On Friday, December 22nd - Ghosts in-class essay

I will give you a prompt and you will have the block to compose an essay.  Please bring your computers.  You will post the essay to Turnitin.com.  If you will not be here, you may make this up after or before the break.

NO HOMEWORK OVER THE VACATION BREAK!!!

Due Friday, December 22nd - Ghosts Journal and Blog Response

In your journal, please compose a comprehensive response detailing your personal experiences with ghosts.  How do past memories look different now that you understand the concept of ghosts?  How are the events you see in the media examples of ghosts?  How can we exorcise those ghosts?

In this blog space, please compose a brief response to share with your classmates from your journal about ghosts. 

Due Tuesday, December 19th - Brainstorm ideas for Shared Studios

We are going to be engaging in project with Shared Studios (Below you will find a link to the website).

For homework, please explore the website and get a sense of the possibilities.  My goal is to reach out to a group of people from another part of the world and share our experiences with literature together.  Further, I am hoping to open this up to the faculty and see if we can see this work on a school wide scale.

In this blog space, please interact and brainstorm ideas that we could do as a class in a Shared Studio.  We will discuss this further in class on Tuesday, when we meet again.

I am really looking forward to your responses!!!!

Mr. P. ;)

Website Link:

https://www.sharedstudios.com/

Due Monday, December 18th - "Ghosts" Q2 Essay

The following passage is an excerpt from Ghosts, a play by Henrik Ibsen, produced in 1881.  Read the passage carefully.  Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the playwright reveals his values with regard to the nature of the society through symbolic characters.

NOTE:  Take as much time as want.  We will concern ourselves with composing essays in 40 minutes in Term 3.

OSWALD. My stay is indefinite, sir.-But, ah! It is good to be at home!
MRS. ALVING. [Beaming.] Yes, isn't it, dear?
MANDERS. [Looking sympathetically at him.] You went out into the world early, my dear Oswald.
OSWALD. I did. I sometimes wonder whether it wasn't too early.
MRS. ALVING. Oh, not at all. A healthy lad is all the better for it; especially when he's an only child. He oughtn't to hang on at home with his mother and father, and get spoilt.
MANDERS. That is a very disputable point, Mrs. Alving. A child's proper place is, and must be, the home of his fathers.
OSWALD. There I quite agree with you, Pastor Manders.
MANDERS. Only look at your own son--there is no reason why we should not say it in his presence--what has the consequence been for him? He is six or seven and twenty, and has never had the opportunity of learning what a well-ordered home really is.
OSWALD. I beg your pardon, Pastor; there you're quite mistaken.
MANDERS. Indeed? I thought you had lived almost exclusively in artistic circles.
OSWALD. So I have.
MANDERS. And chiefly among the younger artists?
OSWALD. Yes, certainly.
MANDERS. But I thought few of those young fellows could afford to set up house and support a family.
OSWALD. There are many who cannot afford to marry, sir.
MANDERS. Yes, that is just what I say.
OSWALD. But they may have a home for all that. And several of them have, as a matter of fact; and very pleasant, well-ordered homes they are, too.

[MRS. ALVING follows with breathless interest; nods, but says nothing.]

MANDERS. But I'm not talking of bachelors' quarters. By a "home" I understand the home of a family, where a man lives with his wife and children.
OSWALD. Yes; or with his children and his children's mother.
MANDERS. [Starts; clasps his hands.] But, good heavens--
OSWALD. Well?
MANDERS. Lives with--his children's mother!
OSWALD. Yes. Would you have him turn his children's mother out of doors?
MANDERS. Then it is illicit relations you are talking of! Irregular marriages, as people call them!
OSWALD. I have never noticed anything particularly irregular about the life these people lead.
MANDERS. But how is it possible that a--a young man or young woman with any decency of feeling can endure to live in that way?--in the eyes of all the world!
OSWALD. What are they to do? A poor young artist--a poor girl-- marriage costs a great deal. What are they to do?
MANDERS. What are they to do? Let me tell you, Mr. Alving, what they ought to do. They ought to exercise self-restraint from the first; that is what they ought to do.

OSWALD. That doctrine will scarcely go down with warm-blooded young people who love each other.
MRS. ALVING. No, scarcely!
MANDERS. [Continuing.] How can the authorities tolerate such things! Allow them to go on in the light of day! [Confronting MRS. ALVING.] Had I not cause to be deeply concerned about your son? In circles where open immorality prevails, and has even a sort of recognized position--!
OSWALD. Let me tell you, sir, that I have been in the habit of spending nearly all my Sundays in one or two such irregular homes--
MANDERS. Sunday of all days!
OSWALD. Isn't that the day to enjoy one's self? Well, never have I heard an offensive word, and still less have I witnessed anything that could be called immoral. No; do you know when and where I have come across immorality in artistic circles?
MANDERS. No, thank heaven, I don't!
OSWALD. Well, then, allow me to inform you. I have met with it when one or other of our pattern husbands and fathers has come to Paris to have a look round on his own account, and has done the artists the honour of visiting their humble haunts. They knew what was what. These gentlemen could tell us all about places and things we had never dreamt of.
MANDERS. What! Do you mean to say that respectable men from home here would--?
OSWALD. Have you never heard these respectable men, when they got home again, talking about the way in which immorality runs rampant abroad?
MANDERS. Yes, no doubt--
MRS. ALVING. I have too.
OSWALD. Well, you may take their word for it. They know what they are talking about! [Presses his hands to his head.] Oh! That that great, free, glorious life out there should be defiled in such a way!
MRS. ALVING. You mustn't get excited, Oswald. It's not good for you.
OSWALD. Yes; you're quite right, mother. It's bad for me, I know. You see, I'm wretchedly worn out. I shall go for a little turn before dinner. Excuse me, Pastor: I know you can't take my point of view; but I couldn't help speaking out. [He goes out by the second door to the right.]



