Henrik Ibsen is one of the world's greatest dramatists.

He was the leading figure of an artistic renaissance that took place in Norway around the end of the nineteenth century, in which the work of artist Edward Munch also played a large part. Ibsen lived from 1828 to 1906. He grew up in poverty, studied medicine for a while, and then abandoned that to write plays. In 1858, he published his first play, The Vikings at Helgeland, and married Susannah Thoresen, the daughter of a pastor. Mrs. Helene Alving is the widow of Captain Alving, late Court Chamberlain, of Rosenvold a man of high esteem in the community. The marriage was an unhappy one for Mrs. Alving, but she did everything in her power to conceal the fact that her husband was an alcoholic who lived a depraved life at the manor. Alving had a daughter, Regine, by a servant at the house, and a son, Osvald, by his wife. Regine is now Mrs. Alving's servant, while Osvald was sent abroad as a child to protect him from his home surroundings. Regine thinks she is the daughter of Engstrand, a carpenter who is now finishing work on a children's home to be opened the next day in memory of Captain Alving. After this Engstrand wants to take Regine to the neighbouring town to help him start a public house for sailors. Regine and Mrs. Alving are both opposed to this. Regine imagines being able to go to Paris with Osvald, a painter who has come home from Paris in order to be present at the opening of the children's home.

Manders, a clergyman in charge of the financing of the home, has also come for the opening. When young, Mrs. Alving was in love with Manders and wanted to leave her husband for him, but Manders rejected her and sent her home.

The night before the ceremony the home in memory of Captain Alving burns down. Manders has insisted that the home should not be insured, and now he is afraid for his reputation as a clergyman and financial manager. He comes to a secret agreement with Engstrand, by which the latter takes the blame for the fire and in return funds for running the home are to be invested in Engstrand's projected "sailors' home" in the town.

Osvald tells his mother that he is suffering from syphilis, which he thinks he has contracted as a result of his bohemian life in Paris. He is afraid of becoming a helpless invalid, and hopes that Regine will be willing to help him to take an over-dose of morphine in the last stage of his illness. But when Regine realizes that he is ill, and in fact is her step-brother, she leaves Rosenlund to make her own way in the town. Mrs. Alving tells Osvald of his father's true nature, and that he has inherited the disease from his father. It is now up to her to decide whether she is willing to help her son by giving him the over-dose of morphine. The play ends as the sun rises and Osvald has succumbed to the last stage of his illness. Edith Hamilton, in the Greek Way wrote, "Isben's plays are not tragedies. Whether Isben is a realist or not, small souls are his dramatist personae, and his plays are dramas with an unhappy ending. The end of Ghosts leaves us with a sense of shuddering horror and cold anger towards a society where such

things can be, and those are not tragic feelings. A reading of the play reveals many features consistent of Ghosts being a modern tragedy. In his Poetics (325 B.C.), Aristotle defines tragedy as "incidents arousing pity and fear" (Chapter 9), which is precisely what Isben achieves through Ghosts when one analyzes its distinguished characters. Several of the characters in Ghosts inspire fear and evoke pity such as Oswald and mrs. Alving. Ghosts is the epitome of a tragedy, for the reason that it encompasses the very ideals of a tragedy according to aristotles definition as Aristotle defines tragedy as "an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear. Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another; there is more of the marvelous in them than if they happened themselves or by mere chance." The main theme of Ghosts is the extent to which society invades personal lives. Mrs. Alving, obsessed with keeping up appearances, tries to protect her late husband's reputation. But because of this concern, she not only ends up living a lie and building a memorial to her husband's false reputation, but she also ruins the lives of her husband's two children, Oswald and Regina.

Pastor Manders is also ruled by a neurotic concern for public opinion. It leads him to much foolishness, to the extent that he is eventually tricked into funding Engstrand sailor's saloon. In the Pastor, we see the connection between public opinion and duty. When the Pastor tells Mrs. Alving that she must save Oswald from sin, it is unclear whether he is motivated by a pure sense of moral duty or by a deference to public opinion, because for him they are essentially the same. It is because of the Pastor's principles that he does not give in to the mutual attraction that he and Mrs. Alving share and that would have made them both happy.

Mrs. Alving's speech on "ghosts," in the second act, establishes the play's key metaphor. The "ghosts" of duty and public opinion come to dominate and ruin generations of lives. Mrs. Alving feels that all people are haunted not only by their inheritances from specific people, but by general superstitions that exist within a community. The idea of filial piety, or duty to family members above all else, is such a ghost. Ghosts Theme of Freedom and Confinement

The characters in Ghosts are trapped. Social obligations, class restrictions, religion, and family have them all in a vice grip. The main character, Mrs. Alving, is trapped by her own hang-ups. Like a good

Victorian housewife, she believes she should keep quiet about her unconventional ideas, protect her bad husband's good reputation, and above all be a good mother. Mrs. Alving's syphilitic son wipes out these "shoulds" with his belief in the idea of livsglede, choosing your own personal path to joy. Don't worry about being a good mom, he says. In fact, stop being a mom entirely. In the end, he asks her to put him out of his misery. Correlation btw confinement and Theme of Duty

"Duty" is a word repeated over and over in Ghosts. Everyone has duties related to the role they play in the society. The wife/mother is duty-bound to protect her husband's reputation (no matter how unsavory he is) and to sacrifice everything for her son. In return the son must love his mother. The maid is duty-bound to clean up everyone's mess no matter how colossal it is. The Pastor is duty-bound to regulate everyone else's fulfillment of their duty. Theme of Family

With his realistic depiction of this dysfunctional family, Ibsen pushed the envelope like the South Park guys do. He wasn't afraid to show families as they are sometimes ugly and unseemly. In Ghosts he encourages everyone to stop playing Mom, Dad, and Son (or Daughter) and to relate to each other as human beings. Theme of Memory and the Past

We can tell from the title of Ghosts that the past may play a role here. The spooky, creaky Alving house is collapsing under the weight of the past. There's a memory of a misbehaving father, compounded by Mrs. Alving's memory of every lie she had to tell to keep his real life a secret. Mrs. Alving wants to bury the past, but when her son returns with the past in his body, her mission changes. Instead of a final burial of her husband, Mrs. Alving facilitates an enormous recovery of the memory of his life. Her new understanding of her husband's life-loving nature and her role in repressing it transforms her understanding of herself. Theme of Society and Class

Ibsen depicts the flip side of the lives of elite and the aristocrats as In Ghosts, it seems as though the higher your social position, the more miserable you are. You probably had to make some painful sacrifices to get there, for example marrying a man you loathe. You can only maintain that position by appearing to be absolutely perfect in every way at all times. Which presents a challenge to most of us. The freest characters in Ghosts are the working-class people. Unfettered by the heavy burden of

expectation, true to themselves and untouched by feelings of guilt, they don't seem to be under the same burden. Theme of Guilt and Blame

Ibsen saw guilt and shame as Protestant control mechanisms and spent much of his life criticizing them. He wrote about the two emotions almost obsessively in his literary work, and wasn't a fan of these two carriers of unhappiness. In Ghosts, guilt and shame are nasty byproducts of a world governed by shoulds. You should stick with your husband, you should love your mother, and so forth. Get rid of this garbage, says Ibsen. Hence it can be inferred that in the play He's advocating for an authentic response to the world motivated by the person's heart, not by their feelings of guilt.