The Wild Duck #2

Ibsen uses the motif of disease and illness to show the detrimental effects of living a false life and forcing an illusion upon someone's life to solve a problem in your own. When Gregers and Werle are arguing at the end of Act 1, Werle tells Greger that,"You have seen me through your mother's eyes. But you ought to remember that her eyes were- were- clouded now and then" (Ibsen 90). This quote happens during the middle of an argument so clearly that gives a negative and destructive connotation to illness. After talking about Gregers' mother's clouded eyes they continue fighting and then Gregers accuses Werle of messing up Hjalmar's life and says, "And there he is now [...] without the slightest idea that what he calls home is built on a lie" (Ibsen 90). This is important because it is a mention of lying and deceit during an argument immediately after the mention of clouded eyes which connect to being blind. This quote shows how Ibsen is making a connection between illness, specifically failure of eyesight, to the destructive effects of lying. When Gregers comes to the Ekdal home later in the story, Act 2, him and Hjalmar talk about Hedvig's eyesight and Hjalmar tells Gregers that him and Gina do not "have the heart to tell her anything about it. She suspects nothing" (Ibsen 101). This is another connection between lies and eye disease. The fact that eye disease comes up with lying connects to a negative thing pairing with not telling the truth. This helps to prove that Ibsen uses disease and illness to show the detrimental effects of lies.

The Wild Duck #1

Prompt 2:


I feel like Ms. Sorby has false conceptions of herself. She is a very kind and giving woman, but at this point in time she is still a housemaid that is employed under Werle. It seems that she is beginning to see herself as wealthy before she actually becomes married to Werle, but in reality she is just a handmaid for now. I think that it is safe to say that Hjalmar has false conceptions of the other people around him. He is in the blind about Gina having an affair with Werle and he thinks that Hedvig is his biological daughter when in reality she belongs to Werle as well. The person that recognizes the facades is Gregers. Gregers calls out Werle on everything at the end of the first act, and then makes all of it aware to Hjalmar near the end, sending Hjalmar's life into a downward spiral, which ultimately results in Hedvig's death. Hjalmar reacts to learning about the facades at first by freaking out and becoming angry with everyone, but then after Hedvig's death he accepts all of the new facts he has learned about his life. His wife Gina reacts rather calmly but that is only because she has known all of this information the whole time. When Gregers reaches the conclusions early on in the novel he reacts by getting excited about bringing his father down, and heads to Hjalmar's to set the tragedy in motion.

We #3

Motifs: There is a more apparent repetition of facial features and body parts and D-503 recognizes and describes people by their body parts in the final third of the novel. He does this because he has his soul so he is more imaginative with his description but he is also on a thin line between going back to his old ways of being straight-forward and fully accepting his soul. This is because his descriptions of people are often very creative and out of the box, but his ways of categorizing them is very logical. Body parts may also be foreshadowing for the Great Operation because D-503 describes a doctor as having "scissor-lips" and since it was a doctor and scissors are a surgery tool, it may be a way of subtly foreshadowing the Great Operation.

Setting: The setting changes to more of nature than sealed in walls in this final section of the book. Instead of being trapped within the walls of the city, D-503 breaks through the barriers by going beyond the green wall with I-330 and also flying into space with the Integral. Going beyond his enclosure really shows how he is going against society because of this soul he develops. He fully accepts having his soul in this part of the book, and because of that he almost attempts a traitorous act against the One State. The lack of boundaries in this last third of the book show how D-503 has broken all of the control that his government has over him.

Language: The language of this section of the novel is almost as it was in the second third. It is very complex sentence structure, however most of the sentences end with an ellipse. This is because most of this last part is D-503's internal conflict between himself coming to a resolve so he has a lot of thoughts that conflict, so his sentences trail off as a result of that. Although, in the last entry of the book, all of his sentences become short, and logical, and there is not one ellipse in the entire entry. This is because he had the Great Operation done on him and the part of his brain that contained the imagination/soul he developed was removed. As a result of this his sentences become very direct and logical as they were at the beginning of the novel. This shows how D-503 has come full circle since the start of his journal.

We #2

Motifs: In the second third of the novel there is more use of colors in D-503's description of things. These colors are used by Zamyatin to show how D-503 is beginning to develop a soul/imagination. In the first third, most of his descriptions were rather bland, but as he becomes less logical his descriptions broaden into a wide variety of colors. Also, things that are see through, such as glass, windows, and ice are repeated more in the second third. They show how D-503 is becoming more of a transparent person since he is developing a soul. Before, he was just a solid, opaque, logical person, but now he is thinking thoughts he never would have thought if he had remained as he was in the first third.

Setting: The setting in the second third seems to be more confined than it was at the beginning. At the beginning of the novel, even though D-503 mentioned the wall, it seemed to me like the place he was in was more open. Now, in the second third D-503 mentions houses and walls a lot which gives a feeling of being trapped. He is often in small places such as his room and the use of the green wall adds to the sense of being sealed in. This sense of being sealed in represents how D-503 is having an internal conflict between logic and having a soul. He is trapped within himself and often talks about how there is two of him, showing how he is having a troubling conflict within himself, in that confined space.

Language: The language in the second third of the novel becomes far more fanciful than it was at the beginning. At the beginning D-503 is very strict to his mathematical ways, but in the second third his mind begins to wander. Instead of having straight, logical sentences, D-503 begins to speak in more similes and has longer, more complex sentences. These also relates to how he is beginning to develop a soul, because without the soul he thought with straight logic. But now he is developing a soul, and this causes his sentences to become more complex since he is questioning everything.

We #1

Motifs: There is a surplus of motifs in We. An often mentioned motif is religion and God. God plays a big part in this society, not because the people believe in a god and have religion, but because there is an absence of God and religion. This helps to define the society because many times D-503 talks about how the people are on the same level as gods, and therefore are one and the same. This lack of religion shows how the people of the society believe that they have found the answers to almost everything through their mathematical ways. It helps to show that this society is based on mathematics, science, and logic.

Setting: The setting of the novel is very futuristic for when it was written (1920-1921). D-503's descriptions of the ancients in the 20th century are very accurate depictions of what actually came about during that time period. The setting of this novel is in a futuristic glass city that has almost entirely boxed out nature except for a botanical garden somewhere in the city. The fact that there is no wild nature allowed in the city walls shows how the society, and people in that society, are far more advanced scientifically and mathematically than the primitive life of the "savage", being us, the reader.

Language: The language of the novel is quite advanced. There is a good amount of higher level words, which plays into the fact that the people of this society see themselves as more intelligent than the old society. Also, poets are very important in this society and they play a big part in putting what happens in this mathematically dominated society into words. The poets are all required to write down things about their perfect mathematical society, and this makes words very important in a society that is dominated by math.