Watch the scene again:

Start of passage can be found from 25:29 - end

Continues from beginning 0:00 to 1:20

Due Wednesday, December 13th - "Ghosts" by Henrik Ibsen - Act I

Please read and respond to Act I of Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen.  How does Ibsen use dialogue, characterization, and symbolism to teach us philosophy?  Use direct examples from the text.  Also, end your response with a question for class discussion.

I have a link to the full text below:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8121/8121-h/8121-h.htm#link2H_4_0003

Due Tuesday, December 12th - Poetry - Tone

Directions:  Please read the following poems.  All the poems connect to the thematic elements of A Doll House and Ghosts.  Please respond to the 1-2 poems in a response.  Think about theme, form, and the use of tone.

Poems:

Marge Piercy, Barbie Doll

Richard Wilbur, A Barred Owl

Billy Collins, The History Teacher   

Taylor Mali, Like, Totally Whatever

Jan Heller Levi, Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad      

Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz

Eric Pellerin, Death of a Timeshare Salesman

Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy

This girlchild was born as usual

and presented dolls that did pee-pee

and miniature GE stoves and irons

and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.

Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:

You have a great big nose and fat legs.

She was healthy, tested intelligent,

possessed strong arms and back,

abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.

She went to and fro apologizing.

Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.

She was advised to play coy,

exhorted to come on hearty,

exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.

Her good nature wore out

like a fan belt.

So she cut off her nose and her legs

and offered them up.

In the casket displayed on satin she lay

with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,

a turned-up putty nose,

dressed in a pink and white nightie.

Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.

Consummation at last.

To every woman a happy ending.

A Barred Owl by Richard Wilbur

The warping night air having brought the boom

Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,

We tell the wakened child that all she heard

Was an odd question from a forest bird,

Asking of us, if rightly listened to,

“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,

Can also thus domesticate a fear,

And send a small child back to sleep at night

Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight

Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw

Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

The History Teacher by Billy Collins

Trying to protect his students' innocence

he told them the Ice Age was really just

the Chilly Age, a period of a million years

when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,

named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more

than an outbreak of questions such as

"How far is it from here to Madrid?"

"What do you call the matador's hat?"

The War of the Roses took place in a garden,

and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom

on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom

for the playground to torment the weak

and the smart,

mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home

past flower beds and white picket fences,

wondering if they would believe that soldiers

in the Boer War told long, rambling stories

designed to make the enemy nod off.

Totally like whatever, you know? by Taylor Mali

In case you hadn’t noticed,

it has somehow become uncool

to sound like you know what you’re talking about?

Or believe strongly in what you’re saying?

Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s

have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?

Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences—so called

because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true, okay,

as opposed to other things are, like, totally, you know, not—

have been infected by a totally hip

and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?

Like, don’t think I’m uncool just because I’ve noticed this;

this is just like the word on the street, you know?

It’s like what I’ve heard?

I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?

I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?

Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?

Have they been, like, chopped down

with the rest of the rain forest?

Or do we have, like, nothing to say?

Has society become so, like, totally . . .

I mean absolutely . . . You know?

That we’ve just gotten to the point where it’s just, like . . .

whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness

is just a clever sort of . . . thing

to disguise the fact that we’ve become

the most aggressively inarticulate generation

to come along since . . .

you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,

I challenge you: To speak with conviction.

To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks

the determination with which you believe it.

Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,

it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.

You have to speak with it, too.

Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad by Jan Heller Levi

I think you are most yourself when you are swimming;

slicing the water with each stroke,

the funny way you breathe, your mouth cocked

as though you’re yawning.

You’re neither fantastic nor miserable

at getting from here to there.

You wouldn’t win any medals, Dad,

but you wouldn’t drown.

I think how different everything might have been

had I judged your loving

like I judge your sidestroke, your butterfly,

your Australian crawl.

But I always thought I was drowning

in that icy ocean between us,

I always thought you were moving too slowly to save me,

When you were moving as fast as you can.

My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath  

Could make a small boy dizzy;  

But I hung on like death:  

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans  

Slid from the kitchen shelf;  

My mother’s countenance  

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist  

Was battered on one knuckle;  

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head  

With a palm caked hard by dirt,  

Then waltzed me off to bed  

Still clinging to your shirt.

death of a time share salesman by eric pellerin

how do timeshare salesmen smile at home

is it the same as when

eddie came

up to me during the final moments

to tell me that he was not going

to sell me

anything

to thank me

for stopping by

that i just do not love my children

enough 

most people work too hard

die

leave their children

nothing

that i can spend my money

on anything i like

that this is the best time to buy

his thick southern drawl

jokes about liberals

usa pin on his lapel

betraying his fear of border jumpers 

gays

obama

he smiles

i want to smile back

but i only stare

at the floor

a small child

who peed his pants

he mentions my children

again

it is somehow connected

to time sharing

he smiles

i look at him hard

he returns the glare

still smiling

an old ken doll

in a dream house

full of naked barbies

with snarly hair

no names

no vagina

i think of his children

his daughter telling him

that she is getting married

to a special someone

from massachusetts

liberal

black

native

american

and her name is tanya

i hope she smiles

and tells him

that she is not trying

to sell him

anything

that she will have a child or two

that he can share time

with his family

and love them

if he chooses to take a risk

for once in his life

and give his consent

right

now

                                      

Due Friday, December 8th - Essay on "A Doll House" by Henrik Ibsen

Directions: Chose one of the following prompts and compose an essay, using A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen as your primary source. Write an essay to the best of your ability using direct quotations from the text in your writing. You may make references to the alternative ending in your piece.

A.P. E. Prompts

1983. From a novel or play of literary merit, select an important character who is a villain. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze the nature of the character's villainy and show how it enhances meaning in the work. Do not merely summarize the plot.

