G. Thompson
Last time, on Wed.--discussion of characters we didn't get to; conflicts dramatized in the play.
Why write this as a play? What advantages in using drama? Is there a danger in aestheticizing social problems? Does Ibsen take a side? If we see him as essentially backing Stockmann's position (an end to all lies), what happens to society?
Greek notion that the ethical responsibilities of the individual and the state are analogous--but doesn't the state sometimes have to lie?
Distinction between a mob and a People (as Stockmann puts it). (below--p. 93-94) Ibsen is picking up on late 19th-c.-early 20th-c. concerns about the mass of people. Cf. Thoreau, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," only by Ibsen's time they weren't so quiet. Two conceptions of elitism: one is based on inherited wealth or social position attained through money. Morten Kiil and unnamed "aristocrats" stand for the first, Peter Stockmann, Asklaksen, and perhaps others the second. Billing aspires to join their circle. The second conception of elitism is based on intelligence, education, scientific or other achievement--learning and commitment to the truth wherever it leads. That's the sort of elite which Dr. Stockmann believes in, and I think we see Petra advocating for that as well. The first sort is presented to us as requiring that we compromise the truth in the interest of gaining public backing and keeping people's good opinion, and in the context of the play (public baths, polluted waters) there has to be a choice. Of course in ordinary life, the contrast may not be so evident.
One issue, perhaps the issue, for the play, is what we do with Dr. Stockmann by the end of the play. There are several attempts to a) buy him off or b) persuade him to compromise so as to avoid harm to the town and to his family. What are arguments for and against his position?
Key speech for Dr. Stockmann comes during the lecture, once they finally allow him to speak. (p. 93 in my edition) "Just because there is a mass or organisms with the human shape, they do not automatically become a People. That honor has to be earned!" His former optimism comes from being able to cure the sick, to meet people from all over the world and learn from them, and become more civilized. (94)
Elitist? "He's an aristocrat all of a sudden." But the town's aristocracy is based on having money and getting along.
Examples and implicit comparison--Jesus and Galileo; the sentry who sees danger ahead. "The majority is never right until it does right." (95)
"Rights are sacred until it hurts for somebody to use them." (95)
First, is Stockmann right to insist on the truth above popular opinion?
Second, is he going about it in a way which is not pragmatic? Couldn't he work more quietly and ameliorate the situation? He faces that challenge in the final act, when Morten Kiil asks him how sure he was. But the reaction to the tax seals his position.
Is Dr. Stockmann too egotistical, or too insistent on his vision of the truth? Is he making his family into martyrs for the sake of his own reputation?
60 Mrs. Stockmann--"there's so much injustice in the world! You've simply got to learn to live with it." Consequences for the family--back to poverty.
"I'm going to teach you what a man is." Mrs. Stockmann cries.
66 "After all the lies in the papers . . ." Dr. Stockmann isn't being cautious of who he's talking to here; they print the papers. Ambition "to blow up every lie we live by."
Discuss this point: what is included in "every lie we live by"?
Hovstad and Billing--in act two (our version) are pragmatic always--it's not that he needs public support for its own sake, but they can use his crusade to sell papers.
Dr. Stockmann sees public live as corrupt and wants to blow it all up. Do we think that everyone who has that ambition is justified? Cf. some of Trump's supporters . . . "Drain the swamp" indeed--corporate friendly figures like Scott Pruitt enable the swamp.
Conclusion: they are going to homeschool the kids, find some urchins to join a school, and raise a generation of free citizens. The play ends there, with Petra's saying "Father!" In the house where they've been evicted; perhaps they will stay with the Captain.
Cf. Meyer:
What I want is so simple and straightforward and easy! I only want to knock it into the heads of these curs that the Liberals are the most insidious enemies of freedom--that party programmes strangle every new truth that deserves to live--and that expediency and self-interest turn morality and justice upside down, so that in the end life here becomes intolerable.
I don't think this is the same thing as Miller's program--this speech isn't in Miller's adaptation.
Another topic--Miller's adaptation.
Act 3 in this adaptation, act 5 in Meyer's translation (and other versions).
Miller:
MRS. STOCKMANN: But how do you know it'll be any different there?
DR. STOCKMANN: I don't know. It just seems to me, in a big country like that, the spirit must be bigger. Still, I suppose they must have the solid majority there too. I don't know, at least there must be more room to hide there.
Meyer's translation:
MRS. STOCKMANN: Yes, Thomas, they've behaved shockingly to you in this town. But does that mean we have to leave the country?
DR. STOCKMANN: Do you think the rabble aren't just as insolent in other towns? . . . Mind you, they're probably not much better in America; the majority's rampant there too, and liberal public opinion and all the rest of the rubbish. But the context is larger there, you see. They may kill you, but they won't torture you slowly . . . (302-303)
This seems to me to be significantly different.
What's the context when Miller adapted this play, in 1950? See his preface--he sees Ibsen as insisting on saying what he has to say . . . "Every Ibsen play begins with the unwritten words: 'Now listen here!'" Opposition, in his preface, to seeing plays as entertainment. (7) For Miller, th equestion is "whether the democratic guarantees protecting political minorities ought to be set aside in time of crisis. More personally, it is the question of whether one's vision of the truth ought to be a source of guilt at a time when the mass of men condemn it as a dangerous and devilish lie."
1950 was during a dark time in American culture, in spite of our having come out of WWII victorious and relatively unscathed, and being dominant in the world. Communism was perceived to be a threat, politicians such as Joseph McCarthy were making careers out of unfounded charges, and Miller himself was called to testify in 1956. (see Politico, June 21, 2013-- )
Video compilation about the Red Scare (source?)
Does it do violence to the play to place it into the framework of McCarthyism? Is Ibsen writing about the same thing?