Wild Duck Journal #3: Exploring themes of judgment and punishment

In both Oedipus and Wild Duck, characters experience some form of judgment and punishment at some point in the story. In Wild Duck, this idea of judging someone and then suffering because of it is shown. When Gregers is speaking to his father, Werle, he says, "You've spoiled my entire life. I'm not thinking of all that with Mother. But you're the one I can thank for my going around, whipped and driven by this guilt-ridden conscience" (175). Gregers is placing this judgment and blame on his father and is holding his father responsible for his guilty conscience when he did not have the courage to speak up against the trap that was laid for Lieutenant Ekdal. We can see how according to Gregers, Werle is the one who is responsible for Gregers' internal harm, but Gregers is the one who must suffer the punishment because of his father's actions. Gregers made it come across as Werle completely destroying his life when he says that Werle "spoiled" it, and the effect of this shifting of judgment and blame shows how the characters do not necessarily accept the responsibility for the punishments, like a guilty conscience, they receive- it is given to someone else. However, in Oedipus, when he says, "What love, what call of heart can touch my ears with joy? Nothing, friends. Take me away, far, far from Thebes, quickly, cast me away, my friends- this great murderous ruin, this man cursed to heaven, the man the deathless gods hate most of all!" (1475-1480), Oedipus places more of a judgment on himself. He reveals that he does not deserve joy ever again and feels that he does not even deserve to stay in Thebes because he has just realized he murdered his own father and married his mother. The punishment he faces because of this realization and judgment of himself is definitely an internal one. He loses any pride he had initially and therefore the punishment he faces is just the fact that it is unlikely that he will regain any sense of dignity because of the unknown actions he has taken. This contrasts with Wild Duck and has the effect of revealing how in Oedipus the characters' judgment and punishment are more internal and they are completely stripped of what was initially high self-regard. They do not pass the blame onto someone else for their suffering, they suffer the consequences as if they should be held responsible.