1986. Some works of literature use the element of time in a distinct way. The chronological sequence of events may be altered, or time may be suspended or accelerated. Choose a novel, an epic, or a play of recognized literary merit and show how the author's manipulation of time contributes to the effectiveness of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

2014. It has often been said that what we value can be determined only by what we sacrifice. Consider how this statement applies to a character from a novel or play. Select a character that has deliberately sacrificed, surrendered, or forfeited something in a way that highlights that character’s values. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the particular sacrifice illuminates the character’s values and provides a deeper understanding of the meaning of the work as a whole.

Major Quotations from A Doll House

Act I

1. That is like a woman! But seriously, Nora, you know what I think about that. No debt, no borrowing. There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt. We two have kept bravely on the straight road so far, and we will go on the same way for the short time longer that there need be any struggle.

2. No, indeed; I only feel my life unspeakably empty. No one to live for any more. (Gets up restlessly.) That is why I could not stand the life in my little backwater any longer. I hope it may be easier here to find something which will busy me and occupy my thoughts. If only I could have the good luck to get some regular work--office work of some kind--

3. Do you still think I am of no use? I can tell you, too, that this affair has caused me a lot of worry. It has been by no means easy for me to meet my engagements punctually….. Well, then I have found other ways of earning money. Last winter I was lucky enough to get a lot of copying to do; so I locked myself up and sat writing every evening until quite late at night. Many a time I was desperately tired; but all the same it was a tremendous pleasure to sit there working and earning money. It was like being a man.

4. The matter never came into court; but every way seemed to be closed to me after that. So I took to the business that you know of. I had to do something; and, honestly, don't think I've been one of the worst. But now I must cut myself free from all that. My sons are growing up; for their sake I must try and win back as much respect as I can in the town. This post in the Bank was like the first step up for me--and now your husband is going to kick me downstairs again into the mud.

5. Just think how a guilty man like that has to lie and play the hypocrite with everyone, how he has to wear a mask in the presence of those near and dear to him, even before his own wife and children. And about the children--that is the most terrible part of it all.



Act II

6. Do you think so? Do you think they would forget their mother if she went away altogether?

7. Come what will, you may be sure I shall have both courage and strength if they be needed. You will see I am man enough to take everything upon myself.

8. Do you think he is the only one - who would gladly give his life for your sake?

9. That was really horrid of you…. to go and tell me so. There was really no need - to think you could be so clumsy! We were getting on so nicely.

10. Most of us think of that at first. I did, too - but I hadn't the courage.

11. You should have let it alone; you must prevent nothing. After all, it is splendid to be waiting for a wonderful thing to happen.



Act III

12. When I lost you, it was as if all the solid ground went from under my feet. Look at me now - I am a shipwrecked man clinging to a bit of wreckage.

13. I could not endure life without work. All my life, as long as I can remember, I have worked, and it has been my greatest and only pleasure. But now I am quite alone in the world--my life is so dreadfully empty and I feel so forsaken. There is not the least pleasure in working for one's self. Give me someone and something to work for.

14. At the next fancy-dress ball I shall be invisible.

15. Do you know, Nora, I have often wished that you might be threatened by some great danger, so that I might risk my life's blood, and everything, for your sake.

16. Now you have destroyed all my happiness. You have ruined all my future. It is horrible to think of! I am in the power of an unscrupulous man; he can do what he likes with me, ask anything he likes of me, give me any orders he pleases - I dare not refuse. And I must sink to such miserable depths because of a thoughtless woman!

17. When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you… I was simply transferred from papa's hands into yours….You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life.

18. I have other duties just as sacred…..Duties to myself.

19. I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are - or, at all events, that I must try and become one. I know quite well that most people would think you right, and that views of that kind are to be found in books; but I can no longer content myself with what most people say, or with what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get to understand them.

20. The most wonderful thing of all?

Alternate Ending of A Doll House

NORA. ... Where we could make a real marriage out of our lives together. Goodbye. [Begins to go.]

HELMER. Go then! [Seizes her arm.] But first you shall see your children for the last time!

NORA. Let me go! I will not see them! I cannot!

HELMER [draws her over to the door, left]. You shall see them. [Opens the door and says softly.] Look, there they are asleep, peaceful and carefree. Tomorrow, when they wake up and call for their mother, they will be - motherless.

NORA [trembling]. Motherless...!

HELMER. As you once were.

NORA. Motherless! [Struggles with herself, lets her travelling bag fall, and says.] Oh, this is a sin against myself, but I cannot leave them. [Half sinks down by the door.]

HELMER [joyfully, but softly]. Nora!

[The curtain falls.]

Due Monday, December 4th - "A Doll House" Act III

Please finish reading A Doll House, Act III and respond in this space.  Please include insights and questions for Monday's class discussion.  I look forward to your responses.

Due Thursday, November 30th - "A Doll House" - Read & Respond to Act 2

Please read Act 2, and respond in this blog space.  Please consider the following ways to respond:

*  Choose a direct quotation from Act 2 and couple it with a quotation from Act 1.
*  Can you explain what is going on in the minds of Nora and Dr. Rank in the "silk stocking" scene?
*  Do you have any questions for our class discussion (I'd like to begin with these tomorrow).

Due Wednesday, November 29th - "A Doll House" by Henrik Ibsen - Finish reading Act I

Ghosts! When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was as though ghosts rose up before me. But I almost think we are all of us ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that "walks" in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.

                                                                                          Mrs. Alving from Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen

Gillian Anderson as Nora

Homework:

1)  Finish reading Acts I of A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen.
2)  In your journal, please attend to the following questions.  Write in complete sentences and/or copy questions into your journal so this can be used as a study guide in the future.

