Wild Duck Journal #1

Point of view/characters: From whose point of view is the story told? Does this change? How reliable is the narrative voice? How well does the reader get to know the characters? How credible are they? How are they presented? How does the writer persuade us to like/sympathize with some characters and dislike others?

In Wild Duck, the main narrator so far is Gregers. I know he is the narrator because he shows up fairly quickly at the beginning of the play, and is the character Ibsen focuses the most on at this point, as he follows Gregers' conversations with various people. The narrator hasn't changed yet, but at this point in the play (Act 1), it is hard to know if it will. I feel like Gregers is reliable. From his conversations, I do not get the impression that he is trying to hide anything, and in contrast to his father, during their conversation he is the one interested the most in talking about the truth. Although it is early in the play, we have gotten to know the characters fairly well, especially Gregers, Werle, Hjalmar, and Ekdal. Since Gregers is the narrator and therefore seems to be the protagonist, Ibsen has set him up to be liked by the reader. He wants to know the truth from his father about the forestry scandal, wants to take time to catch up with his childhood friend Hjalmer, and pities the poor condition that Ekdal is in. All of these are admirable qualities and present Gregers as a fine man. On the other hand, Werle was not set up to be liked by the readers. Ibsen uses the conversation between Werle and his son, Gregers, to emphasize Werle's bad qualities: his lack of guilt for going unpunished while his friend Ekdal suffered ("But the fact remains that he was convicted and I was acquited," Act 1, 131), his lack of sympathy for the poor old man's condition ("Seriously, what would you have me do for these people? When Ekdal was let out, he was a broken man, beyond any help" (Act 1, 131), and his open admittance of simply using his son ("In a relatinoship as close as ours, one can always be of use to the other" Act 1, 134). By highlighting these negative qualities in Werle, Ibsen convinces the reader to relate more to his son. Ibsen also causes us to sympathize with Ekdal, the old man, simply by his physicality and short appearance in this act. When he walks through the party dressed in dirty clothing looking extremely out of place, causing all of the guests to look down on him, the reader cannot help but feel at least a little sorry for him.