gina; but Hialmar did not want to know the
truth. He is not noble enough to forgive Gina for her past and even turns
against Hedvig, convinced that she is Werle's daughter.
2. Self-Delusion(illusion):

Gregers Werle sees himself as a man of character, noble and

incorruptible, whose mission is to right wrongs and champion the cause
of truth. Hjalmar Ekdal sees himself as a good husband, father, and
son, as well as a brilliant inventor. In short, these two men are heroes to
themselves. But neither recognizes his own shortcomings; neither sees
himself as he truly is.
Both men's visions of reality are no less faulty than demented
Lieutenant Ekdal, who goes on hunting expeditions amid old Christmas
trees in the garret.
Rather than face the reality of his business scandal, he escapes it
entirely to live in an illusory world. And then there is Molvik. He
repeatedly deludes himself into believing that alcohol will cure his ills,
whatever they are.
3. Concealing vs. Revealing the Truth:

In his extreme idealism, Gregers Werle believes in revealing the

truth whatever the cost. In his extreme pragmatism, Doctor
Relling believes in hiding the truth whenever it has the potential
to cause harm. Ironically, while laying bare the truth about his
father and the Ekdal family, Gregers fails to recognize the truth
about himself that he is a meddlesome, vengeful snot. And, just
as ironically, in recommending the concealment of truth, Relling
presents the truth to Werle round, unvarnished, and naked.
4. Revenge:

Revenge taints the actions of Gregers Werle.

Although he declares that his conscience and his
idealism drive his mission to expose the truth about
his father, clearly his overriding goal is to punish his
father. Gregers' animosity is a legacy of his childhood
days, when he and his mother sided against Mr. Werle
in a bitter rivalry. As the elder Werle tells Gregers in
Act I, "You and she always held together. It was she
who turned you against me, from the first."
5. Shame

Shame motivates Hjalmar Werle on several occasions. In Act I, for example,

he avoids acknowledging the presence of his disgraced father when the old
man passes through Hkon Werle's study
while Hjalmar is there after the dinner.
On the same occasion, when he speaks with Gregers Werle for the first time
in at least sixteen years, he depicts his wife as "by no means without culture,"
in as much as she has learned from him as well as from the "remarkable men"
the Ekdals know.
The fact is that Gina is common and unsophisticated and frequently
mispronounces even simple words. When Hjalmar returns home from the
dinner, he is ashamed to admit to his family that a dinner guest embarrassed
him in front of others by exposing Hjalmar's lack of knowledge of wines.
Instead, Hjalmar pretends that he enlightened the guests about wine vintages.
 FORESHADOWING

 Many events in the play foreshadow what follows them. For

example, the mess Gregers makes of his room while building a

stove fire foreshadows the mess he makes of the Ekdals' life.
Perhaps the most obvious foreshadowing in the play occurs
when Hjalmar emerges from the garret with a doubled-
barreled pistol and warns Hedvig not to touch it because it
still has a bullet in one of its barrels.
 Examples of Symbols
 Gregers Werle's Smoky Room:
After renting a room from Hjalmar Ekdal, Werle builds a fire in the stove
and smokes up the room. Then he throws water on the fire, leaving a
puddle on the floor. The mess he has made of the room appears to
symbolize and foreshadow the mess he will make of the Ekdal family's life.

 Garret (upper floor) :

In this dark room behind sliding doors, Old Ekdal spends time hunting in a
"forest" made of old Christmas trees. He and his son have stocked the
room with rabbits to serve as bears that Old Ekdal shoots on his hunting
expeditions. Hjalmar helps his father maintain the patch of "wilderness,"
which also contains pigeons, hens, and the wild duck. The garret
symbolizes Old Ekdal's illusion of himself as a great hunter.
The Wild Duck:

While hunting, Hkon Werle shoots a wild duck but only wounds it. Werle's servant,

Pettersen, later gives the duck to Old Ekdal, who takes it home and, with the help of his

son and granddaughter, Hedvig, cares for it in the garret. Hedvig is especially fond of it.