ACT I

1. What does the fact that Nora pays the porter twice what she owes him suggest about Nora? What might this incident foreshadow about the play?
   
   
2. What is the significance of the fact that Nora eats macaroons, hides the package in her pocket, and wipes the crumbs from her lips?
   
   
3. Torvald Helmer has several pet names for Nora. What do they include, and what do they say about how he regards her?
   
   
4. What points do Helmer and Nora each make in their first conversation about money?
   
   
5. How does this set up a framework for future action?
   
   
6. What does Nora’s flirtatious behavior suggest about her relationship with Helmer?
   
   
7. What literary element is used when Helmer refers to Nora’s father, and what does Helmer say about the father?
   
   
8. What does the reader learn when Helmer raises the subject of sweets, saying, “Hasn’t Miss Sweet-Tooth been breaking rules in town to-day”?
   
   
9. When the family was short of money, what did Nora do so they could all celebrate Christmas? What does this symbolize, and what does it suggest about her character?
   
   
10. What does the reader infer about the Helmer family’s choice to have servants even when they are in tight economic circumstances?
    
    
11. When the doorbell rings, why does Helmer say, “If it is a caller, remember that I am not at home”?
    
    
12. How is Nora’s self-centeredness illustrated in her initial conversation with Mrs. Linde?
    
    
13. More exposition occurs when Nora discusses Helmer’s early career with Mrs. Linde.  What does the reader learn about Helmer’s career?
    
    
14. What behavioral problem does Mrs. Linde chide Nora about?
    
    
15. What does Nora reveal about how she and Helmer have managed financially? How did they raise the money needed to go to Italy for his health? What is significant about her comments?
    
    
16. What does Mrs. Linde admit about her marriage?
    
    
17. Why has Mrs. Linde come to Nora’s house?
    
    
18. Mrs. Linde says to Nora, “. . . you know so little of the burdens and troubles of life.”  What literary devices are used here?
    
    
19. What is Mrs. Linde’s initial reaction as Nora begins to reveal the source of the 250 pounds? What does this conversation reveal about the status of women?
    
    
20. Nora suggests that she might have obtained the money from an admirer, but she is insulted when Mrs. Linde suggests imprudence on Nora’s part. How does this exchange add to the reader’s understanding of Nora?
    
    
21. Nora gives Mrs. Linde a summary of the source of the funds. In terms of the “well-made play,” why is this important?
    
    
22. How has Nora managed her own finances to address her debts?
    
    
23. Why has Nora’s work copying documents been so important?
    
    
24. What dangers exist in Nora’s employment?
    
    
25. At this point in the play, where is the power allocated among Helmer, Nora, and Mrs. Linde?
    
    
26. Who is Krogstad?
    
    
27. What else could Krogstad possibly come to the Helmer home to discuss?
    
    
28. What does the reader learn when Nora and Mrs. Linde discuss Krogstad?
    
    
29. What is revealed in the conversation between Dr. Rank and Mrs. Linde?
    
    
30. What can the reader infer from Nora’s question as to whether “all the people who are employed in the Bank” are now “dependent on Torvald”?
    
    
31. What is important about Nora’s offer of macaroons to Dr. Rank?
    
    
32. How does Nora manage the conversation when she asks her husband to give Mrs. Linde a job?
    
    
33. Why is Nora’s management of the conversation significant?
    
    
34. Why does Ibsen insert a scene of Nora romping with her children?
    
    
35. What is Krogstad’s relationship with Nora?
    
    
36. What is ironic about the following conversation?
    Nora: When anyone is in a subordinate position, Mr. Krogstad, they should really be careful to avoid offending anyone who—who—
    Krogstad: Who has influence?
    
    
37. What is discordant about Krogstad’s request that Nora influence Helmer in the matter of Krogstad’s job?
    
    
38. Why does Krogstad think he is being fired?
    
    
39. In another example of exposition, what does Krogstad reveal about himself?
    
    
40. What does Krogstad mean when he says, “I have the means to compel you”?
    
    
41. What is Nora’s reaction?
    
    
42. What does Krogstad reveal about the bond used to secure the loan?
    
    
43. Why did Nora forge her father’s signature?
    
    
44. How does the conversation end?
    
    
45. Why does Ibsen show Nora telling her children that she cannot play with them?
    
    
46. What does Helmer scold Nora for when he returns?
    
    
47. Why does Ibsen include the conversation between Helmer and Nora about the fancy dress ball?
    
    
48. What is ironic about Krogstad’s crime?
    
    
49. What does Helmer say about Krogstad’s morals and his current life?
    
    
50. What does Helmer say about mothers, and why is this ironic?
    
    
51. Why does Nora reject the return of her children at the end of this act?
    
    
52. What does Nora’s final comment—“It’s not true. It can’t possibly be true.”—say about her state of mind?
    
    
53. Looking over Act I, identify the protagonist and antagonist and classify Nora, Helmer, Krogstad, Mrs. Linde, and Doctor Rank as to whether they are round or flat characters.
    
    
54. Are lesser characters used to create foils to Nora and Helmer?
     
55. What are the main themes of the play, as established in Act I?

Background on Henrik Ibsen

by Professor Bjorn Hemmer, professor at the University of Oslo

Introduction

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 bitter opposition. 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.

It is from this perspective we view his contribution to theatrical history. His realistic contemporary drama was a continuation of the European tradition of tragic plays. In these works he portrays people from the middle class of his day. These are people whose routines are suddenly upset as they are confronted with a deep crisis in their lives. They have been blindly following a way of life leading to the troubles and are themselves responsible for the crisis. Looking back on their lives, they are forced to confront themselves. However, Ibsen created another type of drama as well. In fact, he had been writing for 25 years before he, in 1877, created his first contemporary drama, "Pillars of Society".

