Reading Order
The Wild Duck Reading Order
The Wild Duck (1884) by Henrik Ibsen is the most formally complex Ibsen play — the Ekdal family in their cramped apartment, the attic with its wild duck and old Christmas trees, and the arrival of Gregers Werle, who believes that relationships should be built on 'the claim of the ideal' (absolute truth) and who sets out to reveal the truth about Haakon Werle's past relationship with Gina Ekdal and its consequences. The play is Ibsen's most ambivalent work: unlike the earlier plays, in which the exposure of bourgeois hypocrisy is clearly salutary, The Wild Duck shows the destruction that Gregers's truth-telling causes. The fourteen-year-old Hedvig's death at the end of the play — she shoots herself with the pistol she was going to use to kill the wild duck as a sacrifice — is the consequence of Gregers's idealism, and Ibsen refuses to endorse either position: the truth destroyed the family, but the lie had already done its damage. The wild duck itself — found wounded by Haakon Werle and now living in the attic — is the play's central symbol: the creature that has adapted to captivity and would die if released into its natural element.
Where to start
The Wild Duck (1884) — any modern translation; Christopher Hampton's is particularly good. Best Ibsen reading order: A Doll's House → Ghosts → The Wild Duck → Hedda Gabler → The Master Builder → When We Dead Awaken
Complete The Wild Duck Book List
- 1Buy
The Wild Duck
Henrik Ibsen·1884·Ibsen's most formally complex play — the Ekdal family, the attic wild duck, Gregers Werle's destructive idealism, and Hedvig's death. The play in which Ibsen most directly interrogates the value of the truth-telling that his earlier plays celebrated; the formal sophistication that marks the beginning of his late period - 2Buy
Hedda Gabler
Henrik Ibsen·1890·The later companion — Hedda Tesman, surrounded by people who want things from her, and the offstage shot. The Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler are companion investigations of the Ibsenian theme of the destruction wrought by people whose desires are completely out of alignment with their circumstances - 3Buy
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen·1879·The earlier companion — Nora Helmer's discovery of her unfreedom and her departure. A Doll's House and The Wild Duck together show the range of Ibsen's treatment of truth and its consequences: in A Doll's House, the revelation of truth (even though it is painful) seems to lead toward liberation; in The Wild Duck, the revelation of truth leads directly to Hedvig's death - 4Buy
The Cherry Orchard
Anton Chekhov·1904·The companion in the theatrical tradition of the play about characters who cannot save themselves from the destruction that is coming because they are incapable of facing reality — the Ranevskaya family's inability to save the cherry orchard. The Wild Duck and The Cherry Orchard are companion investigations of the same problem: what happens to people when the fiction that sustains them is removed - 5Buy
Uncle Vanya
Anton Chekhov·1899·Chekhov's companion in the tradition of the play about people whose lives are organized around disappointment — Vanya's long years of service to Serebryakov and the devastating recognition that the service was wasted. The Wild Duck and Uncle Vanya are companion plays about the people who organize their lives around an illusion (the old professor's greatness; the Ekdals' life in the attic) and what happens to them when the illusion is exposed - 6Buy
The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams·1945·Williams's companion in the tradition of the play organized around a fragile world of illusion (Laura's glass animals; the Ekdals' attic) and the outsider whose arrival threatens to shatter it. Both are organized around the question of what the truth would do to people who have constructed their lives around a carefully maintained fiction - 7Buy
Ghosts
Henrik Ibsen·1881·The earlier companion Ibsen play about the consequences of concealed truth — Mrs. Alving's revelation of the truth about her late husband. Ghosts and The Wild Duck are companion investigations of the same Ibsenian question from opposite directions: Ghosts shows the damage that the concealment of truth causes; The Wild Duck shows the damage that the revelation of truth causes - 8Buy
Middlemarch
George Eliot·1871·Eliot's companion in the literary tradition of the investigation of idealism and its consequences — Dorothea Brooke's aspirations and their collision with the reality of Casaubon. Both The Wild Duck and Middlemarch are organized around the collision between idealism (Gregers's 'claim of the ideal'; Dorothea's aspirations) and the reality of the lives in which that idealism operates
The Wild Duck — Frequently Asked Questions
What does the wild duck symbolize in Ibsen's play?
The wild duck is the play's central symbol and works on several levels simultaneously. The literal situation: the wild duck was found wounded by Haakon Werle and is now living in the Ekdals' attic, adapted to captivity and, as old Ekdal explains, would probably die if returned to its natural element. As symbol: the wild duck represents the Ekdal family as a whole — wounded by Haakon Werle (whose involvement with Gina and whose business dealings have shaped all of their lives), living in a comfortable but artificial captivity (the attic, with its Christmas trees and rabbits), adapted to their diminished circumstances in a way that would make genuine freedom impossible. Specifically, the wild duck is associated with Hedvig — she loves it most, and Gregers suggests she sacrifice it as a proof of her love for her father. When Hedvig shoots herself instead, the sacrifice of the wild duck has been replaced by the sacrifice of the girl who loved it; the symbolic and the literal have collapsed. Ibsen's choice to make the duck a wounded thing that has adapted to captivity rather than a free wild creature is his central statement about what Gregers's idealism fails to understand: the Ekdals are not prisoners longing for freedom, but people who have found a way to live in their captivity, and removing the captivity will not liberate them.
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