The duck symbolizes Hedvig, an innocent victim of the strife in her home, as well as

others in the play would like the duck have been wounded by the circumstances of their

lives. Hkon Werle alludes to the duck when he tells his son, Gregers, "There are people

in the world who dive to the bottom the moment they get a couple of slugs in

their body, and never come to the surface again" (Act I). An observation of Hedvig

in Act III indicates that the duck also symbolizes Hedvig's parentageu0097that is,

whether she is the daughter of Hkon Werle or Hjalmar. Hedvig tells Gregers Werle:

"[T]here is so much that is strange about the wild duck. Nobody knows her,

and nobody knows where she came from either."

 The Invention: Hjalmar's unfinished invention symbolizes his illusion
of himself as a great man. Working on it enables him to entertain his
heroic vision of himself; finishing it would force him to expose to the
world the mediocre quality of his ideas.

 Lights and Colors: He uses the theme of light to contrast

Old Werle, a stingy rich man, with Old Ekdal, a poor helpless
man. Ibsen connects the color green with the loss of
eyesight of Old Werle.

A possible affair between Old Werle and Gina, Hedvig's

mother, may suggest the cause of Hedvig's loss of sight. By
using sun and moon, Ibsen establishes the atmosphere of the
scene.
 Ibsen employs the image of light to portray certain
characteristics in order to construct the plot and to adjust the
mood of the scene.
Werle: Some people in this world only need to get a couple of slugs in them
and they go plunging right down to the depths, and they never come up again.

Gina: Is Gregers still as awful as ever.

Hjalmar: She’s the only one, yes. She’s our greatest joy in life, and …

she’s also our deepest sorrow, Gregers.

Ekdal: Felling, eh? …….. That’s a dangerous business, that. That brings

trouble. The forests avenge themselves.

Ekdal: She did that. Always do that, wild ducks do. Go plunging right

to the bottom … as deep as they can get, my dear sir … hold on with
their beaks to the weeds and stuff … all other mess you find down
there. Then they never come up again.
 Relling: Personality? Him! If he ever showed any signs of anything as abnormal as a
personality, it was all thoroughly cleared out of him, root and branch, when he was still a lad
– that I can assure you.

 Relling: While I remember, Mr. Werle junior – don’t use this fancy word ‘ideals’;
we’ve got a plain word that’s good enough: ‘lies’.

 Gregers: Dr. Relling, I shall not rest until I have rescued Hjalmar Ekdal from your
clutches!

 Relling: So much the worse for him. Take the life-lie away from the average man
and straight away you take away his happiness.

 Gregers: Ah, if only you’d had your eyes opened to what really makes life worth
while! If you had the genuine, joyous, courageous spirit of self-sacrifice, then you
would see how quickly he would come back to you. But I still have faith in you,
Hedvig.
 Symbols
The wild duck
The Wild Duck is littered with weighty and heavy-handed symbolism.
Certainly the play's chief symbol is the wild duck. The duck serves as a
"quilting point" for the characters' fantasies of themselves and those around
them. Thus Ekdal figures as the wild duck in having been betrayed and shot
down by his old partner Werle. He has sunk into his reveries never to return.
Gregers imagines Hialmar as the wild duck in his entrapment in the
"poisonous marshes" of his household, the tangle of deceit that makes his
marriage possible. In contrast, he imagines himself in the figure of the clever
dog that would rescue the wounded bird. He also considers himself the wild
duck in becoming the Ekdals' adopted tenant. Finally, Hedvig figures as the
wild duck in that she loses her family and place of origin. She is in some
sense her father's adopted child.
Hedvig's doubling with the wild duck particularly distinguishes itself from
that of the rest of the cast in that it takes the substitution of metaphor to a
lethal conclusion. This shift occurs when the two figures both become the
object of sacrifice. When Hialmar abandons Hedvig, Gregers will exhort her
to sacrifice the duck, her most precious possession, to prove her love for her
father. Hedvig will enter the garret to kill the duck but end by killing herself.
 Title
The wild Duck” as a title is most apt for this play because it gives us a definite clue
to the major theme of the play – the value of illusions in the average man’s life. The
wild duck is a precise and an all-important symbol. The wild duck symbolizes the life
of Hjalmar and his father, the life of Hedvig and also Ibsen’s own life at the time he
wrote this play. Gregers too becomes a symbol by wishing to play the role of the
clever dog and to bring the wounded duck back to the surface. As all this symbolism
is the hub and the heart of the play, the title “The Wild Duck” is most suitable for it.
 Mr. Werle was sailing a boat and seeing a wild duck, had shot
at, and wounded, it. The wounded duck dived down to the
bottom of the sea and tangle there to never come up again.
But Mr. Werle’s clever dog dived after the wounded duck and
brought it up again. The wounded wild duck was taken to Mr.
Werle’s house but it did not thrive there. It was passed on to
Old Ekdal where it became used to its present abode, and had
forgotten its natural, wild life.
 The wild duck as a symbol appears first in Mr. Werle’s
speech with reference to the sad fate which had overtaken
Old Ekdal. He says:
“By the time Ekdal was released, he was a broken-
down man, past help from anyone. There are
people in this world who dive to the bottom the
moment they are wounded, and never come up
again.”