Life and Writing

Ibsen's biography is lacking in grand and momentous episodes. His life as an artist can be seen as a singularly long and hard struggle leading to victory and fame - a hard road from poverty to international success. He spent all of 27 years abroad, in Italy and Germany. He left his land of birth at the age of 36 in 1864. It was not until he was 63 that he moved home again, to Kristiania (now Oslo), where he would die in 1906 at the age of 78.

In lbsen's last drama, "When We Dead Awaken", he describes the life of an artist that in many ways reflects on his own. The world renowned sculptor, Professor Rubek, has returned to Norway after many years abroad, and in spite of his fame and success, he feels no happiness. In the central work of his life, he has modeled a self-portrait titled "Remorse for a ruined life" During the play he is forced to admit that he has taken the pleasure out of his own life as well as spoiling others'. Everything has been sacrificed for his art - he has forsaken the love of his youth and his earlier idealism as well. It follows that he has actually betrayed his art by relinquishing these essentials. It is none other than his old flame Irene, the model who posed for him in his youth, who goes to him in his moment of destiny and tells him the truth: it is first when we dead awaken, that we see what is irremediable that we have never really lived.

It is the tragic life feeling itself that gives Ibsen's drama its special character, the experience of missing out on life and plodding along in a state of living death. The alternative is pictured as a utopian existence in freedom, truth and love - in short - a happy life. In Ibsen's world the main character strives toward a goal, but this struggle leads out into the cold, to loneliness. Yet the possibility of opting for another route is always there, one can chose human warmth and contact. The problem for Ibsen's protagonist is that both choices can appear to be good, and the individual does not see the consequences of the decision.

In "When We Dead Awaken" the chill of art is contrasted with life's warmth. In this perspective, art serves as a prison from which the artist neither can, nor wishes to escape. As Rubek says to Irene:

"I am an artist, Irene, and I take no shame to myself for the frailties that perhaps cling to me. For I was born to be an artist, you see. - And, do what I may, I shall never be anything else."

This is not an acceptable excuse for Irene, whom he has betrayed. She sees things from a different angle. She calls him a "poet", one who creates his own fictitious world, neglecting his humanity and that of the people who love him. Ella Rentheim, in "John Gabriel Borkman" (1896) makes the same complaint against the man who sacrificed her on the altar of his career. The tragic element in Ibsen's perspective is that for the type of people that concern him, this seems to be an insoluble conflict. Yet this fact does not exonerate them from the responsibility or their own decisions.

Although "When We Dead Awaken" criticizes the egocentricity of the artist, it would be going too far to view the drama as the writer's bitter self-examination. Rubek is not a self-portrait. However, some Ibsen researchers have seen him as a spokesman for the author's standpoint on the question of art. At one point, Rubek says that the public only relates to the external realistic "truth" in his human portrayal. What people do not understand is the hidden dimension in these portraits, all the deceitful motives that hide behind the respectable bourgeois facades. In his youth, Rubek had been inspired by an idealistic vision of a higher form of human existence. Experience has turned him into a disillusioned exposer of people, a man who believes he portrays life as it really is. It is the animal governing man that dominates his vision; this is Rubek's version of Zola's "La béte humaine", and he explains the changes in his art in the following way:

"I imagined that which I saw with my eyes around me in the world. I had to include it (...) and up from the fissures of the soil there now swarm men and women with dimly- suggested animal-faces. women and men - as I knew them in real life."

Understandably, some students of Ibsen have fallen into the temptation of drawing a parallel between life and art, and see this work as a merciless self-denunciation. Once again, "When We Dead Awaken" is by no means auto-biographical. Rubek's relationship with the writer has to be sought on a deeper level - in the conflicts that Ibsen, toward the end of his life, saw as a general and essential human problem.

Ibsen the Psychologist

In the work of the aging writer we meet a number of people who are experiencing similar conflicts. John Gabriel Borkman sacrifices his love for a dream of power and honor. Master builder Solness wrecks his family's lives in order to be regarded as an "artist" in his trade. And Hedda Gabler resolutely changes the fates of others in order to fulfill her own dream of freedom and independence. These examples of people who pursue their own goals, involuntarily trampling on the lives of others, are all drawn from the playwright's last decade of writing. In Ibsen's psychological analyses, he reveals the negative forces (he calls them "demons" and "trolls" in the minds of these people. His human characterization in these latter dramas is extremely complex - a common factor shared by all his last works, starting with "The Wild Duck" in 1884. In his last 15 years of writing, Ibsen developed his dialectical supremacy and his distinctive dramatic form - where realism, symbolism, and deep-digging psychological insights interact. It is this phase of his work that has prompted people to call him - rightly or wrongly - a "Freud of the theater." In any case, Freud and many other psychologists have made use of Ibsen's human portraits as a basis for character analysis or even to illustrate their own theories. Especially well known is Freud's analysis of Rebekka West in "Rosmersholm" (1886), a portrayal he discussed in 1916 together with other character types "who collapse under the weight of success." Freud sees Rebekka as a tragic victim of the Oedipus complex and an incestuous past. The analysis reveals perhaps more about Freud than about Ibsen. But Freud's influence, and the sway of psychoanalysis in general, have had a considerable effect on the way the Norwegian dramatist has been regarded.

Interest in Ibsen as a psychologist can too readily obscure other, equally important, sides of his art. His account of human life is from an acute social and conceptual perspective. Perhaps this is the essence of his art - that which turns it into existential drama exploring many facets of life. This concerns everything he wrote, even prior to his emergence as an international dramatist around 1880.

A Desperate Drama

Ibsen's work as a writer represents a long poetic contemplation of people's need to live differently than they do. Thus there is always a deep undercurrent of desperation in his work. Benedetto Croce called these portrayals of people who live in constant expectation and who are consumed by their pursuit of "something else" in life, "a desperate drama".

