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 The Western Canon Mailing List
 Moderator: Paul John Barnette Jr.
 Activation Date: March 8, 1997
 Current Date:  July 28, 1997
 Current Membership: 85
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 Some questions and comments on Acts four and five
 of Ibsen's Peer Gynt.
 
 Act four is truly amazing. After the relatively
 straight forward nature of acts one through three,
 act four comes as nothing less than a shock. Peer
 is no longer the young man we had come to know. He
 is now middled aged and, at least at the beginning
 of act four, a wealthy man. The structure of act four
 is very experimental for a stage play. It reads as
 though its a screenplay rather than a stage play. Only
 a film would due justice to the action of act four.
 Starting at the shipwreck, we follow Peer through his
 adventures in Northern Africa. He acts the part of
 an Islam prophet only to be outdone by a native girl. He
 visits the Giza and asks the Sphinx its immortal question,
 and ends up in an insane asylum in Cairo. The sequence
 in the asylum is in itself a real shock to the reader.
 It's as thought Ibsen, feeling too hampered by the
 limitations of the stage, was trying to create
 scriptwriting decades before its existence. Only Part
 two of Goethe's Faust can match Ibsen's literary
 invention here.
 
 The scene in the asylum is perhaps the most critical
 Ibsen becomes in regard to Peer. It suggests that the
 maxim that Peer's lives by can only lead to insanity,
 but yet Peer does live to play act five. In fact, Peer
 never dies in the play. What exactly does Peer represent
 that Ibsen is trying to test here? Is Ibsen on Peer's side
 or not? Is Peer a worthy role model for people to follow?
 
 Act five also begins with a shipwreck, but overall it's
 structure is less experimental than act four. In act five
 Peer seems to be living out his own version of Pilgrim's
 Progress, encountering a series of enigmatic characters who
 test Peer's resolve. Who exactly are these characters?
 Who are the Passenger, the Buttonmoulder, the Dovre-Master,
 and the Thin Man? What do each of these characters represent,
 and what do their interaction with Peer reveal about the
 nature of Peer? What role does Solveig function as at the end
 of the play. Does she redeem Peer? Is Peer even worthy of
 redemption?
 
 Peer Gynt is a very curious play. It even seems to be three
 different plays pretending to be only one. Like most great art
 it raises more questions than it answers, leaving us to find
 the answers for ourselves. Perhaps the best way to describe the
 play is to use a word I've already used. Peer Gynt is enigmatic
 
 Please post any comments that you may have.
 
 Paul John Barnette Jr.
 
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