 This speech when Old Ekdal, speaking to Gregers, describes how a wild duck
behaves when it gets wounded. If the particular wild duck had not been rescued
by dog, it would have remained at the bottom and would have died there. In Mr.
Werle’s opinion, Old Ekdal, after his release from the prison, was in no position to
lead a worth-while life because his spirit had completely been broken by his stay
in the prison.
 Hedvig says on two occasions that the wild duck belongs to her

though she would not mind her father and grandfather

borrowing it from her. Hedvig also says that her father and
grandfather look after the wild duck well and try to make it
comfortable. Gregers thereupon says that the wild duck is the
most important person in his house. Hedvig says that the duck
is a real “wild” bird and the wild duck must be feeling sad and
alien here because no one knows it and it knows no one.
Gregers finds that the wild duck has a damaged wing and that
it is a little lame in one foot which the dog had held between
its teeth when dragging the duck back to the surface of the
water.
The wild duck symbolizes Hedvig too. Hedvig too is
an alien in this house like a wild duck. Hedvig is a
product of Mr. Werle’s sport of making love to Gina.
Hjalmar has been thinking her to be his own daughter.
Thus there is much in common between the wild
duck and Hedvig: both are a product of Mr. Werle’s
sporting nature. The wild duck is lame, has a damaged
wing, and is leading an incomplete and unsatisfactory
life, shut within the four walls of a dark garret. Hedvig
too is leading a narrow, limited kind of life, partly
because she has weak eyesight and would soon
become blind. Just as the wild duck has got used to its
new abode, so, Hedvig is perfectly contented with her
inadequate life in this house. And yet she is leading a
frustrated life like that of the wild duck.
 The wild duck symbolizes Old Ekdal’s life also. He used to

hunt into the forest when young. Overtaken by a disaster he

was jailed for some years. After his release he finds life
wretched. When in garret, he imagines himself in a forest
with wild animals. The same applies to Ekdal's putting on
his lieutenant’s uniform at times. He is not entitled any more
to wear it but he puts it on to recall the days when he was a
lieutenant. These illusions are sustaining him in life which
would otherwise appear to him to be not worth living. He
too has become averse to reality, like the wild duck.
The wild duck also reflects Ibsen’s personality when he
wrote the play. Ibsen wants us to know that he has now
forgotten to live a wild life; he has, like the wild duck,
grown plump and tame and contented with his limited life.
Ibsen must have asked himself at the time of writing this
play how far the artist shuts himself off from life. Both
Hjalmar and Gregers represent different aspects of Ibsen:
on the one hand, the evader of reality, and on the other, the
impractical idealist.
The Wild Duck is a perfectly suitable title for this play. The wild
duck is the most important person in the story; it is Hedvig’s
dearest possession; it is looked after by Old Ekdal with great
care. Old Ekdal has provided a water-trough for the wild duck
to splash about. Hjalmar too is deeply attached to the bird till
he learns that the man to whom it had originally belonged
had seduced Gina. Hedvig’s sacrifice would have been great if
she had shot the wild duck, but Hedvig makes an even greater
sacrifice of her own life. In any case the wild duck is the
central symbol in the play, and round the wild duck the plot
hinges.