It is precisely this distance between what they can achieve and what they want to achieve that is the cause of the tragic (and in many cases the comic) aspect of these people's lives. Ibsen felt that this contradiction between will and real prospects was at the root of his art. Looking back on 25 years of writing in 1875, he declared that most of what he had written involved "the contradiction between ability and aspiration, between will and possibility". In this conflict he saw "humanity's and the individual's tragedy and comedy simultaneously." - A decade later, he created the tragicomic constellation of the priest Rosmer and his scruffy teacher Ulrik Brendel. These two men, who are reflections of each other, both end up on the brink of an abyss where all they see is life's total emptiness and insignificance.

In Ibsen's 12 modern contemporary plays, from "Pillars of Society" (1877) to "When We Dead Awaken" (1899), we are led time and again into the same milieu. His characters' are distinguished by their staunch, well-established bourgeois lives. Nevertheless, their world is threatened and threatening. It turns out that the world is in motion; old values and previous conceptions are adrift. The movement shakes up the life of the individual and jeopardizes the established social order. Here we see how the process has a psychological as well as a conceptual and social aspect. Yet what starts the whole process is the need for change, something springing forth from the individual's volition.

In this sense, Ibsen is a powerful conceptual writer. This does not mean that his main concern as a dramatist was the didactical use of theater, or the waging of an abstract ideological debate. (Some of his critics, contemporary and later, have made this accusation - and it's fairly obvious that Ibsen was drawn towards the didactic.) However, the basis of Ibsen's human portrayal is his characters' conceptions of what makes life worth living - their values and their understanding of existence. The concepts they use to describe their position may be unclear; their self-understanding may be intuitive and deficient. A good example of this is Ellida Wangel's description of her ambivalent attraction to the sea in "The Lady from the Sea" (1888). But for a long time, in Ellida's consciousness, a desire has grown for a freer life coupled with a need for other moral and social values than those dominating Dr. Wangel's bourgeois existence. And this discovery within her creates shockwaves on the psychological and the social plane.

"The Human Conflicts"

Ibsen himself has given the best characteristic of his approach to drama. This was as early as 1857 in a theater review:

"It is not the conscious strife between ideas parading before us, nor is this the situation in real life. What we see are human conflicts, and enwrapped in these, deep inside, lay ideas at battle - being defeated, or charged with victory."

This undoubtedly touches upon something essential in Ibsen's demands to dramatic art: it should as realistically as possible unify three elements: the psychological, the ideological and the social. At its best, the organic synthesis of these three elements is at the heart of Ibsen's drama. Perhaps he only succeeds completely in a few of his plays, such as "Ghosts", "The Wild Duck", and "Hedda Gabler". Interestingly, he considered his major work to be "Emperor and Galilean" (1873), contrary to everyone else. This could indicate how much emphasis he put on ideology, not overt, but as a conflict between opposing views toward life. Ibsen believed that he had created a fully "realistic" rendering of the inner conflict in the abandoned Julian. The truth is, however, that Julian is too marked by the dramatist's own thoughts - what he calls his "positive philosophy of life." Ibsen first succeeded as a theatrical writer when he seriously took another approach - the one he described in connection with "Hedda Gabler" (1890):

"My main goal has been to depict people, human moods and human fates, on the basis of certain predominant social conditions and perceptions."

Ibsen took many years, after "Emperor and Galilean", to orient himself in this direction. Five years after that great historical dramatization of ideas came "Pillars of Society", the starting point for lbsen's reputation as a European theatrical writer.

Ibsen's International Breakthrough

In 1879, Ibsen sent Nora Helmer out into the world with a demand that a woman too must have the freedom to develop as an adult, independent, and responsible person. The playwright was now over 50, and had finally been recognized outside of the Nordic countries. "Pillars of Society". had admittedly opened the German borders for him, but it was "A Doll's House". and "Ghost" (1881) which in the 1880s led him into the European avant-garde.

"A Doll's House" has a plot which he repeated in many subsequent works, in the phase when he cultivated "critical realism". We experience the individual in opposition to the majority, society's oppressive authority. Nora puts it this way: "I will have to find out who is right, society or myself".

As noted earlier, when the individual intellectually frees himself from traditional ways of thinking, serious conflicts arise. For a short period around 1880, it appears that Ibsen was relatively optimistic about the individual's chances of succeeding on his own. Although her future is insecure in many ways, Nora seems to have a real chance of finding the freedom and independence she is seeking. Ibsen can be criticized for his somewhat superficial treatment of the problems a divorced woman without means would face in contemporary society. But it was the moral problems that concerned him as a writer, not the practical and economic ones.

A Singular Success

In spite of Nora's uncertain future prospects, she has served in a number of countries as a symbol for women fighting for liberation and equality. In this connection, she is the most "international" of lbsen's characters. Yet this is a rather singular success. The middle-class public has enthusiastically applauded a woman who leaves her children and husband, completely breaking off with the most important institution in the bourgeois society - the family!

This points to the basis of Ibsen's international success. He took deep schisms and acute problems that afflicted the bourgeois family and placed them on the stage. On the surface, the middle-class homes gave an impression of success - and appeared to reflect a picture of a healthy and stable society. But Ibsen dramatizes the hidden conflicts in this society by opening the doors to the private, and secret rooms of the bourgeois homes. He shows what can be hiding behind the beautiful façades: moral duplicity, confinement, betrayal, and fraud not to mention a constant insecurity. These were the aspects of the middle-class life one was not supposed to mention in public, as Pastor Manders wished Mrs. Alving to keep secret her reading and everything else that threatened the atmosphere at Rosenvold in "Ghosts". In the same manner, the social leaders in "Rosmersholm" put pressure on Rosmer to keep him from telling that he, the priest, had given up the Christian faith.

