• IBSEN COURSE •
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Romanticism to Realism
an online course by Brian Johnston

WEEK VIII: The Political comedy of An Enemy of the People.    Condensed Summary of ‘The Physician and the Gadfly: An Enemy of the People’
from Text and Supertext in Ibsen’s Drama pp.165-191

An Enemy of the People (En folkefiende)

     An Enemy of the People's draws on the section of the Phenomenology which brings to a close the inherent conflicts and contradictions of the Greek civic world and prepares for the succeeding phase of the ‘Roman’ and Christian world-view that follows (The Wild Duck). Hegel illustrates this final phase of the Greek world with both literary and historical examples: the quarrel of two brothers (Eteocles and Polyneices) in the Theban Plays, Aristophanes’ political comedies, the conflict of Socrates with his community as recorded by Aristophanes and Plato and the downfall of the Greek democratic polis, through the Peloponnesian War and the Platonic critique of democracy in The Republic.  These Greek texts haunt An Enemy of the People.  This does not mean Ibsen accepts (or does not accept) Hegel’s interpretation of these source events.  As always, he employs the structure and cultural cargo of The Phenomenology as the springboard for his own, independently imaginative project.  As the last play in the group An Enemy of the People repeats certain features of the first play, Pillars of Society, a structural pattern we will find in each group.  In both plays, the social world is on display in crowd scenes, and is dominated by male characters Karsten Bernick and Thomas Stockmann, though in a radical reversal of leading roles from ‘pillar’ to ‘rebel’.

            An Enemy of the People is the Cycle's only political comedy. Ibsen makes Stockmann an occasionally absurd, often naive but always honorable individual, a good man, in contrast with his opponents.  Much of the fun of this role (which was Stanislavski’s favorite) is Thomas's naïve capacity continually to be astonished at the duplicity of the characters of the community he encounters. He lived long in the wild 'North' of Norway but maintained a love for his community, wishing to protect its well-being and prosperity through conceiving the health-giving institution of the Baths.     As a scientist in league with natural forces, he comes up against the civic interests of the political authorities.  His first name, Thomas, suggests a doubter, a questioner, in contrast to his brother Peter, the unyielding rock of orthodoxy and authority. 

            His strongest archetypal analogy, however, is with the first 'enemy of the people', Socrates.  Another Greek reference in Hegel's text is that of the quarreling brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, who fight each other for control of the community, one seeking to oust the other. Ibsen's method, we have seen, is to locate archetypal figures and actions within our ordinary modern experience.  It is not that Thomas  'is' Socrates or Polyneices but that his actions and his character in his own contemporary world raise these cultural ghosts, giving the play its universal as well as its solidly particular dimensions.  In just this way Hegel continually raises the ghosts of the cultural past in his account of the modern mind.

            On the purely realistic level the play is finely histrionic: that is one advantage of the dialectic structure.  As a character Thomas is wonderfully actable: impetuous, indignant, naive, good-natured, a little vain, loving attention, even enjoying a good fight if necessary.    He is the kind of man likely to turn rebel in any society, capable of being shocked and surprised at the wickedness and folly of the world; whereas more cynical folk like his brother, Peter and the opportunistic newspaper men know the world better and can adjust smoothly to its corruptions.   These political portraits are superbly and caustically rendered and are as recognizable in todays political as when they were created.   Peter, especially, is an excellent study of man as a political animal; in his own sphere astute and adroit but hostile to inconvenient truth.  Stockmann’ dismay at the world of political sleaze reveals his naiveté, but he has the good scientist's capacity for creative openness before the facts presented to him.  He shares other Greek and Socratic aspects: he exhibits that 'joy-of-life' imagined by Osvald Alving; a love of the natural world; feasting, seeing healthy young bodies grow.   The evolution of the play from an emphasis on the physical and material to an emphasis on the intellectual is practically a condensed history of classical Athenian culture from the gymnasium to the Academy.  It is also appropriate that the ‘Greek’ tetralogy of the Cycle should end with a comedy or satyr play.

            The major metaphor of the play, the polluted baths, like the coffin ships in Pillars of Society, is better than it has been given credit for.  The coffin ships did not just 'symbolize' corrupt society: they were, like the baths, realistic details in their own right, integral to the plot, and a clear indication of what such a society is capable of.  The same goes for the baths, the institution around which the life of the community revolves.  It is the central social, economic and political reality of the community. It’s history and current condition is the result of the actions of this community. It is the engine of the plot and its metaphoric dimension is an inescapable aspect of its reality.

