An Enemy of the People Henrik Ibsen 9781481056946 Books
Download As PDF : An Enemy of the People Henrik Ibsen 9781481056946 Books
An Enemy of the People is an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the public outcry against his play Ghosts, which at that time was considered scandalous. Ghosts had challenged the hypocrisy of Victorian morality and was deemed indecent for its veiled references to syphilis. An Enemy of the People addresses the irrational tendencies of the masses, and the hypocritical and corrupt nature of the political system that they support. It is the story of one brave man's struggle to do the right thing and speak the truth in the face of extreme social intolerance. The play's protagonist, Dr Stockmann, represents the playwright's own voice. Upon completion of the play, Ibsen wrote to his publisher in Copenhagen "I am still uncertain as to whether I should call it a comedy or a straight drama. It may [have] many traits of comedy, but it also is based on a serious idea."
An Enemy of the People Henrik Ibsen 9781481056946 Books
The play itself is terrific, if infuriating. Ibsen did a terrific job illuminating how communities struggle to balance short-term economic interests with long-term health and prosperity, as well as the difficulty of having public debate about scientific issues when most people don't understand the technical details well enough to make their own informed judgments about relative risk and consequences. Replace "tainted water in the public baths" with "climate change" and you see how relevant this play remains today.However, this translation is not great. It often reads like a transliteration, with clunky turns of phrase that may be more precise matches to the original Norwegian but don't sound at all natural in English. The result is that much of the dialogue in this translation feels overly formal and stilted, not the dynamic and vigorous discussions that I suspect were intended.
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An Enemy of the People Henrik Ibsen 9781481056946 Books Reviews
Although I've never read or seen Ibsen's version of this play, it is evident that Miller is, as he puts it, "ventur[ing] into another's chickencoop". This work lacks Miller's distinctive air of mystery found in works such as "Death of a Salesman" and "After the Fall" in which subtle but devastating details are revealed slowly throughout the play until the whole stinking onion has been peeled. The course of this play is evident from the beginning. And even in a work like "The Crucible" which, being based on actual historical events, doesn't allow for so much gradual unfolding, Miller still manages to bring in subtle drama to engage the reader's/viewer's suspense. While this work is certainly filled with bombast, it lacks drama.
Dr. Thomas Stockmann is a knowledgeable, competent, and basically respected scientist. He is also rather liberal and known as a bit of a non-conformist and rabble-rouser. And he also has a wife and two kids to support. His brother Peter is the mayor of the town, the director of the Institute at which Dr. Stockmann is employed, and decidedly more conservative.
When Dr. Stockmann discovers poison in the town's water supply from a tannery upstream, he expects a hero's reception for saving the town and its major attraction, Kirsten Springs. And indeed, initially he is regarded as a hero, not only by his wife, but also by some allegedly radical newspapermen who vow to publish his findings.
But as it turns out, Mayor Stockmann and other town leaders have vested interests in the findings not being revealed. The repairs to the water supply will cost too much and take too long. Meanwhile, tourism, the town's major business and income source, will dry up.
Inexorably, the forces of moneyed interests begin to encircle Dr. Stockmann and his family. People who initially greeted his discovery with joy and predicted that it would bring down the wealthy bureaucrats begin to turn against him and side with the mayor and the other elites. Dr. Stockmann's position at the Institute is threatened. Townspeople refuse to listen to what he has to say and, indeed, refuse to even do business with him. And his mysterious father-in-law Kiil delivers the final blow by buying up cheap shares of Kirsten Springs in his name, making it look as if Dr. Stockmann set the whole thing up for profit and giving Dr. Stockmann (whose financial prospects are now in tatters) and economic stake in the springs.
In a Faustian bargain reminiscent of Proctor's in "The Crucible", Dr. Stockmann is given the chance to save his job, his "reputation" and his standing in the community if only he will renounce his findings. Will he take the "easy" way out for himself and his family and allow others to suffer when he knows the truth? Or will he stand up for what he believes in, regardless of personal cost.
Thy dynamic set up in "An Enemy of the People" is as valid and common now as it was when Ibsen wrote it and when Miller updated it. The book is an indictment of a society which will throttle its own interests - indeed, even its own life - to adamantly support the interests of the rich and powerful few. It is as relevant for today's working class Tea Partiers as it was for the people of Ibsen's small Norwegian town.
Unfortunately, on a literary level, this play does not live up to its political import. The dialogue is stilted, bombastic and exaggerated. Dr. Stockmann is an unlikeable, sexist, narcissist who, despite his claims to liberalism, can't be bothered to remember his housekeeper's name. His wife is all over the map, at times a strong and stalwart devoted wife, at other times piteously weak, deferential, and basically stupid. Mayor Stockmann is too heavy-handed to be believable. It is subtlety and subterfuge which win the population to support the elite moneyed interest at the expense of their own interests. Too much heavy-handedness gives the game away and risks rousing the common rabble against the elite. The other characters are either flat (Stockmann's children, Horster) or so conflicted and inconsistent that they aren't believable (the newspapermen). Overall, the book simply lacks the finely-tuned sense of character that Miller usually brings to his work.
The play is still very much worth reading, however, if only for the political message alone.
Great allegory of standing for what’s right even when no one stands with you. Loved this book and would recommend.
This book, written in the form of a play, is as true today as when it was written. Don't let the fact that it is a "play" keep you from reading it! I never thought I would want to read a play either, but this one has changed my perspective on them. Rather than tell what the book is about, which ruins the story for me, I would just highly recommend that people read this. It's a good story with a good morality element.
Glorious play with a spectacular ending. Some of the lines are over-the-top, but in the context, they are perfect. For me, An Enemy of the People met Kafka's definition of how a book is supposed to be like an ice-axe to break the sea inside us.
This is a great story. I read it in college, and it stuck with me.I re-read it because of problems in the tourist industry of my hometown, which is causing serious health problems. This translation, while quite old, is still quite good and catches the flavor of the period.
I bought the Dover thrift edition for $3 as opposed to the Arthur Miller adaptation (these reviews on are aggregated across both versions). I enjoyed the play, but while I sympathized with the main character, Dr. Stockmann, his intellectual elitism was too much for me.
This classic Ibsen play is remarkably modern in content and theme. Imagine - a scientific-minded professional discovers potentially deadly toxic material in a town's main tourist draw, and the town tries hard to ruin him! Imagine - a large group of scientists agree that human activity is creating potentially deadly climate change, and the powers that be try hard to ruin them! Oh my.
So many people have been returning to Orwell's 1984, given the current American climate of charges of "fake news" and assertions of "alternative facts" and so on. I would suggest that this play also deserves a second look (or first, if you didn't read it in high school).
The play itself is terrific, if infuriating. Ibsen did a terrific job illuminating how communities struggle to balance short-term economic interests with long-term health and prosperity, as well as the difficulty of having public debate about scientific issues when most people don't understand the technical details well enough to make their own informed judgments about relative risk and consequences. Replace "tainted water in the public baths" with "climate change" and you see how relevant this play remains today.
However, this translation is not great. It often reads like a transliteration, with clunky turns of phrase that may be more precise matches to the original Norwegian but don't sound at all natural in English. The result is that much of the dialogue in this translation feels overly formal and stilted, not the dynamic and vigorous discussions that I suspect were intended.
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