Plays for Our Times: “An Enemy of the People”
or Idealism Descended to Egoism
A note for Carla’s readers from Carla’s husband Larry: As many will recall, for almost twenty years Carla lived with and fought thyroid cancer. Determined to keep working through pain, pain meds, and chemo drugs, she wrote and published her last piece, “The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent,” (next below), in August just days before the cancer won out. Finished but left unpublished were four major essays. Kept in “the vault,” Carla planned to publish them one at a time while she wrote a new play.
Enroute the Celebration of her Life on her 80th birthday, December 1st, here is the first of the four. A too-brief summary of her too-brief life in our local paper..
Carla Seaquist
It’s always a risk to return to something you revered in the past, because it is possible, with more life under your belt, that that something will be shown up as lesser, as bogus, as wrong-headed even.
Such is the case with the 1882 play by Henrik Ibsen, “An Enemy of the People.”
When I first read it, I was a senior in high school, in a small town in Washington state, selected to represent my school in what was called a “humanities retreat,” organized by the University of Washington. To prepare, I read the Ibsen play; C.P. Snow’s book-long essay, “Two Cultures,” about the arts and the sciences; and Bertrand Russell on moral rearmament. In the early 1960s, this reading list reflected the tensions of the Cold War’s nuclear threat and offered up the humanities as a counter. It was the first time I’d heard of the humanities as a field of pursuit, and ultimately it became my own.
“An Enemy of the People,” at first youthful reading, stunned me. The protagonist, Dr. Tomas Stockmann, is the medical officer at “the baths,” the thermal waters that put his small Norwegian town on sturdy economic footing as a destination resort. It is when he suspects the waters may be poisoned, and confirms it after the university’s testing, that the drama arises: Can he persuade the town to take the corrective measures to purify the waters and prevent further deaths of unsuspecting guests? (Several such deaths spurred the doctor to investigate.)
The answer in the play is: No. Stockmann fails, spectacularly: He is opposed from all quarters — by the powers-that-be (led by his brother, the mayor); by the press (led by the editor of The People’s Monitor); and by the business and citizen associations. The only group for him is his own family. Thus Stockmann’s tragic recognition, that “The majority is never right.” Because of his failure, more deaths will occur and eventually the town will be ruined, just as he prophesied.
All this fed the tragic sense of life that — as I have come to see over a lifetime — infuses Western civilization: All is corrupt, nothing can be done, give it up. At the time I found the idea that “The majority is never right” especially explosive and, if correct, not-good for democracy. I also embraced Stockmann’s final recognition, that “The strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone,” substituting “person” for “man”; the tragic hero. Sisyphus, endlessly pushing the rock up a hill, seemed the apt metaphor. Sigh….
But: In real life, as I have also come to see over a lifetime, we can avert tragedy, we can get to Yes. Fie on the tragic sense of life! Rereading the play now, I am stunned once again — but in opposite ways. This time, I see Stockmann as — to put it in the modulated voice of the forthcoming — an idiot. Yes, he was right about the poisoned waters. But by making a moral crusade out of his quest and getting righteous and going it alone, he was bound to fail. I say this as a moralist myself: There are smarter ways of “doing the right thing.”
So, on the theory that we really do learn more from our mistakes than our successes, following are insights gleaned from Dr. Stockmann’s mistakes; in sum, how good causes can be forwarded in the political arena, where the battle is fought and won.
Expectations: Keep them real.
Stockmann, in bringing bad news to the townspeople, actually expected a “Thank you” for bringing enlightened truth to the masses (he even anticipated a parade). Never did he truly understand the peril he posed to the town he allegedly loved; he saw himself as a savior. Nor did he understand there were vested interests in the status quo, which did not make them “wrong” (as he soon saw them), just vested. Had he understood, he would have presented the problem as “our” problem and sought to initiate “our” solution to the potential ruin facing “our” town.
Execution: Come with a plan, keep it nimble.
Stockmann comes with a plan — basically tearing up all the piping and starting over — but it is so exorbitant in cost and time, requiring the spa to shut down for two years, that it is infeasible. His brother, the mayor, actually has a workable alternative — doing repair work while the spa continues operations — but Stockmann won’t entertain it: The spa must be shut down. Nimble, he is not. Stockmann takes offense at the merest objection to his brilliant ideas, soon assuming a Messiah complex that bollixes everything.
Alliances and coalitions: Organize them and keep them.
Messiahs expect to be followed. Stockmann, rather than consolidate the strength of those who initially sided with him — members of the press, the business and citizen associations — soon antagonizes all potential allies in his quest to overhaul the town’s economy. He insults, rather than persuades. And in antagonizing them, these forces eventually oppose him, at which point he is well and truly stymied.
Mind the conclusions: Draw the right ones.
Stymied, and priding himself as a thinker, Stockmann seeks to draw conclusions — and, unyielding all the way, he draws the wrong ones, notably: “The majority is never right.” Had he handled his proposition better, the majority could have been right, brilliantly so. From this extreme conclusion, others follow: Not only does Stockmann not believe in the majority, he voices the elitist idea that a select few brilliant minds (always male) should lead. Soon, Stockmann is proposing to overhaul society. Revolution!
Messaging: Keep it cogent.
Given his one best opportunity to present his case to the townspeople, at a town forum, Stockmann gets . . . academic. The argle-bargle is impossible to follow on the page, much less in a public setting. He cannot adapt his message. Message? His orations.
Mind the ego: Keep it in check.
I was surprised, at this reading, to see how often I wrote “Ego” in the margins. Not only Stockmann’s, but everybody’s — from the mayor (the Stockmann brothers had major unresolved issues); to the newspaper editor who saw himself as a “thought leader”; to the printer who prates on about his moderation; to Stockmann’s father-in-law who interferes out of spite. Far more than a concern for the commonweal, “I’ll show him!” is this play’s motivator. Conclusion: Once egos enter in, and extremism, all will break down. What a tragedy, because, again, Stockmann was absolutely right on the science and on the moral question, but so wrong on the politics.
The only one to keep the ego in check? Mrs. Stockmann, who’s on the lookout only for family, even barging into the newspaper editor’s office to save her husband from himself.
All this is not to say Ibsen wrote a bad play, not at all. It is to say that I, in my youth, was looking for heroes: I thought I saw a major one, someone who took on all of society, and I latched onto him, without a rethink until now. In Stockmann, Ibsen created a hero laden with ego that trips him up at every turn. (American movie star Steve McQueen, seeking a serious role, took on Stockman in a 1978 film version: I thought the interpretation doltish (as in this 3-minute clip), but McQueen may have got him right. Satyajit Ray’s 1990 film version is more subtle.)
Also with this play’s focus on toxins, Ibsen in the 1880s was very early to environmental awareness, as was another doctor, Dr. Astrov, in Anton Chekhov’s play, “Uncle Vanya.”
I revere Ibsen, along with Shakespeare and Chekhov, precisely because Ibsen took on all of society, warning of the sins and crimes that lay under capitalism’s bourgeois veneer. Not for him the sentimental drawing-room dramas of the day: In Ibsen’s drawing-rooms, the social and political forces impinging on his characters’ lives course through the dialogue, often without their realizing it. It is the characters who confront those forces, often women — Nora in “A Doll’s House,” Hedda in “Hedda Gabler,” Mrs. Alving in “Ghosts” — who compel the most. But with Ibsen, the end is almost always tragic.
Perhaps, if we understand the real enemy in “An Enemy of the People” — idealism curdled into egoism — we can produce a better day?
