English Literature

“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:

We recall 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.

Gregers tells Hjalmar that the latter has a strain of the wild duck in him. He elaborates that Hjalmar has dived down and taken firm hold of the sea weeds. He further says that Hjalmar has landed in a “poisonous swamp” and has got an “insidious disease”, and has dived to the bottom “to die in the dark”. So he should not worry about his miserable condition because Gregers would see that Hjalmar rises to the surface again.

Gregers means that Hjalmar is hiding himself from the reality of life like the wild duck by diving to the bottom and hiding form the real life. Gregers knows Gina past but Hjalmar was unaware. Gregers compares Hjalmar to the wild duck and himself to the dog. He aims to open Hjalmar’s eyes to those facts. The wild duck becomes a symbol of Hjalmar’s life of ignorance; while Mr. Werle’s clever dog symbolizes Gregers who has resolved to awaken the ideal. The wild duck, which is lame and has a damaged wing, also symbolizes Hjalmar’s incomplete life.

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.

Gregers plays the role of a saviour, but with disastrous results. Gregers reveals the secret of Gina’s past to Hjalmar. Hjalmar’s reaction to this discloser is one of shock. On his asking Gina about her past, she confirms everything. Hjalmar’s grief knows no limits. He scolds Gina for having kept him in the dark and accuses her of deceiving him. He also comes to know that Hedvig is not his own daughter but Mr. Werle’s. Hjalmar now cannot even bear to look at Hedvig and declares his intention to leave the house. Hedvig feels miserable when she finds that she has lost Hjalmar’s love. Gregers advises Hedvig to shoot the wild duck in order to make a sacrifice to please her father but Hedvig shoots herself. Gregers had aimed at a reconstruction of Gregers’ domestic life but he succeeds only in wrecking a young life.

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 who bothers mankind with his claims of the ideal because he has a sick conscience.

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.

• 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.

• Gregers: So time stands still in there … besides the wild duck.

• Hedvig: But she’s completely cut off from her friends. And then everything about the wild duck is so mysterious. Nobody really knows her; and nobody knows where she’s from either.

• Hjalmar: Good Lord, you mustn’t ask me about details like dates. An invention is something you can never be completely master of. It’s largely a matter of inspiration ... of intuition … and it’s pretty nearly impossible to predict when that will come.

• 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: I’m afraid not; I don’t give secret like that away to quacks. … But it’s a tried and tested method; I have used it on Molvik as well. I have made him a ‘demonic’. That’s the particular cure I had to apply to him.

• 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.

• Gregers: If you are right and I am wrong, life will no longer be worth living.

• Gregers: Hedvig has not died in vain. Didn’t you see how grief brought out what was noblest in him?

• Relling: Oh, life wouldn’t be too bad if only these blessed people who come canvassing their ideals round everybody’s door would leave us poor souls in peace.

Sean O’Casey was born in 1818 and died in 1964. So it makes him a contemporary of T. S. Eliot. The play has been written on the background of Irish Civil War, which has been going for centuries. There are many faction involved in the play.

1. There are the free staters,
2. There are also those who demand have ruled Ireland within the authority of English parliament
3. There are the unionists, who want unity with min Ireland.

Main Ireland got independence after the First World War Ireland is divided into Southern and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is now called Ulster. The people of main Ireland are Roman Catholic. The majority of Ulster is Anglican. So there is political and religious problem.

Either to unite with main Ireland

“Juno and the Paycock” also has, like O'Casey’s other plays, war at its background. O'Casey is very much against the war fought under any pretext. He closely observed how war affects the society and the individuals, how war crushes the economy and the system, how war disintegrates the family structure, how it demolishes the psychology of the people and how it creates generation gap. Thus O’Casey condemns the exploitation of man-by-man, man’s inhuman treatment towards man, man’s barbarity against man.

The play begins with Mary's reading a newspaper. The very first information we get form the play is of a gruesome murder.

O'Casey evidently has sympathies for the poverty stricken and war ridden Irish society. There is nothing predicable in Ireland. Everyone is in extreme danger. They are hanging between life and death.

There are lots of references in the play regarding Ireland's religious and political history. Irish makes many attempts to shake off the foreign yoke. Foreigners are very inhuman to them. In 1916, hundred of casualties and the execution of the leaders are faultless examples of that.

