An Enemy of The People

[H]ow can an individual alert society to an  unwelcome truth? What turns people’s friend into the people’s enemy – and who decides which is which? These key questions are explored in the play.

The answers, we may find, are as disturbing for us now as for the Norwegian public who gave it such a mixed reception in 1882.

But so long as we still have politicians and a press with the power to inform or conceal, the message of the play remains as urgent as ever. (Geoff Barton)

Preparation

Required

Do the following prior to the next class meeting (in the recommended order).

  • For Your Notebook: In preparation for class discussion, compare and contrast the characters, institutions, and interests of An Enemy of the People and Diagnosis: Mercury. You may wish to consult the Study Guide for Henrik Ibsen’s original play in [Readings].

Optional

Discussion

Another version of Dr. Stockmann’s speech

This version of Dr. Stockmann’s speech follows Henri Ibsen’s play more closely than the Stockmann speech in Arthur Miller’s adaption and Schaefer’s 1978 film.

For Your Notebook: How did Arthur Miller modify Dr. Stockmann’s speech for his adaptation? Why might he have done so?

What Arthur Miller had to say about An Enemy of the People

These passages are drawn from The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.

I have attempted to make An Enemy of the People as alive to Americans as it undoubtedly was to Norwegians, while keeping it intact. … And I believe this play could be alive for us because its central theme is, in my opinion, the central theme of our social life today.  Simply, it is the question of whether the democratic guarantees protecting political minorities ought to be set aside in times of crisis.  More personally, it is the question of whether one’s vision of the truth ought to be a source of guilt at a time when the mass of men condemn it as a dangerous and devilish lie.  It is an enduring theme … because there never was, nor will there ever be, and organized society able to countenance calmly the individual who insists that he is right while the vast majority is absolutely wrong.

The play is the story of a scientist who discovers an evil and, innocently believing that he has done a service to humanity, expects that he will at least be thanked.  However, the town has a vested interest in the perpetuation of that evil, and this “truth,” when confronted with that interest, must be made to conform. The scientist cannot change the truth for any reason disconnected with the evil. He clings to the truth and suffers the social consequences. At rock bottom, then, the play is concerned with the inviolability of objective truth. Or, put more dynamically, that those who attempt to warp the truth for ulterior purposes must inevitably become warped and corrupted themselves. This theme is valid today, just as it will always be…. (p. 19-20)

It is a terrible thing to have to say, but the story of Enemy is far more applicable to our nature-despoiling societies than to even turn-of-the-century capitalism, untrammeled and raw as Ibsen knew it to be. The churning up of pristine forests, valleys and fields for minerals and the rights of way of the expanding rail systems is child’s play compared to some of our vast depredations, our atomic contamination and oil spills, to say nothing of the tainting of our food supply by carcinogenic chemicals.

It must be remembered, however, that for Ibsen the poisoning of the public water supply by the mendacious and greedy interests was only the occasion of An Enemy of the People and is not, strictly speaking, its theme. That, of course, concerns the crushing of the dissenting spirit by the majority, and the right and obligation of such a spirit to exist at all.  (p. 386)

Further Watching

It is interesting to compare this BBC version of An Enemy of the People with Robert Urquhart to the film based on Arthur Miller’s adaptation.

Further Reading

Van Laan, T. F. (1986). Generic Complexity in Ibsen’s an Enemy of the People. Comparative Drama, 20(2), 95-114.

The quote from Geoff Barton is from the Introduction to the Longman Literature edition of Arthur Miller’s adaptation (p. xvii-xviii).

Miller, A. (2015). The collected essays of Arthur Miller. Bloomsbury Publishing.

  • Preface to an Adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. (p. 19-22).
  • Ibsen’s Warning (p. 386-387).

Further Watching

Logan Dupree discussing Acts 1 and 3 of An Enemy of the People for her high school class.