SYMBOLISM IN THE WILD
DUCK
THE WILD DUCK AS SYMBOLIC NOVEL
Symbolism means a veiled or oblique mode of
communication. The chief symbol in this play is the wild duck.
The play dependant on and held together by a symbol as if the wild duck were a
magnet and all the characters are iron filings held together by the centripetal
force.
Mr. Werle while hunting saw a wild duck and shot it. The wounded duck dived down into the sea and tangled to the weeds to never come up again. Mr. Werle’s clever dog dived after the wounded wild duck and brought it up again. The wild duck thus symbolizes Hjalmar’s life of ignorance while Mr. Werle’s clever dog symbolizes Gregers who has resolved to awaken Hjalmar to the reality that he is leading an incomplete life for he is ignorant of Gina’s past and hiding himself from the reality of life like the wild duck.
Gregers says,
“My dear Hjalmar, I almost think you have something
of the wild duck in you… you have dived down and bitten yourself fast in the
undergrowth.”
In this way, the wild duck symbolizes Hedvig too.
As she herself says,
“My wild duck. It belongs to
me.”
The wild duck, wounded by Mr. Werle while enjoying
the sport of shooting bird, is an alien in the garret. Hedvig too is an alien
in this household and is a product of Mr. Werle’s sport of flirting with Gina.
Like the wild duck, Hedvig too is leading a narrow and limited life because she
has no ambition to see the world because she has weak eyesight and would soon
become blind. Her approaching blindness symbolizes her approaching death.
The dark menagerie in the Ekdal’s house symbolizes
the thick forest where Old Ekdal used to hunt wild animals. Art of photography
is also symbolic. It is an image of reality but not the true reality.
It is possible that the wild duck, consciously or
unconsciously, also reflects Ibsen’s own life when he wrote this
play. Ibsen own world does not seems to be very different from Ekdals garret.
Both Hjalmar and Gregers signify different aspects of Ibsen: on one hand the
evader of reality, and in contrast, an idealist who bothers mankind with his
claims of the ideal because he has a sick conscience.
We can conclude that Ibsen has beautifully
employed the device of symbolism to make sure the necessity of illusion in the
life of average human beings. In Act III, Gregers says:
“The wild duck is the most
important of all the things in there”.
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