Act V

• Cold, grey morning light fills the studio; a snowstorm roars outside.

• Gina is doing housework when Hedvig rushes through the door. She is certain Hialmar is at Relling's.

• Old Ekdal enters in a dressing gown, and the women tell him Hialmar has gone out.

• Gregers appears. He is dismayed that Hialmar is downstairs; he should be collecting his thoughts in solitude.

• Relling enters and reports that Hialmar is snoring on his sofa. Gina asks Hedvig to help her with the housecleaning.

• Gregers asks Relling how he explains the "spiritual tumult" at work in Hialmar.

Gregers [turning to RELLING.] What is your explanation of the spiritual tumult that is

now going on in Hialmar Ekdal?

Relling. Devil a bit of a spiritual tumult have I noticed in him.

Gregers. What! Not at such a crisis, when his whole life has been placed on a new

foundation — ? How can you think that such an individuality as Hialmar's — ?

• Relling sees none; Gregers is mistaken is idealizing him as some great man.

• Gregers counters that the aunts who raised him, the "soul mothers" Relling dubs high-flown hysterics, never forgot the claim of the ideal.

• Relling argues that they are part of Hialmar's illness: in his own circle, he has always been looked on as a "shining light." His handsomeness, "superficially emotional temperament," "sympathetic voice," and talent for declaiming the verses and thoughts of others have always made him appear the "great light of the future."

Relling. Well, so be it. But then, when our dear, sweet Hialmar went to college, he at once

passed for the great light of the future amongst his comrades too. He was handsome, the

rascal — red and white — a shop-girl's dream of manly beauty; and with his superficially

emotional temperament, and his sympathetic voice, and his talent for declaiming other

people's verses and other people's thoughts —

Gregers [indignantly.] Is it Hialmar Ekdal you are talking about in this strain?

Relling. Yes, with your permission; I am simply giving you an inside view of the idol you

are grovelling before.

• Gregers hardly thinks himself as "stone blind" as Relling believes.

• Relling disagrees and says that Gregers is sick as well, suffering from an "integrity fever" and a "delirium of hero-worship."

• Gregers asks what Relling has prescribed as Hialmar's cure.

• Relling has given him the usual one: the Livslognen or "life-illusion." He will not reveal Hialmar's particular inoculation but offers Molvik's as an example.

Relling. Well, you see, I'm supposed to be a sort of a doctor — save the mark! I can't but

give a hand to the poor sick folk who live under the same roof with me.

Gregers. Oh, indeed! Hialmar Ekdal is sick too, is he!

Relling. Most people are, worse luck.

Gregers. And what remedy are you applying in Hialmar's case?

Relling. My usual one. I am cultivating the life-illusion* in him.

• Relling has told Molvik he is demonic to save him from self-contempt.

• Similarly Ekdal has found his own illusion with his fantasies of hunting in the garret.

• Gregers sighs in pity; Ekdal has narrowed the ideals of his youth.

• Relling retorts that he should use a native word, lies, rather than the foreign one, "ideals." The two are as closely related as typhus and putrid fever.

• Gregers pledges to rescue Hialmar from Relling's clutches.

Gregers. Dr. Relling, I shall not give up the struggle until I have rescued Hialmar from

your clutches!

Relling. So much the worse for him. Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob

him of his happiness at the same stroke.

• Relling returns to his flat, and Hedvig re-appears. When Gregers asks if she has yet to kill the duck, Hedvig replies that when she woke this morning, the plan no longer seemed worthwhile. Gregers laments that if only her eyes had been opened to the ideal, and if only she possessed the spirit of sacrifice.

• Hedvig wanders the room. Ekdal emerges from the garret. She asks him how one goes about shooting wild ducks. He explains and shuffles off to his room.

• Hedvig reaches for the pistol on the bookshelf when Gina enters. She hastily lays it down, unobserved. Gina sends her into the kitchen to check on Hialmar's breakfast.

• The door opens hesitantly and an unkempt Hialmar enters. He declares tonelessly that he will depart shortly.

• Hedvig sees and runs to him in joy; Hialmar rejects her anew. Hedwig retires without a word.

