Engliterarium

“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.

‘Symbolism means a veiled or oblique mode of communication.’ A play may have deeper meaning which is understood only by interpreting the deeper significance of the words and phrases used.

In “The Wild Duck” Ibsen made use of symbolism on an elaborate scale than in his earlier plays. The chief symbol in this play is the wild duck. The play dependent on and held together by a symbol as if the wild duck were a magnet and all the characters are iron filings held together by the centripetal force. For the first time in Ibsenian drama, the symbol is a physical reality or near enough to it to suggest an actual presence.

Though the wild duck is not the only symbol in the play yet it is an all-important symbol. The wild duck symbolizes the kind of life which Hjalmar, his father and Hedvig is leading and besides, it symbolizes Ibsen’s own life at the time he wrote this play. All this symbolizes is the hub and heart of the play.

Mr. Werle while hunting saw a wild duck and shot it. The wounded duck dived down into the sea and tangled to the weeds to never come up again. Mr. Werle’s clever dog dived after the wounded wild duck and brought it up again.

In Act III, Gregers finds that the wild duck has a damaged wing and is a little lame in one foot. These wounds are symbolic. Gregers tells Hjalmar that Hjalmar has, like a wild duck, dived down and taken firm hold of the sea-weeds. What Gregers means is that Hjalmar is hiding himself from the reality of life like the wild duck. Gregers knows that Gina had been seduced by Mr. Werle before her marriage to Hjalmar. Gregers feels sorry that Hjalmar is still ignorant about Gina’s past. The wild duck thus symbolizes Hjalmar’s life of ignorance while Mr. Werle’s clever dog symbolizes Gregers who has resolved to awaken Hjalmar to the reality that he is leading an incomplete life for he is ignorant of Gina’ past. In this respect also the lame wild duck symbolizes Hjalmar’s incomplete life.

The wild duck symbolizes Hedvig too. The wild duck, wounded by Mr. Werle while enjoying the sport of shooting bird, is an alien in the garret. Hedvig too is an alien in this household and is a product of Mr. Werle’s sport of flirting with Gina. Like the wild duck, Hedvig too is leading anarrow and limited life because she has no ambition to see the world and mainly because she has weak eyesight and would soon become blind. Her approaching blindness symbolizes her approaching death.

The wild duck symbolizes Old Ekdal’s life also. When he was living at Hoidal, he was as free as the wild duck was before it had been shot at by Mr. Werle. And now he is living in a stuffy and congested city shut in by four walls like the wild duck, away from the natural life.

It is possible that the wild duck, consciously or unconsciously, also reflects Ibsen’s own life when he wrote this play. Ibsen own world does not seems to be very different from Ekdals garret. Both Hjalmar and Gregers signify different aspects of Ibsen: on one hand the evader of reality, and in contrast, an idealist who bothers mankind with his claims of the ideal because he has a sick conscience.

The dark menagerie in the Ekdal’s house symbolizes the thick forest where Old Ekdal used to hunt wild animals. It is a symbol of protective fantasy for Old Ekdal. This is an illusion which Old Ekdal has built up for himself. This is “the saving lie” which keeps him alive.

Ibsen has superbly employed the symbol of light. The impact of light in the garret is different in the daylight and in the moonlight. Taking garret as human life, the daylight as reality and the moonlight as illusion, we can conclude that the life looks beautiful and relaxed in moonlight which is an illusion of life. Whereas, the reality, the daylight has totally opposite impact on the garret. Reality makes the things clear which tortures the life making it dull and miserable. It means illusions make our life sustain in a better way than the reality.

In Act II, Old Ekdal says:

Old Ekdal’s splitting, breaking speech is also symbolic. It symbolizes the incomplete and damaged life of Old Ekdal. It also reflects the impact of forests on his life. This is why he, in another speech, says:

Old Ekdal's lieutenant’s uniform is also symbolic. He is not entitled any more to wear it but he puts it on to recall the days when he was a lieutenant. He lives in a world of illusion, created by himself, in which he finds sufficient satisfaction.

In Act II, Gregers says:

Gregers saying himself a clever dog is also symbolic. He thinks himself to be a great savior and a great ‘help’ for the Ekdal family and is on his mission to take the Ekdals from ignorance to the light. But this absurd insight leads them to the disastrous consequences. In Act III, Hedvig says that the clock in the menagerie is still and doesn’t go anymore. It is symbolic as it is concerned with the wild duck. Time has no value for the wild duck because his life has confined to this menagerie. There is also a picture about the Death of a girl. This death is symbolic to the approaching death of Hedvig. Hedvig says:

There are some other aspects of symbolism in the play. For instance, alcohol for Molvik is symbolic because it is an illusion for him which gives him a kind of escape from his dull life. Art of photography is symbolic. It is an image of reality but not the true reality. Here Ibsen is giving an importance to the necessity of illusive life. Hjalmar’s proposed invention is symbolizing ‘a saving lie’ for him. This is a hope for Hjalmar towards a better future for him.

Characters in the play are also symbolic representing average human beings and illusion for them is an important thing on which their whole life is built. The house of Ekdals symbolizes the whole society which needs a saving lie.

There are also Christian symbols in the play. Gina and Hjalmar symbolize Eve and Adam living in their Paradise and whose comfort is disturbed by the intrusion of the devil, the Gregers. They have to face a hope lose in the shape of the death of Hedvig. The thirteenth person at the party is also a Christian symbol. Judas was thirteenth who betrayed Christ and here Gregers is playing the role of Judas. The Christmas tree is symbolic from Christian point of view.

We can conclude that Ibsen has beautifully employed the device of symbolism to make sure the necessity of illusion in the life of average human beings. In Act III, Gregers says:

No doubt that the wild duck is the most important symbol in the play which makes the play one of the great plays of Ibsen.