            An Enemy of the People, as its title proclaims, reverses the situation of Pillars of Society, reflecting the dialectical evolution within the group.  The conflicts and contradictions of this community are as severe as in the first play but there has been a marked development of communal consciousness.  In Pillars the sub-ethical contradictions and conflicts were concealed beneath a pretence of social harmony and it needed the violent arrival of Lona Hessel to get the community only at the end of the play to acknowledge the conflicts existed.  In An Enemy of the People by contrast, they have evolved into openly opposing parties and principles, into an articulate ethical and political life whose blatant contradictions are more adequately perceived by the consciousness confronting them.  The metaphor of the baths reflects the complex past and present nature of the community:

1. The bath's natural origins, water, contain health-giving qualities.                             
2. It was Thomas who discovered their existence.
3. He finally persuades his community’s leaders to develop the resource.
4. The natural resources are taken over by commercial and political interests who take control of them. 
5. For economic reasons they do not take the pipes high enough into the natural world.
6. The waters, consequently, are contaminated by human activity.
7. The baths become a ‘cause’ for a power play between conservatives and liberals.
8. The community finds its material interests in the baths,
9. The town attracts outside visitors who come for their health: later, some of these fall sick.
10. The scientist, seeing more than his fellows, becomes worried and discovers the bacteria.
11. The metaphor of physical pollution changes to that of cultural pollution.

            Thomas, the healer of bodies, will find himself needing to be a healer  of ‘souls’, first of the ‘body politic’ when he fights his brother for control of community and then, seeing that the pollution goes deeper, when he sets about curing minds through a new program of human education.  This action encapsulates the life of the Greek polis (Athens) in Hegel’s analysis from the culture that celebrated the life of the body and mind in ceremonies and art, to the final phase where, in Plato’s anti-democratic The Republic, a program of educating for a radically new social order is inaugurated.   Stockmann's anti-democratic tirade in act IV reproduces details of the argument and imagery of The Republic and need not be ascribed to Ibsen himself.

     Water is a symbol of the spirit in many cultures.  Polluted waters can stand for cultural and spiritual sources; an analogy Stockmann is driven to discover.  The theme of pollution evolves and expands in the plays of this first group.  In A Doll House, it is Rank's ‘background’ hereditary disease; in Ghosts it moves to the centre of the play as the disease destroying Osvald and his art and also as the polluted cultural past.   In An Enemy of the People the pollution now spreads out from the sources within the body to polluted streams infecting of the whole community.  This Greek imagery of pollution is found only in the first group in the Cycle.  

     The play’s dialectic will transform Thomas from the patriot and friend of his community to its enemy; his house of welcome and hospitality in Act I will become the house attacked in Act V. . Thomas will be displaced from the admired centre of his social group to an ostracized outcast; will transform himself  from a healer of bodies to healer of minds.  The scenic progression will be from the physical) (dining room) to the intellectual (the study.   The play is a political comedy in which the hero, Thomas, unlike his brother Peter, has so much to learn about his community.  It is through his growing awareness of the world he lives in that we, the audience, gradually recognize our own world. 

Act I  'The first discovery'

     The scene is the dining room and living room  emphasizing the pleasures of physical well-being; feasting, drinking, in the house of hospitality    There is much discussion by everyone, of food, digestion and of “young healthy bodies" gobbling down food at the dining table.   Towards the end of the act the journalists discuss society and politics and Petra will introduce the theme of education.  Petra is offered Captain Horster’s house as an alternative school to teach the things forbidden by the community.   She declines but at the end of the play the new revolutionary new school will be set up in the Captain's house. 

