Wild Duck #3

Stylistic techniques (imagery, figurative language, sensory detail)

HEDVIG. No, I won’t. It’s something so stupid.

GREGERS. It couldn’t be. Now tell me why you smiled.

HEDVIG. That was because always, when all of a sudden—in a flash—I happen to think of that in there, it always seems to me that the whole room and everything in it is called “the depths of the sea”! But that’s all so stupid. (Ibsen 164)

The passage above is one of the most interesting, in my opinion, in the entire play. Gregers is talking to Hedvig about the attic full of wild birds they have in their attic, and Hedvig says she thinks of the attic as the depths of the sea. However, she also says that that is a stupid thought, and should not be divulged. The repetitions of the word “stupid” makes Hedvig appear very childlike, and it also shows how the attic, which she and her family view as their hope and freedom, should not be taken lightly. We see other times when water comes into play throughout the novel, like when the Wild Duck dives down into the depths to escape the hunter, or when Gregers says earlier about the wild duck “Just don’t let her ever catch sight of the sea”(Ibsen 153). This passage shows how Gregers understands that the wild duck will never want to remain in confinement once she has seen the beauty of the outdoors, and especially, the sea. The sea offers hope, it is freedom, the ultimate dream of the duck and of the family. This imagery which shows up throughout the novel illustrates how the family is trying to have hope by keeping the animals in the attic, for that is their sea.

We also see this image of the sea when Hjalmar says about his father: “I am going to rescue that shipwrecked man. That’s just what he suffered—shipwreck—when the storm broke over him” (Ibsen168). By this passage, it seems that hope and dreams and freedom also have the ability to bring ruin down on a man’s head. By using the image of a shipwrecked man tortured by a storm, Hjalmar could be saying that his father was wrecked while hoping for something else, or in fact that the hope actually did it to him. Either way, things got nasty for Ekdal when he was younger and full of hope. Therefore, the sea is a double-edged sword that should not be taken lightly.