But Ibsen did not remain silent, and the spotlights of his plays made contemporary aspects of life highly visible. He disrupted the peace of the lives of the bourgeoisie by reminding them that they had climbed to their position of social power by mastering quite different ideals than tranquillity, order and stability. The bourgeoisie had betrayed its own motto of "freedom, equality, and brotherhood", and especially after the revolutionary year 1848 they had become defenders of the status quo. There was, of course, a liberal opposition within their class, and Ibsen openly joins these ranks in his first modern contemporary drama. He considered this movement for freedom and progress to be the true "European" point of view. As early as 1870, he wrote to the Danish critic Georg Brandes that it was imperative to return to the ideas of the French revolution, freedom, equality, and brotherhood. The words need a new meaning in keeping with the times, he claimed. In 1875 he writes, again to Brandes:

"Why are you, and the rest of us who hold the European viewpoint, so isolated at home?"

Eventually, as Ibsen grew older, he had trouble accepting certain extreme forms of liberalism which overemphasized the individual's sovereign right to self-realization and to some extent radically departed from past norms and values. In "Rosmersholm", he points out the dangers of radicalism built solely on individual moral norms. It is obvious here that Ibsen is concerned with European culture's basis in a Christian inspired moral tradition. One has to build on this, he indicates, even though one has given up the Christian faith. This is certainly the conclusion that Rebekka West reaches.

Simultaneously, this drama, like "Ghosts", is a painful clash with the melancholic, killjoy aspects of the Christian bourgeois tradition which subdues the human spirit. Both these works contain, for all their despair, a warm defense of happiness and the joy of life - pitted against the bourgeois society's emphasis on duty, law, and order.

It was in the 1870s that Ibsen oriented himself toward his "European" point of view. Even though he lived abroad, he continually chose a Norwegian setting for his contemporary dramas. As a rule, we find ourselves in a small Norwegian coastal town, the kind Ibsen knew so well from his childhood in Skien and his youth in Grimstad. The background of the young Ibsen certainly gave him a sharp eye for social forces and conflicts arising from differing viewpoints. In small societies, such as the typical Norwegian coastal town, these social and ideological conflicts are more exposed than they would be in a larger city.

Ibsen's first painful experiences came from such a small community. He had seen how conventions, traditions, and norms could exercise a negative control over the individual, create anxiety, and inhibit a natural and joyful lifestyle. This is the atmosphere of the "ghosts" as Mrs. Alving experiences it. According to her, it makes people "afraid of the light."

This was the atmosphere of his youth that formed the basis for his writing and world fame. As an insecure writer and man of the theater in a stifling Norwegian milieu, he set out to create a new Norwegian drama. He began with this national perspective. At the same time, from his first journey abroad, he oriented himself toward the European tradition of theater.

lbsen's Years of Learning

In the history of drama, early in the 1850s Ibsen carried on the traditions of two highly dissimilar writers, the Frenchman Eugéne Scribe (1791-1861) and the German Friedrich Hebbel (1813-63). For 11 years the young Ibsen was occupied with day to day practical stagework, and it follows that he had to keep himself well informed about the latest contemporary Euro-heatrical art. He worked with rehearsals of new plays and was committed to writing for the theater.

Scribe could teach him how a drama's plot should be structured in a logically motivated progression of scenes. Hebbel provided him with an example of the way drama could be based on life's contemporary dialectics, creating a modern conceptual drama. Hebbel's pioneering work was his conveyance of the ideologicalconflicts of his day into the theater where he created "a drama of issues" pointing forward. He also knew how the Greek tragedy's retrospective technique could be used by a modern dramatist.

In other words, Ibsen was in close contact with the art of the stage for a long uninterrupted period. His six years at the theater in Bergen (1851-57) and the following four or five years at the theater in Kristiania from 1857 were not easy. But he acquired a sharp eye for theatrical techniques and possibilities.

During a study tour to Copenhagen and Dresden in 1852, he came across a dramaturgical work newly released in Germany. It was Hermann Hettner's "Das moderne Drama" (1852). This programmatic treatise for a new topical theater deeply affected Ibsen's development as a dramatist. In Hettner too, we see the strong influence of Scribe and Hebbel, combined with a passionate interest for Shakespeare. Ibsen also gleaned knowledge from other writers, most notably Schiller and the two Danes Adam Oehlenschleger (1779-1850) and John Ludvig Heiberg (1791-1860).

Ibsen's apprenticeship was long, lasting about 15 years, and included theater work he later would claim to be as difficult as "having an abortion every day." There was a strong pressure to produce hanging over him; one that led to fumbling attempts in many directions. He experienced a few minor artistic victories - and numerous defeats. Very few believed that he had the necessary gift to become more than a minor theatrical writer with a modicum of talent.

In spite of this insecurity, it is a determined young writer we see during these years. His goal was clearly national. Together with his friend and colleague Bjornstjerne Bjornson (1832-1910), he founded "The Norwegian Company" in 1859, an organ for Norwegian art and culture. They had a joint program for their activities. Ibsen was especially concerned with the role of theater in the young Norwegian nation's search for its own identity In these "nation-building" pursuits, he gathered his material from the country's medieval history and perfected his art as a dramatist. This is prominent in the work that caps Ibsen's period of apprenticeship, "The Pretenders" from 1863. The story takes place in Norway in the 1200s, a period marked by destructive strife. But Ibsen's perspective is Norway of the 1860s when he has the king, Haakon Haakonsson, express his thoughts on national unity:

"Norway was a kingdom, now it will be a nation (... ) all shall be as one hereafter, and all shall know in themselves that they are one.!"

"The Pretenders" was Ibsen's breakthrough, yet he had to wait a few years before being recognized as one of the country's leading writers. This honor came in 1866 with "Brand" "The Pretenders", constitutes the end of his close relationship with Norwegian theater. It was also his farewell performance - he now started his long exile. In the years that followed, he turned away from the stage and sought a reading public.

