The Play of Analogies

The play can be interpreted in several ways. We can examine the relationship between each character and the world of the wild duck.

Hedvig owns the wild duck, but she is happy to lend it to the grown-up children who are her father and grandfather. She compares herself to the duck, or she compares her circumstances with those of the duck, when, for example, she guesses that she may not be her father’s daughter. For her the duck is never a symbol; her relationship to it is analogical — in the Norwegian text, the duck is always referred to in the feminine! When she identifies herself with it, it is out of solidarity or sympathy; in the end she chooses to sacrifice herself rather than to sacrifice the duck.

Gina never talks about the duck nor of the attic. She doesn’t want to talk about them, and when she alludes to them, it is always to run them down. But she tolerates this fantasy as long as a minimum of the duties of daily life are performed, as long as the photographs are developed for the clients. Mrs. Sørby clearly knows nothing of the duck since Gina is her sole source of information.

According to Gregers, Hjalmar is the wild duck: he is clinging to the seaweed at the bottom of the sea. Hjalmar does not think of himself as the duck. He plays his father’s game out of solidarity, because his personality is weak, and he follows his parent in his folly. Gregers wants to kill the duck in order to kill that part of the duck that is in Hjalmar. The duck has to be destroyed since it represents all the lies in the house of Ekdal. Gregers is the first to create a symbology out of the domesticated, confined wild duck. In other words, he equates it with the crazed irreality of the Ekdal family. In his metaphorical system, Gregers considers himself the faithful dog whose duty it is to bring the unwilling duck back to the surface, even if it means wounding the bird in the process. It is he, therefore, who reveals to Hjalmar the light of truth. But Gregers is sick; he himself is also the duck in need of help. Within Gregers is a great divide; he is not the devil, he destroys through good intention, like certain missionaries in the countries of the Third World, like the dog who bravely retrieves the dying duck for his master.

As in ancient Greek tragedy, the whole sweep of the action is announced at the outset, and everything comes to pass, alas, as foretold. Ibsen throws in a terrible surprise at the end. It is foreshadowed, before Chekhov’s Seagull, before Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, by an offstage gunshot. But the tragedy of The Wild Duck is latent in the first act. It begins, indeed, like a comedy; as does A Doll’s House. It is only once the journey has begun that the screw turns, and suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of a tragedy.

François Rochaix is Director of the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University.