Conflicts in Hedda Gabler

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part of an essay on hedda gabler by Esther (guyana) Essay Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is the founder of modern drama, and for that reason he is known as The Father of Modern Drama. Ibsen stated that his new drama is not a tragedy in the old-world signification of the word, but that what he tried to depict in it is human beings, and for that very reason he has not allowed them to talk the language of the gods. One of Henrik’s first plays is ‘’Hedda Gabler’’. It is about a woman who simply cannot accept the wrongs that society and tradition impose on her. The modern tragedy of Hedda Gabler presents the protagonist has a character that faces conflicts internally and externally. In other to understand how Ibsen dramatizes these conflicts in the play we must first delve into the meaning of ‘modern tragedy’ and one of the consistent elements of Modern Tragedy- conflict (internal and external conflict). In Early drama, tragedy according to Aristotle (335 BCE), one of the greatest philosophers of Ancient Greece, can only depict those with power and high status who experienced a downfall due to a tragic flaw. Modern tragedy, on the other hand, is depicted in Arthur Miller’s essay ‘’ Tragedy and the Common Man’’ (1949) has ‘ordinary people in domestic surroundings’. These are just ordinary people in tragic situations. These situations are struggles and these struggles are referred to as conflicts. According to Holt et al (2005), a conflict is a struggle or clash between opposing characters or opposing forces. There are basically two types of conflicts – internal conflict and external conflict. An external is a struggle between a character and some outside force. ‘The outside force maybe another character, a society a whole, or a natural force like bitter-cold weather or a ferocious shark. An internal conflict, on the other hand, is a struggle between opposing desires or
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