Monday, April 25, 2011

Part Two of Act One and Part One of Act Two

My reaction to the end of Act One and beginning of Act Two was general. I had a general reaction by not being too shocked, and I was expecting it.  When I first started reading A Doll's House, I was sort of annoyed with the character of Mrs. Linde.  Mrs. Linde seemed to be very stuck up and ignorant towards Nora.  But now that I have finished reading the end of Act One and beginning of Act Two, my reaction to Mrs. Linde's character is more positive.  This section of the play is mainly based upon the discussion between Nora and Mrs. Linde, the banking business, and people using Nora.  The discussion between Nora and Mrs. Linde was mainly about their greatest accomplishments in life, good deeds, and deepest darkest secrets. At first, Nora did not really seem to have any good deeds, accomplishments, or secrets.  On the other hand, Mrs. Linde had plenty.  Finally, Nora started speaking about something she thought was very dangerous of her, but she felt proud of it.  This secret Nora told was about when she and her husband were in Europe for a great deal of time.  All that time her husband Helmer was very ill and they could not leave.  In order for him to live they had to pay a lot of money.  In order to get that money she had to go through a very risky procedure that no one had.  She confessed to Mrs. Linde that she had spent all the money her husband had gave her for her own needs and forged her fathers signature. This seemed to be the main reason I was surprised. The fact that she had forged her own fathers signature so she could have access to a money loan was very dangerous. Not only is it bad to forge signatures in general, but back then a woman was not allowed to borrow money. The reason that her father could not just sign his signature was because he was ill as well.  But Nora decided it was a risk was worth taking to save her husband's life. In the end, after the whole procedure, her husband lived as everyone can predict.  Till this day in the play, her husband is still unaware of what she had went through for him.  My overall reaction to this while situation was that I thought that it was kind of cute that she take such a big risk to save her husbands life, but it was also very risky.  Once Nora was done telling Mrs. Linde about her confession, Mrs. Linde did not seem to be to surprised about it.  Instead she brought up the fact that she had still needed a job.  I believe the only reason she came down to visit them was in order to use Nora to find her a job.  Another situation in this section of the play, Krogstad, a fellow worker of Helmer, stopped by to speak to Nora.  He began talking to her about Mrs. Linde and how she was with Helmer early this morning, if she was going to take money out of the bank, and about the banking business. Helmer had recently just been moved to a higher status in the business while Krogstad is still set in a lower status.  He started to get into asking personal questions about her home life and other questions one may not like to speak about.  It seemed to me that Krogstad was the man she had borrowed money from, and he was blackmailing her and just  using her to get information out of her since she is very gullible so he could be set as a higher status than Helmer in the business (page 8 of Act One). Once Krogstad left, Helmer saw him walk out the front.  He was very curious in why he was there talking with Nora. Then, Helmer spoke to Nora about how Mrs. Linde is probably going to take Krogstad's place in the bank.  Nora does not want that to happen because then Krogstad will tell Helmer about the secret loan.  After she had heard that from Helmer, it had stuck in her mind.  Everything had seemed to scare her from there on (page 4 of Act Two). My prediction for what will happen next is that he will soon find out about the questions Krogstad had asked, Krogstad might have a chance of having a job in the bank, but not a good one, and he will find out about Nora forging her father's signature and what she went through to keep him alive through Krogstad.
http://www.shmoop.com/dolls-house/literary-devices.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/840229/a_dolls_house_literary_analysis_.html 

http://www.helium.com/knowledge/20660-literary-analysis-a-doll-house-a-dolls-house-a-dolls-house-by-henrik-ibsen 

1 comment:

  1. Your analysis is good, Shannon. Your links also look useful. However, try to incorporate them into their text, rather than just linking them at the bottom.

    Furthermore, try to make connections to other works (books, movies, television shows, etc).

    You will also need to make use of pictures. Just like your connections, they do not need to be from the play itself, but rather you should feel free to show pictures of related ideas.

    18/20

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