But this inhumanity is not just caused by foreigners. The real problem arises with the killing of Irishman by Irishman. War, or to be more exact, a civil war has no solution to man’s problem; rather it aggravates the miseries of victims. The civil war is not confined to two fractions rather it expands to the whole Ireland. The death of Robbie Tancred and Johnny Boyle are perfect examples of that.

Johnny, who has lost an arm and has a hip shattered in a fight, is at the end dragged away and shot by his former republican commanders because he betrayed comrade Tancred. All this shows that Ireland is preying on herself. Earlier Johnny had undoubtedly behaved heroically but the hellish civil war compelled him to betray his comrade. This means the stupid civil war is turning into traitors because of its nothingness and hollowness purposelessness.

Juno emerges as a great humanist and realist. She is a true pacifist and is against man’s inhumanity against man. She has an acute observation and knows about the truth of things. She is very realist and anti-idealist. When Mary emphasizes that one ought to stand by one’s principle being “a principle’s a principle” and tries to justify her call of strike, Juno very realistically remarks:

Being a realist, she has a firm belief in the idea that the fault does not lie with the stars but with the people themselves. She says:

The opportunist class represented by Nugent has also been condemned. According to O'Casey this opportunist class is more harmful than even the combatants. They themselves become the cause of civil war and play a double role. Nugent wants other to respect “Irish people national regard for the dead” but stitches suits for the civil guards at night.

The domestic tragedy, which mainly springs out form pregnancy, is due to the inhumanity of the male. That male chauvinist society cannot tolerate a mistake by a young girl. Whereas on the other hand the idiots like captain Boyle and Joxer Daly are left unaccountable.

Hope for a good time is only due to the courage of women. They are very humane and cooperative. O'Casey’s criticism of life is conveyed through the repetition of significance of deep dialogues. The words of Mrs. Tancred lamentation are pungently recorded by Juno, when she too, is mourning over a slain son.

Against the vanity and moral bankruptcy of masculine character, O'Casey elevates the mother figure when Juno plans to work for Mary and her unborn child. Juno suffers the pain of existence but she sustains life.

Thus, we see O'Casey very beautifully depicts man’s inhumanity towards man. O’Casey is at heart a humanist and a pacifist. He considers life mere inevitable and all idealism is subservient to it. He condemns all principles and gives one and the only principle to live all the days of life peacefully.

Half way through the first act, the reader hears something about a brother Ben. Willy wishes that he had gone to Alaska with his brother Ben. At the same time he speaks of Ben’s having walked into a jungle and when he came out Ben was rich. In the next speech, Happy tells his dad that he is going to retire him for life. Willy flares up and tells both his boys that:

“… the woods are burning. I can't even drive a car”.

All of these ideas and images emerge into one. Ben becomes Willy’s ideal. Here was a man who had nothing and ended up rich. The jungle that Ben walked into is symbolically the jungle of life.

Thus when Willy says that the woods are burning, he mans that life is closing in on him. Whereas, Ben conquered the jungle of life, Willy can only be trapped by the burning woods. Consequently the phrase “the woods are burning” suggests that time is running out on Willy. He no longer has enough time to do anything. This concept of time hurrying past man is again emphasized by Ben. Every time we see Ben, he has his watch out and keeps saying that he has only a few more minutes or that he has to catch a train. He is always on the move while Willy remains stagnantly still. What Ben stands for is captured in his phrase:

“When I was seventeen, I walked into the jungle and when I was twenty-one I walked out … And by God I was rich”.

Here was a man who utilized time while time has simply passed Willy by.

When Howard fires Willy, he has nowhere to turn. Now the woods are really burning. He must now rely upon boys, but his boys are not reliable. So when Biff tries to tell Willy the truth, Willy maintains that he is not interested in the past.

“… because the woods are burning, boys, you understand? There’s a big blaze going on all around. I was fired today.”

Willy then has spent his life “rising up a zero” and now there is no place for him to go. Therefore he conceives of a way out of his burning woods. This involves suicide. Through suicide he would be able to leave his sons twenty thousand dollars. But as Ben says:

“It does take a great kind of a man to crack the jungle”.

