Tragedy Journal 7 (Wild Duck Act 4)

Readers are attracted to moments of intensity in a writer's work. By what means and with what effect have writers in your study offered heightened emotional moments designed to arrest the reader's attention?

Scandal and affairs are commonly used to heighten emotions in relationships. In Act Four of the Wild Duck, Hjalmar has discovered that his wife Gina has hidden a previous relationship with Werle, "GINA. Well, you might as well know it all. He didn't give up till he had his way. HJALMAR. (with a clap of his hands). And this is the mother of my child! How could you keep that hidden from me!" (Ibsen 183). The fact that Gina has had this previous relationship with an enemy of the Ekdal family drives the emotions deep into Hjalmar. This accentuates the motif of the wild duck and how the Ekdal family represents a wounded wild duck.

In Oedipus, the scandal of Oedipus marrying his mother and bedding down with her is enough to send the traditional audiences in Greece reeling. Sophocles tries to make this realization of the scandal very dramatic, "O god - All come true, all burst to light! O light - now let me look my last on you! I stand revealed at last - cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands!" (Sophocles 1306-1310). Both characters realize their scandals in different ways, Oedipus brings the burden upon himself, whereas Hjalmar attempts to put the blame on his wife Gina, "it'll be your past, Gina, that killed it" (Ibsen 184).