• Hialmar begins rummaging for his technical magazines; he requires them for the invention.

• Gina asks if he is still leaving. Hialmar cannot live among traitors and he plans to take Ekdal with him as well.

• Hialmar asks hesitantly if anyone has found his hat on the stairs; apparently he lost it the night before.

• Gina chastises him and enters the kitchen to fetch a breakfast tray for him.

• While she is out, Hialmar hastily examines the torn letter from yesterday. He refuses food upon her return.

• When Hedvig enters the studio again, he rejects her anew and storms into the next room and Gina follows.

Hialmar [With his hand upon the door-handle, says to GINA:] In these, the last

moments I spend in my former home, I wish to be spared from interlopers — —

[Goes into the room.]

Hedvig [with a bound towards her mother, asks softly, trembling.] Does that mean me?

• Terrified, Hedvig takes the pistol from the shelf and creeps into the garret.

• Hialmar and Gina argue over packing. Utterly exhausted, Hialmar slumps onto the sofa and unthinkingly begins to eat his breakfast.

• In face of the endless preparations involved in the prospective move, Gina suggests that he stay in the sitting room for a few days. Hialmar ultimately agrees.

• He also glues Werle's letter back together. After all, it is for his father, and not he, to decline Werle's offer.

• Gregers enters and Hialmar quickly rises. Gregers attempts to strengthen Hialmar's resolve to adhere to the ideal. Hialmar has his invention before him and reveals that the invention was Relling's idea.

• It brought him happiness only in inspiring Hedvig's faith. Now he is convinced Hedvig has been false with him. She has never truly loved him and would readily run off with the Werles if promised their fortune. Hedvig "[blots] the sunlight" from his life.

Hialmar. Oh, I have been so truly happy over it! Not so much for the sake of the

invention itself, as because Hedvig believed in it — believed in it with a child's whole

eagerness of faith. — At least, I have been fool enough to go and imagine that she believed

in it.

• Suddenly a shot rings out from the garret. Gregers is triumphant: he announces that Hedvig has gotten her grandfather to sacrifice her precious duck to prove her love for her father.

Hialmar. Oh, if she would only come home quickly, so that I can tell her — Everything

will come right now, Gregers; now I believe we can begin life afresh.

• Suddenly Ekdal appears in full uniform. The group realizes that he has not shot the duck—it would appear Hedvig has done it herself.

• Hialmar tears open the garret door. The group follows, only to discover Hedwig lying on the floor. The men lay her on the couch as Gina calls for Relling.

• Ekdal murmurs quietly that the woods have avenged themselves.

Ekdal. The woods avenge themselves. But I'm not afraid, all the same.

• Upon examining her, Relling declares the child dead; the bullet has pierced her chest and caused an internal hemorrhage. "In the depths of the sea" murmurs Gregers.

• Hialmar screams remorsefully that he hunted her from him like an animal.

Hialmar. And I! I hunted her from me like an animal! And she crept terrified into the

garret and died for love of me! [Sobbing.] I can never atone to her! I can never tell her — !

[Clenches his hands and cries, upwards.] O thou above — ! If thou be indeed! Why hast

thou done this thing to me?

• Gina asks that they take her to her room. She and Hialmar must help each other mourn. Now Hedvig belongs to both of them.

• Once the members of the household have left, Relling informs Gregers that Hedvig certainly killed herself.

• Gregers consoles himself that Hedvig did not die in vain but set free "what is noble" in her father.

• Relling retorts that this nobility will not last—within a year Hedvig will be but a "pretty theme for declamation." Moreover Gregers has little reason to concern himself with the Ekdals further: people do fine if others do not pester them with talk of ideals.

Gregers. Hedvig has not died in vain. Did you not see how sorrow set free what is noble in

him?

Relling. Most people are ennobled by the actual presence of death. But how long do you

suppose this nobility will last in him?

Gregers. Why should it not endure and increase throughout his life?

Relling. Before a year is over, little Hedvig will be nothing to him but a pretty theme for

declamation.

• If Relling is right, Gregers declares, life is not worth living. Walking off, he announces that he is glad of his destiny—to be the thirteenth at the table. "The devil it is" answers Relling.