The Wild Duck Journal #4

"Not rounding off, but opening out." Comment upon the way the writers deal with the ending in relation to the whole. In your answer you should refer to two or three of the works you have studied.

I noticed that in the two plays that we have read so far there has been death or suicide at the end of each one. In Oedipus, Jocasta kills herself and in The Wild Duck, Hedvig kills herself. In Oedipus, There is a lot of deceit and secrets kept. Jocasta is really Oedipus' mother and he actually killed his own father who he figured out is Laius. I believe that because of this lie and deceit and Oedipus' ignorance, Sophocles tries to deal with the ending by having Jocasta kill herself which is a way to make the story more tragic. Jocasta cannot deal with the fact that she lied to and married her son so a way to fix it is to kill herself. I think that Sophocles might have done this to show that you need a good family relationship and then nothing will go wrong then.

In The Wild Duck, There is also deceit and lies. Werle is the reason for Edkal's downfall. Also Hedvig may not actually be Hjalmer' daughter which means that Gina has lied to him.Hedvig cannot deal with the fact that her dad is shunning her now so she kills herself to. Ibsen, believe, dealt with the whole ordeal by killing Hedvig and i think that he did that to make the family feel guilt for not having a good relationship with each other and having secrets and deceit.