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Henrik Ibsen Thesis Paper

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Ibsen Paper
College English
Mrs. Wright
2/1/13
Jake Pratt

Life presents questions to every person that experiences it. Many of these question will forever remain unanswered. The social and psychological problems and questions that life throws at it attendants are stressed by one of the mid to late 1800 's best problem play authors, Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen spend most of his writing career exploring the human mind. He had a passion for the truth, and due to this he conveyed his thoughts through writing. His time period offered many scenarios for him to write about which still apply to today 's society. One of these scenarios is the societal roles that given to people. Ibsen stressed the importance of societal and gender roles in his …show more content…

Are you mad? We are making our living by retailing filth and corruption..." (An Enemy of the People, p. 30).The majority follows what Peter has to say, seeing as how society has placed him in a leadership role. The minority follow the doctor. Now, both aspects of the conflict are in full blast. Society is forcing these brothers to work against each other, ironically for one main shared purpose. Both of these stories show the affect that society has on communities and individuals, alike. The need for specific people, such as Torvald and the Stockman brothers, to be what society wants them to be creates conflicts that are larger than themselves. It creates problems with others. This is the result of human doing what they do best, make mistakes. The human race evolves over time, both mentally and physically. With these changes come new responsibilities and decisions. When people fail to fulfill their responsibilities, conflicts arise. That is seen in these stories. This is a similar pattern as that of the gender role throughout history. Women were seen as the more submissive gender. This is because human beings made it this way. All of these conflicts and problems that are still to this day present are because of humans. As a race, humans create problems between each other because they feel some sort of unearned privilege to be better than others. Henrik Ibsen understood this concept; he loved to explore the minds of humans. That is what made his writing so

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