The Wild Duck story
The Wild Duck (original Norwegian title: Vildanden) is an 1884 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is considered the first modern masterpiece in the genre of tragicomedy.
11 total · 3 choice · 7 major · 1 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| familial love | choice | Hedvig loved her father deeply and he doted on her until he discovered she might have been illegitimate |
| father and daughter | choice | Hjalmar and Hedvig |
| having a skeleton in the closet | choice | the Ekdal home is full of lies that people tell in order to get along. Gregers' father may have impregnated his servant Gina then married her off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child, and Hjalmar's father has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime the elder Werle committed. |
| blindness | major | Hedvig was slowly going blind. |
| extramarital affair | major | Hjalmar learns that Gina has had an extramarital affair and that Hedvig might not be his biological daughter. |
| husband and wife | major | Gina and Hjalmar |
| neglectful parent | major | Hjalmar was somewhat negligent in his duties as a dad |
| parenting a physically disabled child | major | Hedvig was slowly going blind |
| realist vs. idealist | major | Greger was an idealist who believed truth must be told; other characters, for example Greger's father, were more down to earth |
| to tell the truth vs. to offer a comforting lie | major | The viewer is made to understand that the ideologue Greger was instrumental in upsetting the order in the Ekdal home, by uncovering various lies that the inhabitants lived by. |