Critically Comment on the Title of Henrick Ibsen’s Ghosts

Critically Comment on the Title of Henrick Ibsen’s Ghosts : 

🎯 Norwegian playwright Henrick Ibsen carves out a substantial niche for himself by producing a
number of remarkable plays including Ghosts which stands singular among the others not just
only for its distinctive thematic contents but also because this play is imbued in several
connotations. Originally written in Danish, Ghosts bring up issues like deception, disease,
infidelity, concealment of truth, to name only a few. Title of any literary work including Ibsen’s
work is of profound significance to the readers, for it succinctly encapsulates nuanced
connotations of the contents and it is very true in the case of Ibsen’s Ghosts. Different
connotations of the title make Ibsen’s tour de force stand out among others so much so that this
play has been translated into several languages including English. This translated work needs to
be understood in the context of its title, for the title carries a number of suggestions leading
readers to figure out Ibsen’s intervention into the intersection among disease, deception, and
illicit union.

🎯 In Danish language, Ibsen’s work is called “Gengangere” meaning “Again Walkers”.
Actually, there exists no English equivalent to “Gengangere”. Thus, ‘revenants’ seems to be the
closer to “Gengangere” as far as spectral connotations are concerned. This play is titled “Ghosts”
possibly because it demonstrates how a dead person works from the behind and leaves influences
on every character in the play. Mrs Alving, the female protagonist, wishes to dedicate a newly
built-up orphanage in the memory of her departed husband although she used to dwell with her
husband in order to protect her son from getting involved into any scandal. Although she is
aware of her husband’s licentiousness, she tries to conceal the truth but fails to do so. Just as a
ghost can hardly put under a cover, the licentiousness of Mr Alving can scarcely be kept secret.
Licentiousness time and again slips out the cover thereby leading to equate it to that of a ghost.
A ghost often stands as a reminder of a sin which although occurred in the past, has the
potential to haunt in the future. In a way, a ghost is capable of integrating past, present and future
by an invisible thread of spectrality. When Mrs Alving comes to know that her son, Oswald, is
suffering from a disease called Syphilis, a sexually transmissible disease, she deduces that her
son has possibly inherited this disease from his father. It suggests that just as his father had
engaged himself in sexual relationship with a servant, resulting in the production of an
illegitimate child, Oswald, too, follows his father’s suit and commits illicit sexual union and thus
is suffering from this sort of disease. Oswald’s involvement into an illicit sexual affair reminds Mrs Alving of the ghostly appearance of her departed husband. Infidelity and unethical behavior
of Mr Alving make ghostly entries into the actions of his son, Oswald.

🎯 When Mrs Alving sees people around her, she starts to find ghostly presence of her
husband. For example, when she sees Engstrand, the drunkard, she promptly equates him to her
late husband. Again, when Mrs Alving witnesses the incestuous relationship between Oswald
and Regina, she remembers her late husband’s inclination to extramarital affairs. What it
suggests is that Ghosts lays bare how a departed person continues to impact the movements of
living beings and defies all temporal barriers. Haunting of the ghost of Mr Alving implies how
Mrs Alving has to time and again negotiate past and present to walk into the paths of the future.
A ghost is sometimes held as a referent to the passage of time in that a ghost can hardly
be territorialized and thus flows with the passage of time. This is precisely the reason why the
ghost of Mr Alving supposedly visits Oswald whose dwindling character vouches for gradual
disappearance of the ghost. This interpretation can further be worked out in this way that each
figure in the play somewhat acts out a ghost in the sense that all of them are patiently waiting for
their own demises.

🎯 Thus, in a nutshell, one may safely argue that Ibsen’s Ghosts has not justly represented
a complex web of themes but also let the title bear an imprint of it. Plural significances of the
title at once refrain one from approaching it from the perspectives of spectrality only and at times
encourages readers to intervene into it from ethical, social and medical points of view. Thus, the
title aptly captures layers of meaning that make this play a quite rewarding experience for the readers.

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