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    The Wild Duck
    The Wild Duck
    The Wild Duck
    Audiobook3 hours

    The Wild Duck

    Written by Henrik Ibsen

    Narrated by LibriVox Community

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    About this audiobook

    The Wild Duck (1884) (original Norwegian title: Vildanden) is by many considered Ibsen's finest work, and it is certainly the most complex. It tells the story of Gregers Werle, a young man who returns to his hometown after an extended exile and is reunited with his boyhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal. Over the course of the play, the many secrets that lie behind the Ekdals' apparently happy home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "Summons of the Ideal". Among these truths: Gregers' father impregnated his servant Gina, then married her off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child. Another man has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime the elder Werle committed. Furthermore, while Hjalmar spends his days working on a wholly imaginary "invention", his wife is earning the household income.

    Ibsen displays masterful use of irony: despite his dogmatic insistence on truth, Gregers never says what he thinks but only insinuates, and is never understood until the play reaches its climax. Gregers hammers away at Hjalmar through innuendo and coded phrases until he realizes the truth; Gina's daughter, Hedvig, is not his child. Blinded by Gregers' insistence on absolute truth, he disavows the child. Seeing the damage he has wrought, Gregers determines to repair things, and suggests to Hedvig that she sacrifice the wild duck, her wounded pet, to prove her love for Hjalmar. Hedvig, alone among the characters, recognizes that Gregers always speaks in code, and looking for the deeper meaning in the first important statement Gregers makes which does not contain one, kills herself rather than the duck in order to prove her love for him in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Only too late do Hjalmar and Gregers realize that the absolute truth of the "ideal" is sometimes too much for the human heart to bear. (Summary by Wikipedia)

    Cast

    Narrator: Kristingj
    WERLE, a merchant, manufacturer, etc.: Algy Pug
    GREGERS WERLE, his son: David Goldfarb
    OLD EKDAL: Lewis
    HIALMAR EKDAL, his son, a photographer: Marty Kris
    GINA EKDAL, Hjalmar's wife: Helen Falconer
    HEDVIG, their daughter, a girl of fourteen: ChyAnne Donnell
    MRS. SORBY, Werle's housekeeper: Carol Box
    RELLING, a doctor & A SHORT-SIGHTED GENTLEMAN: Lars Rolander
    MOLVIK, student of theology & ANOTHER WAITER: David Lawrence
    GRABERG, Werle's bookkeeper: Availle
    PETTERSEN, Werle's servant: DublinGothic
    JENSEN, a hired waiter: Max Körlinge
    A FLABBY GENTLEMAN: Leonard Wilson
    A THIN-HAIRED GENTLEMAN: Martin Geeson

    Audio edited by: Algy Pug

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLibriVox
    Release dateAug 25, 2014
    Author

    Henrik Ibsen

    Born in 1828, Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and poet, often associated with the early Modernist movement in theatre. Determined to become a playwright from a young age, Ibsen began writing while working as an apprentice pharmacist to help support his family. Though his early plays were largely unsuccessful, Ibsen was able to take employment at a theatre where he worked as a writer, director, and producer. Ibsen’s first success came with Brand and Peter Gynt, and with later plays like A Doll’s House, Ghosts, and The Master Builder he became one of the most performed playwrights in the world, second only to William Shakespeare. Ibsen died in his home in Norway in 1906 at the age of 78.

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