But here the jungle is no longer the jungle of life; instead it is the jungle of death. This jungle “is dark but full of diamonds”: that is, the diamonds represent the insurance money. And to Ben frantic calling that it is “Time, William, time”. Willy drives off to his own death.

Therefore, for Willy, the jungle was a life that he could never conquer and instead it became a type of burning woods that was constantly closing in upon him. But in the end, when time had completely overtaken him, the jungle became the darkness of death which wily thought he could mistakenly conquer by suicide.

Symbolism is a technique, employed by a large number of playwrights, in which an object or a metaphor is described having meaning and implications beyond its apparent meaning.

Many of the symbols used in “Death of a Salesman” have specifically American connotations. The play opens with reference to cars. Caris an American symbol of individual mobility, freedom and social status. But Miller uses it in a negative and ironic manner. In the very beginning of the play Willy comes home exhausted with driving. His exhaustion with driving symbolizes his tiredness from life. The car is going out of control. This symbolism gets its final intensity in the climax of the play when Willy drives his car out of the house into darkness and death.

Even the sound of flute in the play is symbolic. The play opens with a melody of the flute. Here is a symbolism that subtly supports the meaning of the play. As the play closes with Linda leaving Willy’s grave the only thing left on the stage is the sound of the flute playing a rather sad dirge. Thus the melody of flute opens and closes the play or it may be said to encompass the entire drama. But the use of symbol of flute becomes more important when we come to know that Willy’s father used to make and sell flutes. In this way he was also a salesman but he used to sell flutes prepared by his own hands, whereas, Willy sells wares of some other person.

Ben becomes Willy’s ideal. Ben is a man who has nothing in the beginning but he ends up in riches. The Jungle than Ben walks into is symbolically the jungle of life. But the jungle becomes the woods for Willy. Thus when Willy says that ‘the woods are burning’ he means that life is closing in on him. Whereas, Ben conquered the jungle of life, Willy was trapped by the burning wood. Consequently the phrase ‘the woods are burning’ suggest that time is running out on Willy. He no longer has enough time to do anything. This concept of time is again emphasized by Ben. Every time we see Ben, he has his watch out and keeps saying that he has only a few minutes or that he has to catch a train. He is always on the move while Willy remains stagnant still.

The temporary optimism at the beginning of Act II is conveyed partly by references to seeds and tools. Willy imagines that he can make seeds grow in, but he can’t do so because of the hardness of earth. This implies that his life is a barren thing. But it is already too late and his gestures of planting in the hope of future growth are desperate and futile.

Finally it is possible to treat Willy as a symbolic character. Willy may be regarded as an American everyman. Willy is much more emphatically a representative figure, than any of Miller’s other characters. This means that Willy’s problems are much less personal dilemma than they are public issues.

Arthur Miller “Death of a salesman” is not a tragedy according to the conventional concept of tragedy in which the hero and fate come into conflict and fate causes the tragedy of the hero or the central protagonist.

The play cannot attain the stature of a genuine tragedy because of its extreme social awareness nor can it be a social drama because it is fitting to call it a social tragedy and it is. Social tragedy is a modern kind of tragedy in which the conflict between the central protagonist and society is depicted and the protagonist becomes the victim of society’s ill-treatment.

Arthur Miller in his drama “Death of a Salesman” depicts the conflict within the family and the conflict between protagonist and the society. He is misfit in the capitalist society. He is the victim of a social injustice and this social injustice causes his tragedy.

Tragi-comedy is a kind of writing in which comedy is hovering on the brinks of tragedy. O'Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock” is a tragi-comedy although, on the whole, it is a serious and somber play having much destruction and violence. But there are a number of comic elements in the play which would not fit into the pattern of a tragedy. On the other hand, as the comic elements do not outweigh the tragic ones, it would be inappropriate to label the play as a comedy. It means there is a co-existence in the play of tragic and comic elements and so, the best course is to treat it as a tragi-comedy.

