World Literature - Hedda Gabler

I.
A gun is always ominous on stage.
So when you pulled out your revolver—all black and white
like they always are,
the rounds slipping into the cylinder
like eyes into the sockets of skulls—I thought, good lord! I’m going to die

We are all going to die
by, at least, act four.

II.
You only put it to my lips,
lifting away each tooth.

I saw your hair tangled up in the branches in the sky,
And you were calling me Hedda again
“you stone cold bitch, you animal,
you, you,”
stuttering, slurring, I am choking and realizing
how unsatisfying it is to have your mouth around the barrel.

Hedda, Hedda

III.
You are the stag shaking fruit out of the tree
with your horns,
those wreath-wound-wild antlers.

IV.
I am never the hunter, but this time,
you have given me the blindfold, the curtain threatening to come down
and I am tying the eyes of the stag
and you are asking for the gun.

I want so much for you to succeed, I want
so much
for you to be, but the gun is going off and the curtain is down
and everybody has to take their bows.

This is NOT MY POEM. From: http://basalganglia.deviantart.com/art/Hedda-35248958

My love for the world of literature and the arts is strange indeed. I enter a world of catharsis, where tormented geniuses flee to by means of their work. Here i am doing world lit. I don't ever mean to say I hate the works, rather I like them for the catharsis I feel when reading them (even though I never wrote them).

Hedda's problem is that although she looked up to Lovborg and the way he lived his life free without caring what others thought of him, she has always been too paralysed by fear of scandal to follow his example. Eilert Lovborg was a Dogged Nice Guy to Hedda before he fell in love with Thea Elvsted. Hedda supplies a tweaked example however: she got married to George Tesman instead, who is incredibly stupid (in a social and emotional sort of way), and thus, for her, the wrong guy. She gets some severe Unresolved Sexual Tension with both Eilert (actually the right guy and the one of her dreams. But he got together with Thea instead.) and Judge Brack (the even wronger guy). Because she has never controlled her own life, she seeks to control others - or at least to sabotage their control over their own lives out of spite. This is why she ruins Lovborg's life, and why she is so horrible and domineering over everybody else. In the end, Eilert accidentally shoots himself (in the groin, and then he died.) and Hedda becomes implicated by Judge Brack for the fact that she gave Eilert the pistol. Upset and forced into a corner when Brack threatens to expose her involvement in Lovborg's death and cause a public scandal. And Hedda is dreadfully afraid of being involved in such a scandal. And that is why she eventually kills herself (blowing her brains out with a revolver), when Brack forces her into a corner. She shoots herself, not because she doesn't want to sleep with him, but because she doesn't want to be forced to do anything.

Somehow, I could see myself as Judge Brack. All this talk of his relationship with Hedda... He is like a convenient rook piece to her, where she can castle within for security, and on a whim send him out on her tasks. For the most part, Brack had no objections to being a plaything of her, but later his ulterior motives start to show. Brack had hinted that however he wanted to establish a triangular relationship with Hedda.

From Act 2:

Brack: (hears the front door open and shut) The triangle is completed.

Hedda: (half under her breath) And the train goes on.

Here goes a little passage from Act 3:

Hedda: (looks at him and smiles) I see. You want to be the cock of the walk.

Brack: (nods slowly and lowers his voice) Yes, that is my aim. And I shall fight for it with - every weapon at my disposal.

Hedda: (as her smile fades) You're a dangerous man, aren't you? When you really want something.

Brack: You think so?

Hedda: Yes, I'm beginning to think so.

But more so I can identify with Hedda. She has had little or no control of her life, in the sense that she is a person with many fears. She does not dare to step into Eilert's romantic world, which is truly what she desires yet she fears leaving the security of the world that she is most familiar in when she was brought up. She is a person stuck in the limbo of times and ages and choices, and the closest she can get to feel alive is to live out her romantic dreams through observing other poeple around her, and she subtly manipulates them into doing so if they are not as easy to convince. But everything falls apart for her - and she lifts a loaded revolver to her head and blows out her brains.

Romantic somehow. A dark beauty in the sight... Ahh, i can identify so much... Even right down to the whole revolver to head thing and the blood spattered mess on the furniture...That bit showed up in my dreams... Such an end are what my fears and insecurities will turn into...

I guess i knew from the start that I wouldn't be able to overtake you, yes you, the one in my vision. They all said: "You can't fight fate..."

I have fought, and how I have failed. But I am tenacious. It's part of my personality and I am not given to giving like that.

But it goes to having to say again:
I guess i knew right from the start that I wouldn't be able to overtake you, yes you, the one in my vision. I cannot do with the sparks and charges, rather I can only leave you a prayer that you can and will keep. Let none else pass through to what is coveted.

I never wanted to do any of this. And if things are to stay the way they are, then no one will ever be happy. If there is to be all the talk of the greater good and selflessness, then i will do it and do it beautifully. Since there is no more but ruin set up for me... I will have to make it beautiful. Just kiss me and leave the gun in my hand. I will make the bloody mess of brains on the wall myself.

I am more fearful than anyone can try to fathom. I don't know what there is to turn to. And in the end... Only General Gabler's daughter.