Wild Duck Journal #4

Readers are attracted to moments of intensity in a writer's work. By what means and with what effect have writers in your study offered heightened emotional moments designed to arrest the reader's attention?

In "Oedipus the King," Sophocles includes a lot of heightened emotional moments. He shows Oedipus in a state where he is going insane because of the prophecy. Sophocles also has a scene where it seems as if the prophecy about Oedipus did not come true. This is one of the "heightened emotional moments." "JOCASTA: / Bringing the MESSENGER closer. / Listen to him, see for yourself what all those awful prophecies of god have come to" (Sophocles 1042-1043). This shows how hopeful Jocasta is that the prophecy did not come true. Sophocles uses dramatic irony, because the chorus implies that the prophecy has come true. This causes the reader to be more interested in the play.

In "The Wild Duck," Ibsen invokes a feeling of pity in the reader. In Act 5, Relling tells Gregers that Hedvig kills herself, but to Hjalmar and Gina it looks as if the pistol went off. They let Hjalmar keep on believing this because it would keep him sane. Before Hedvig died, Hjalmar was angry and about to leave his house. After she died, he decided to stay with Gina. Her death brought them together again. This scene attracts the reader's attention more, because it is more dramatic then most of the other scenes.

In both "Oedipus the King" and "The Wild Duck," Sophocles and Ibsen have increased the readers' attention by adding more dramatic scenes to the play.