The play starts with a graphic description of Boyle’s household. The setting reflects the poverty of the dwellers. Then the news of murder of Robbie Tancred is also very gloomy. Johnny's neurotic condition adds to the tension of the play. But suddenly the mood of the play changes when Captain Boyle and Joxer Daly come in. The description of Mr. Boyle and Joxer’s physiognomy creates laughter. They are in fact grotesques. Mr. Boyle's neck is short and his head looks like a stone ball on top of a gatepost. He carries himself with the upper part of his body slightly thrust forward. His walk is a slow consequential thrust.

We again burst into laughter when we see Juno hiding herself to catch Joxer and Captain Boyle as they make themselves at home. Joxer’s repetition of the words “a darling man, a darling man”, “a darling thing, a darling thing”; his attempt to escape from the situation at the sight of Juno; Mr. Boyle's pretension that he is searching for a job sincerely, are all funny indeed. When jerry Devine enters, the situation becomes more ludicrous. Mr. Boyle is not willing to accept the job opportunity brought by Jerry. His lame excuses produce nothing but laughter.

“Won’t it be a climbin’ job? How d’ye expect me to be able to go up a ladder with these legs? An’, if I get up a self, how am I goin’ to get down agen?”

We are also much amused when Captain Boyle is interrupted while singing first by sewing machine man’s entry and then by the thundering knocks at the door. And when Boyle invites Joxer to a cup of tea Joxer says:

“I’m afraid the missus ud pop in on us agen before we’d know where we are, somethin’s tellin’ me to go at wanst.”

And to this Boyle replies:

“Don’t be superstitious, man; we’re Dublin men, ……”

We are also greatly amused when we find Joxer Daly and Mr. Boyle discussing about books and history. But their mock-intellectual discussion is interrupted by the voice of a coal vender. Again we burst into laughter when Joxer flies out of the window at learning the voice of Juno.

In fact, this whole episode is very humorous and funny. But in this fun and ludicrous description there is a tinge of pathos as well. For example, at one place, Juno says to Boyle:

“Here, sit down an’ take your breakfast – it may be the last you’ll get, for I don’t know where the next is going to come from.”

Then when there is knocking at the door and Boyle asks Joxer to tuck this head out of the window and see who is there, Joxer replies:

“An, mebbe get a bullet in the kisser?”

Apparently, this remark may be funny but underneath there is a grim tragedy in it … the tragedy of Ireland destroyed and wasted by civil war. Boyle's remark that:

“… the clergy always had too much power over the people in this unfortunate country.”

This again shows the grim situation of Ireland. Thus here we have an intermingling of light and serious elements of a mixture of comedy and pathos.

In act II, too, we have much laughter. For example the changed attitude of Boyle at the prospect of false will, the singing of Juno and Mary, Mrs. Madigan and especially Joxer and Mr. Boyle are amusingly funny. In fact this whole episode is a merry comedy, although on the background we can also perceive the tensions of the funeral.

In act III, where there are much sufferings and destruction even then we find some comic situation there. Joxer’s behaviour at the downfall of Mr. Boyle is very funny. He instigates Nugent, the tailor, to get his suit away from Mr. Boyle. He also stoles away a bottle of brandy from the table and Boyle's indignation at the moment creates laughter.

Actually, on the whole, farce in the play, is verbal – the repartee, the comic catchphrases, the cumulative comedy of repetition. There is the comedy of dialect and mispronunciation; of pompous phrases misused; of ludicrous images. Inflation and deflation both are comic. Captain Boyle's inflation of his fantasies with invention, exaggeration, rhetoric and bombastic and Juno’ facility in knocking him down etc all are comic.

But, despite, so much laughter and comedy, the play is predominantly tragic in theme. For example, the ignorance that prompts Joxer’s and Captain Boyle's mistake makes us laugh at first but is fundamentally tragic; their idleness, drunkenness and deviousness give numerous opportunities for comedy, but are in themselves wasteful and destructive. Tenement life gives rise to farcical situations but is in reality grim. Thus the superficialities of certain circumstances of Dublin life make an audience laugh, whereas, these are tragic if examined in full e.g. heroes become cowards, nationalism becomes jingoism, labour, humanitarianism becomes inhumanity. These are the tragedies of the play, which are mingled with comedy.

The pith and marrow of all this discussion is that, comedy is here, in fact, hovering on the brink of tragedy and so we are apt and just when we call “Juno and the Paycock” a tragi-comedy.