General Purpose / Structure: Specific situation in the play used to illustrate larger, more general themes and issues concerning mankind.
Issues and Themes in the Play:
o idealism versus practicality
o the relationship of the individual to society
o old, traditional views ("the establishment") versus modern, liberal views
o freedom of the press and freedom of speech versus a politicized press and disinformation
o loyalty
o hypocricy
o personal integrity versus social conventions and obligations
Important Quotations
Act I
o The individual ought undoubtedly to acquiesce in subordinating himself to the community &emdash; to speak more accurately, to the authorities who have the care of the community's welfare.
o A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
o &emdash;What do you want to be then [when you grow up]?
&emdash; I should like best to be a Viking.
&emdash; You'd have to be a pagan, then.
&emdash; Well, I could become a pagan, couldn't I?
&emdash; I agree with you, Morten! My sentiments exactly!
Act II
o The public doesn't require any new ideas. The public is best served with the good, old-established ideas it already has.
o I mean to have the right to look my sons in the face when they are grown men!
Act III
o &emdash; É it conflicts with all your opinions É the burden of this story is that there is a supernatural power that looks after the so-called good people in this world, while all the so-called bad people are punished.
&emdash; Well, but that is all right. That is just what our readers want.
o It is public opinion&emdash; the enlightened pulic&emdash; householders and people of that kind; they control the newspapers.
Act IV
o Now, what is an editor's first and most obvious duty, gentlemen? Is it not to work in harmony with his readers? Has he not received a sort of tacit mandate to work persistently and assiduously for the welfare of those whose opinions he represents?
o I can't stand leading menÉ they do mischief everywhere. They stand in a free man's way, whichever way he turns, and what I should like best would be to see them exterminated like any other vermin&emdash;
o The most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom amongst us is the Émajority
o The majority always has right on its side.
o The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent man must wage war.
o The majority has might on its side&emdash;unfortunately; but right it has not.
o Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk or the stupid? I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.
o I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly on the truth. What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.
o I will confine myself to one well-approved truth, which at bottom is a foul lie, ÉThat is, the doctrine É that the common folk, the ignorant É have the same right to pronounce judgment and to approve, to direct and to govern, as the É intellectually superior personalities in it.
o Broad-mindedness is almost precisely the same thing as morality.
o Happily the theory that culture demoralizes is only an old falsehood that our forefathers believed in and we have inherited. No, it is ignorance, poverty, ugly conditions of life, that do the devil's work!
o All who live by lies ought to be exterminated like vermin!
o I am not so forgiving as a certain Person; I do not say: "I forgive you, for ye know not what ye do."
Act V
o A free man has no right to behave in a way that would justify his spitting in his own face.
o É the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.