The Great Topical Dramas

Both the great dramas for reading, "Brand" (1866) and "Peer Gynt" (1867), were based on Ibsen's problematic relationship with his country of birth. Political developments in 1864 led him to lose his optimistic belief in his country's future. He even began to doubt whether his countrymen had a historical raison d'être as a nation.

What he had earlier treated as a national problem of identity now became a question of the individual's personal integrity. It was no longer sufficient to dwell on an earlier historical era of greatness and focus on the continuity of the nation's life. Ibsen turned away from history, and confronted what he considered the main contemporary problem - a nation can only rise up culturally by means of the individual's exertion of will. "Brand" is mainly a drama with a message that the individual must follow the path of volition in order to achieve true humanity In addition, this is the only way to real freedom - for the individual, and it follows, for society as a whole.

In the two rather different twin works "Brand" and "Peer Gynt", the focus is on the problem of personality, Ibsen dramatizes the conflict between an opportunistic acting out of an unnatural role, and a dedication to a demanding lifelong quest. In "Peer Gynt", the dramatist created a scene which artistically illustrates this situation of conflict. The aging Peer, on his way back to his Norwegian roots is forced to come to terms with himself. As he looks back upon his wasted life, he peels an onion. He lets each layer represent a different role he has played. But he finds no core. He has to face the fact that he has become "no one", that he has no "self".

"So unspeakably poor, then, a soul can go back to nothingness, in the misty gray. You beautiful earth, don't be annoyed that I left no sign when I walked your grass. You beautiful sun, in vain you've shed your glorious light on an empty house. There was no one within to cheer and warm; - The owner, they tell me, was never at home."

Peer is the weak, spineless person - Brand's antithesis. But it is precisely in Ibsen's living portrayal of a personality's "dissolution" in changing roles, that some historians of the theater see the harbinger of a modernistic perception of the individual. The British drama researcher Ronald Gaskell puts it this way: "Peer Gynt" inaugurates the drama of the modern mind", and he continues: "Indeed, if Surrealism and Expressionism in the theater can be said to have any single source, the source is undoubtedly "Peer Gynt".

Thus does this early Ibsen drama though very "Norwegian" and romantic claim a central position in theatrical history, even though it was not written for the stage. In fact, it is "Peer Gynt" that in modern times has helped Ibsen to retain his position as a vital and relevant writer. Thus it was not only his contemporary plays that have made him one of the most towering figures in the history of the theater. Although it was mainly these works the well-known Swedish researcher in drama, Martin Lamm, had in mind when he claimed:

"Ibsen's drama is the Rome of modern drama: all roads lead to it - and from it."

Even though Ibsen withdrew from his Norwegian starting point in the 1870s and became "a European," he was always deeply marked by the country he left in 1864, and to which he first returned as an aging celebrity. It was not easy for him to return. The many years abroad, and the long struggle for recognition, had left their indelible stamp. Towards the end of his career, he said that he really was not happy with the fantastic life he had lived. He felt homeless - even in his mother country.

But it is precisely this tension between the Norwegian and the foreign (an element of freer European culture) in Ibsen that characterized him more than anything else as an individual and a writer. His independent position in what he called "the great, free, cultural situation" provided him with the broad perspective of distance, and freedom. Simultaneously, the Norwegian in him created a longing for a more liberated and happier life. This is the longing for the sun in the grave writer's poetic world. He never denied his distinctive Norwegian character. Toward the end of his life, he said to a German friend:

He who wishes to understand me, must know Norway. The magnificent, but severe, natural environment surrounding people up there in the north, the lonely, secluded life - the farms are miles apart - forces them to be unconcerned with others, to keep to their own. That is why they become introspective and serious, they brood and doubt - and they often lose faith. At home every other person is a philosopher! There, the long, dark, winters come with their thick fogs enveloping the houses - oh, how they long for the sun!

Part II:  Major Works

“Only by grasping and comprehending my entire production as a continuous and coherent whole will the reader be able to receive the precise impression I sought to convey in the individual parts…I therefore appeal to the reader that he not put any play aside, and not skip anything, but that he absorb the plays…in the order in which I wrote them.”

Henrik Ibsen

            1850 - Catiline (Catilina)

            1850 - The Burial Mound also known as The Warrior's Barrow (Kjæmpehøjen)

            1851 - Norma (Norma)

            1852 - St. John's Eve (Sancthansnatten)

            1854 - Lady Inger of Oestraat (Fru Inger til Østeraad)

            1855 - The Feast at Solhaug (Gildet paa Solhoug)

            1856 - Olaf Liljekrans (Olaf Liljekrans)

            1857 - The Vikings at Helgeland (Hærmændene paa Helgeland)

            1862 - Digte - only released collection of poetry

            1862 - Love's Comedy (Kjærlighedens Komedie)

            1863 - The Pretenders (Kongs-Emnerne)

            1866 - Brand (Brand)

            1867 - Peer Gynt (Peer Gynt)

            1869 - The League of Youth (De unges Forbund)

            1873 - Emperor and Galilean (Kejser og Galilæer)

            1877 - Pillars of Society (Samfundets Støtter)

            1879 - A Doll House (Et Dukkehjem)

            1881 - Ghosts (Gengangere)

            1882 - An Enemy of the People (En Folkefiende)

            1884 - The Wild Duck (Vildanden)

            1886 - Rosmersholm (Rosmersholm)

            1888 - The Lady from the Sea (Fruen fra Havet)

            1890 - Hedda Gabler (Hedda Gabler)

            1892 - The Master Builder (Bygmester Solness)

            1896 - John Gabriel Borkman (John Gabriel Borkman)

            1899 - When We Dead Awaken (Når vi døde vaagner)