Act One ends with discovery of the physical danger threatening the community: the bacteria infecting its source of well-being.
Act I presents a scene of family and social harmony, despite rumbles of discontent from Peter and only slight premonitions of trouble to come.   Thomas is as full of joy-of-life; hospitable and happy to bask in the love of his fellow-citizens, imagining himself to be its rescuing hero.   In the social discussion, we hear something of the of the repressive nature of society, from Petra, who sounds the theme that the education of this society is wrong. The two brothers, Peter and Thomas, represent two aspects of this society. Peter, the 'rock of orthodoxy', holds material/political power..  Thomas wields its intellectual power or ‘truth’.  He sees the town in physical danger, attacked by an invisible enemy (the microbes) and needing defense by material and  scientific means.  When the letter from the university arrives, confirming his findings he is exultant; strutting in front of his audience, delaying divulging the letter's contents, relishing being the centre of attention until he drops his bombshell (139-). Act I. ends on a physical action: the doctor lifting his wife into the air and whirling her around, before a circle of admirers.  Only the slightest hints have been sounded of the political bombshells to follow. 

             In Act II, Thomas makes a second discovery: the fate of truth when speaking to power.  The scene is the living room again, but the dining room door is shut as political and ethical themes take over.   Hovstad, the radical editor, is the first to turn Stockmann's physical account of swamp and contamination, into a political metaphor(145).  The doctor is at first is surprised by the editor's metaphoric language:  - it is not the scientist's way of talking.   When he talked about pollution and poison, he meant material, scientific facts.  Later, (Act IV) he will take up this transformation of physical to spiritual sources, developing it far beyond Hovstad’s usage. What now emerges is how the community, instead of serving the truth makes use of it for partisan motives, .   Morton Kiil will use it for revenge; Hovstad, the liberal, to embarrass the conservatives, publishing the truth for political reasons.  Aslaksen, who knows this community, goes along with Hovstad cautiously, looking out for trouble and Billing to score off opponents and further his own career. At this stage, Stockmann  believes he has a brave army for truth behind him and needs the rude awakening Peter will deliver. In a sense, almost everyone understands society better than Thomas, who has lived away for many years.  Katherine  Stockmann, for one, is rightly apprehensive about these supporters.

            Peter, the Mayor, is master of political reality, of what the community will stand for. He has long been impatient with his younger brother's enthusiastic idealism.   Thomas does not know 'the way of the world' and Peter has no idea of the claims of truth.  For Peter, all things are expedient.  (Brand provided a similar portrait of the politician in the Mayor of that play).  Peter fits Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic as one who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.  The scene between Thomas and Peter is the first confrontation in the play revealing the inherent contradiction within the social order. On the one side, the enormous crime of inviting sick people to come and be infected by the polluted waters seems so horrendous one imagines there can be no contest.  But on the other side the community will be economically ruined and will likely never recover. 

            The play enacts a situation that is repeated worldwide: near nuclear power stations, hazardous waste sites, military testing areas, depleted uranium weapons, the tobacco industries, the pollution of our planet, global warming, etc., etc., - for material reasons we are willing to devastate ourselves both materially and spiriitually.  Ibsen's biographer, Michael Meyer relates that Ibsen found models for the play’s action in two events: the reactions of a spa to the outbreak of cholera some fifty years earlier, and the accounts of a violently disrupted public meeting in Christiania (Oslo).  All through the Cycle, there is a ‘mutual interrogation’ between past and present.

             Peter’s adroit face-saving formula when faced with inconvenient truth, "I am unable to persuade myself." or "unable to bring myself to believe" is the recurrent ploy of the politician.  Thomas knows his brother well enough to recognize these evasive stratagems. Like Brand, he is appalled at the community's attitude to truth itself and sees the true danger to the community as spiritual, not material: that his society is content with a ‘troll’ existence of subhumanity.    However, he believes only the reactionary and conservative forces of society are against the truth. He must learn a harder lesson yet.  The journey of Stockmann through one disillusion after another becomes the audience's recognition of the workings of its society.                          

            Act III presents Thomas with his first great disillusionment. It contains the best comic scene in the play as the two brothers struggle for control of the community, symbolized by the batle for the Mayor's hatand stick.. The setting is a liberal newspaper office which Thomas imagines staffed with brave young champions of Truth. There is a notably brilliant use of props in this act:

1. Thomas's manuscript; the truth the press refuses to publish
2. the manuscript. of the 'English story' Petra refuses to translate,
3. the mayor's hat and stick that signifies a battle for power
4. the mayor's deceitful manuscript which the paper will publish.

            The scene enacts a total reversal, beginning with the press boldly and excitedly preparing to publish Thomas’s manuscript and concluding with its pusillanimous decision to suppress it and publish Peter’s falsehood.  Truth must try to get through to ‘the people’ but, in modern society, the powers controlling the media prevent this.  The conduits of information are polluted, disseminating only lie-infected matter. The contest over the mayor’s hat and stick is a perfect Aristotelian combination of peripety and anagnorisis.   It is presented as an act of seeing, as the naive and bewildered Thomas deserted by his imagined allies, "looking around" exclaims, “ What does this mean?" He has one illusion left – to speak directly to the people.

            ACT IV stages the remaining illusion of the radical’s faith: ‘power to the people’  This is the most disillusioning moment as the ‘people’ prove just as selfish, as indifferent to the truth, as the other interests.  The scene is Captain Horster's house.  Horster is the apolitical figure in the play, an identity outside the communal structure.  Stockmann himself, famously, will adopt this identity in his ‘latest ‘discovery’ at the play’s close, “..the strongest man in the world is the one who stands most alone"”   The Cycle itself now leaves the objective, political world of these four plays and will undertake a journey into the interior, subjective realms of the ever-evolving Spirit.  The increasing references to Christian themes in this and the last act show the dialectic moving beyond the Hellenic‘ethical' phase.  

      The crowd at the public meeting behaves like the ‘people as mob’ of Plato's harsh analysis in The Republic.  There are a number of quotations and recollections of The Republic (cf. Text and Supertext pp. 184-188) as well as Christian references that will be fully sounded in the second group in the Cycle.    The people, previously divided into factions, now unite under a common cause: to suppress damaging truth.  Extreme begets extreme and Thomas’s Platonist doctrine of the intellectual elite (Plato’s ‘Guardians’) is not necessarily Ibsen's.   In order to create the extreme division the dialectic requires, Thomas must goad the people to fury.  A more temperate Thomas would not have served the dialectic and dramatic purpose.  Thomas is intemperate - just as Socrates outraged his Athenian judges and jury by his behavior at his trial, ensuring he would get the death penalty when they were willing to let him off more leniently.  Thomas's ideas of eugenics, on the need to breed a meritocracy, just as we breed dogs and hens, is lifted, along with this imagery, almost word for word from The Republic. Like Plato’s Socrates, Thomas believes his intellectual meritocracy can be selected from any class and, like.Socrates, he denies the majority of the people, are a ‘nation’.  

     Act V. confronts Thomas with the choice that faced Socrates: exile or remaining in his hostile community.  The scene is the study: its incongruous juxtaposition of rocks and books seems a direct ‘quotation’ from Aristophanes’ The Clouds where Socrates place of learning is attacked and destroyed at the end of the play.  The study and its books contrasts with the food and drink of the dining room of  Act I.  Now it is to be minds, and not bodies that are to be brought to health.. This project will search for new truths for a new kind of society in order to transform the community that “does not dare"” - a recurring phrase in this Act – into a society of free individuals.  The cowardly actions of this community: the eviction of the family, Petra losing her job, the anonymous letters, Horster losing his ship; are met with finely comic indignation by Stockmann.

     The Cycle's transition to Christian themes, starting at the end of Act IV, now gathers momentum with “The scene of the Four Tempters.'  Peter, the Mayor, offers Thomas social and financial security: temporary exile and later reinstatement if he will retract his findings.  Morten Kiil offers the shares of the Baths giving Thomas supreme material power in the community if he keeps silent.  Thomas rejects this with, "I look at you now and I see the devil himself" (113)   Hovstad and Aslaksen offer the power of the press and of public opinion.  Thomas would thus be the most powerful man in the community, the ruler of a kingdom of lies.  The more friendly temptation of Captain Horster is for the family to escape to America. However, Horster offers an alternative:: the use of his house as residence and school for Thomas and Petra. Thomas, who began as patriot and host to society, now is the individualist outcast and rebel.  The emerging Christian themes preparing for the next play include:

1. The stones to be kept as holy relics.  (Veneration  of Christian martyrs has begun)
2. Morten Kiil as "the devil himself" (203)  Satan's temptation to Christ in the desert.
   Thomas writes "No" three times to Kiil. (Christ tempted three times by Satan in the desert.)
3. Thomas "drives the traders from the Temple" (Hovstad and Aslaksen)
4. He will gather "at least a dozen" disciples from among the poor and humble.(208)

     Bringing the First Group in the Cycle to a close, An Enemy of the People prepares us for the dialectic of the next group, beginning with The Wild Duck.